I remember the sound my 28800 modem made before connecting.
I knew I have exactly 1 second below 60 minutes to be online before I get disconnected from my student dial-up.
I had ICQ. We used Altavista (and Astalavista to crack the software we illegally got). Relevant information and socializing was done via newsgroups, as well as content-sharing. Many don't know why winzip/winrar has the option to split an archive into multiple files (so they can fit 1.44" floppy disk and avoid upload limits). Later on I used Miranda so I can use ICQ/IRC/AIM/MSN from the same client. Browser wars were nonexistent. First "awesome" browser shell I used was Maxthon and content was shared on lan parties or you used obscure xdcc search engines to leech off of IRC. FPS games that I played (quake 1, 2 and 3) lagged, I had 200 ping - which is how I learned about the importance of latency and what it is. It dropped to 50 once I got ISDN.
Now, why did I type this? Not to present myself as "the old internet user". I don't consider myself a user of internet from "before", I'm well aware of even older generation whose internet looked even different. I'm just saddened by the fact that buzzfeed, one of the worst ad-ridden sites that exists, is making this kind of an article, spreading false knowledge (which is what it does anyway). It's not even an article. It's made by someone who used Facebook when it looked slightly shittier than it does now.
That's not "old" internet. The consumer-generation that's lifeblood of leeches such as buzzfeed/youtube has no experience nor right to write about "old" internet. They simply haven't experienced how internet used to be when total population online was well below 50 million people and when broadband was a luxury.
> The consumer-generation that's lifeblood of leeches such as buzzfeed/youtube has no experience nor right to write about "old" internet
While I share your sentiment towards Buzzfeed and clueless millennials, I don't think it's entirely fair to say they have no right to write about the "old" internet.
I began to experience the web around 1997, and it was different in a lot of ways compared to now. More personal pages, less centralization, little content policing, Netscape, Real Player, etc.
I'm sure some old fart from the 80's would tell me that I didn't know the "old" internet because I'd never used Telnet to log in to a BBS. While there's truth to that, it doesn't mean I don't have my own perspective of what's "old".
When I used "they have no right" - what I meant was this: they haven't experienced anything fundamentally different 10 years ago, therefore they can't be writing about something that "died" simply due to the fact there was nothing different to experience back then that doesn't exist today. The article seems forced, as any article from fake-factory would be. I'm always skeptical towards such content, that attributes to my negativity when typing all this. I merely find it ironic that someone who has no clue about the matter is writing about it :)
> Many don't know why winzip/winrar has the option to split an archive into multiple files (so they can fit 1.44" floppy disk
Good archiving programs came with the option of using erasure/error correction codes so that the archive would still be recoverable, even if some of the floppies were returning read errors or became unreadable altogether.
I knew I have exactly 1 second below 60 minutes to be online before I get disconnected from my student dial-up.
I had ICQ. We used Altavista (and Astalavista to crack the software we illegally got). Relevant information and socializing was done via newsgroups, as well as content-sharing. Many don't know why winzip/winrar has the option to split an archive into multiple files (so they can fit 1.44" floppy disk and avoid upload limits). Later on I used Miranda so I can use ICQ/IRC/AIM/MSN from the same client. Browser wars were nonexistent. First "awesome" browser shell I used was Maxthon and content was shared on lan parties or you used obscure xdcc search engines to leech off of IRC. FPS games that I played (quake 1, 2 and 3) lagged, I had 200 ping - which is how I learned about the importance of latency and what it is. It dropped to 50 once I got ISDN.
Now, why did I type this? Not to present myself as "the old internet user". I don't consider myself a user of internet from "before", I'm well aware of even older generation whose internet looked even different. I'm just saddened by the fact that buzzfeed, one of the worst ad-ridden sites that exists, is making this kind of an article, spreading false knowledge (which is what it does anyway). It's not even an article. It's made by someone who used Facebook when it looked slightly shittier than it does now.
That's not "old" internet. The consumer-generation that's lifeblood of leeches such as buzzfeed/youtube has no experience nor right to write about "old" internet. They simply haven't experienced how internet used to be when total population online was well below 50 million people and when broadband was a luxury.