Does anyone agree the internet was higher quality back in the day?
Boyard
Posts: 5,393 Forum Member
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Like in the late 90s and early 00s when most of us still used 56k modems and you had to pay per minute you were online?
1. The slow speed caused us to really think about what we were posting, spellcheck and ensure it's complete and accurate, On Usenet (early forums) we would often write offline before connecting to post and make sure it's relevant before posting it.... download a bunch of messages and reply to them all. There were no hundreds of useless videos of people doing inane things; that one video of someone "twerking" would take 2 hours to upload. Instead, the content that was available was of higher value.
Likewise, you found yourself doing more worthwhile things online, instead of wasting three hours on Facebook and Youtube you really had to weigh the pros and cons of committing 30 minutes of time and money to an exclusive download. Since getting on the web wasn't cheap or consistent you made the most of it while you were there.
2. Cool Site of the Day. The internet was so small that we looked to this one DJ-like site to tell us what was new and noteworthy! It was exciting, surprising and sometimes amazing. There were a lot more personal homepages with all kinds of creativity. Now the internet is a lot more corporate. It all revolves around Twitter, Google, Facebook and YouTube.
3. Instead of forums, chat rooms were much more popular and you could chat live to people from different communities all around the world. It was interesting and felt more lifelike than the forums. I remember when you would go in a new room and they'd all know you were a new person and stop chatting, LOL...... then they would ask you "ASL?" We used to make friends all around world back then rather than just chatting to your friends you see in real life on Facebook. The Yahoo! voice chat rooms were fascinating. I could go to a room in Texas, America and chat to a bunch of rednecks!
4. Because the internet was more exclusive, most of the people who had it were rather geeeky and of higher intelligence so there was generally less stupid people online. I know it sounds elitist but it's true.
5. Websites would have cheesy Midi synthesiser music in the background. Ok that wasn't so high quality, but it was so tacky/camp it was hilarious.
Feel free to share your early internet memories.
1. The slow speed caused us to really think about what we were posting, spellcheck and ensure it's complete and accurate, On Usenet (early forums) we would often write offline before connecting to post and make sure it's relevant before posting it.... download a bunch of messages and reply to them all. There were no hundreds of useless videos of people doing inane things; that one video of someone "twerking" would take 2 hours to upload. Instead, the content that was available was of higher value.
Likewise, you found yourself doing more worthwhile things online, instead of wasting three hours on Facebook and Youtube you really had to weigh the pros and cons of committing 30 minutes of time and money to an exclusive download. Since getting on the web wasn't cheap or consistent you made the most of it while you were there.
2. Cool Site of the Day. The internet was so small that we looked to this one DJ-like site to tell us what was new and noteworthy! It was exciting, surprising and sometimes amazing. There were a lot more personal homepages with all kinds of creativity. Now the internet is a lot more corporate. It all revolves around Twitter, Google, Facebook and YouTube.
3. Instead of forums, chat rooms were much more popular and you could chat live to people from different communities all around the world. It was interesting and felt more lifelike than the forums. I remember when you would go in a new room and they'd all know you were a new person and stop chatting, LOL...... then they would ask you "ASL?" We used to make friends all around world back then rather than just chatting to your friends you see in real life on Facebook. The Yahoo! voice chat rooms were fascinating. I could go to a room in Texas, America and chat to a bunch of rednecks!
4. Because the internet was more exclusive, most of the people who had it were rather geeeky and of higher intelligence so there was generally less stupid people online. I know it sounds elitist but it's true.
5. Websites would have cheesy Midi synthesiser music in the background. Ok that wasn't so high quality, but it was so tacky/camp it was hilarious.
Feel free to share your early internet memories.
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Comments
I think things were better on the web back in the day, in many respects.
Was plagued by pop ups and pop unders then, and the pop up blockers weren't much cop.
Anybody remember those quick time video files + the P2P music download/upload sites?
Rather like some exclusive club?
But that was the late 90s when we only had internet in school. We didn't get it in the home until 2005, but thinking back to even those days, it was still great. I used to go onto Camfrog and to the Insults Room and enjoy listening to everyone slag eachother off through mic
For spotty teen male virgins, a bit like Facebook. Both originators now millionaires.
Yeah, but it took ages for stuff to load.
Especially when your PC got full of spyware & malware crap. We're much more savvy to that these days.
Chat rooms were so excellent then. I started with Prodigy and progressed to Worlds Chat, a superb and different chat room format. Yes, you had your chancers and pervs, but somehow they were easier to spot. I look back on those times and it was just innocent fun.
Usually some shock-jock trolls uploaded videos with fake claims to upset people. For example: "Check out this cute bunny" and after three or four hours' worth of download time, the video revealed either someone torturing a baby rabbit with a penknife or someone having sexual intercourse with a little child with a rabbit hat. This kind cropped up in any newsgroup so often that I rarely bothered downloading any video.
Frankly, all I could remember were:
- trolls. There were tons and tons of aggressive trolls. Most were so extreme that they can liquidate 4Chan in a few seconds.
- phreakspeak (hEllO wOrLD! i guN 2 dAnz LiKe tHeRe's nO tOmoRoW!)
- chronic caps (HELLO, EVERYBODY. WHEN IS CAPTAIN TREK II OUT IN CINEMA?)
- the chronic stupidity of WebTV users ("You can't say I'm wrong. I'm reading this on a 40" TV, suckers!")
- long signatures, filled with animated glittery gifs and photos of angels or teddy bears (my biggest hate)
- many debates where everyone had to have the last word.
- flame wars. Oh, flame wars. There were many, many, many flame wars.
- cliques/communities/guilds/tribes/turfs. Regulars can be quite territorial. When newbies jumped in without following the unwritten rules (which can be easily learnt through a fortnight's worth of lurking), regulars roasted them alive, then kicked them out. I liked some regulars in newsgroups I visited, but I can't deny there was a bullying-mob mentality in each newsgroup.
There were quieter/friendlier newsgroups, but those tended to be filled with obsessive types - people who relished in self-pity, attention-seeking or bragging. Car groups, collector groups, personal groups, etc.
Across the Usenet, there were posts riddled with misspellings, grammatical errors and once in a while, gibberish. My all-time WTF?: 'i dun was 2 c hur agen' ('I don't want to see her again').
Websites? So many badly designed sites. A lot of animated gifs, automatic music (usually that Robin Hood song by Bryan Adams) and horrible colour schemes. Have you ever tried reading a long article in white text against canary-yellow background? I have. My eyes are still trying to recover.
I don't think he means in technical terms.
Read the OP.
i have and i stick to my original post >:(
Which is not what the OP meant, they didn't mean it in a technical capacity, but are pointing out how (allegedly) people on the internet back then were better behaved.
Couldn't see it myself, tbh.
Kind of like when people say "TV was so good back in the 1960s/70s/80s/whenever we happened to be growing up". The technical quality of the programmes and the sets they watched them on weren't as good as now, but the content was (allegedly) better - and it's the early internet content that the OP is talking about.
I know and i stick to my original post what are you not getting? >:(
How could you forget the constant advertising of AOL, Alta Vista, Yahoo!, GeoCities and CompuServe?
But yeah, Facebook nonsense statuses, YouTube animal farts, it's all so...stupid. I was an early adopter myself (33.6k modem ftw). As is usual, the geeks adopt it first and it's awesome, then the masses come with their stupidity
It's now devolved to ****ing Tumblr. Twitter bitching, hashtags like #KillAllMen, otherkin, as many words as you can invent to describe your gender/sexuality. It's all just so...stupid. Most people prefer to check Facebook on their phones than chat nowadays, virtual friends are more important than real friends...and pathetically I'm as much a part of that as they are now.
Nope. It was awful then and even more awful now..but quicker!
Don't forget the toolbars and new search engines and toolbars some downloads also force on you whether you want them or not. If I wanted a search bar and search engine I'd ask for item.