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Gabija Saveiskyte

30 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories

Unlike Gen Z kids, we Millennials never had Snapchat, our own smartphones, and 5G. We grew up with chat rooms, one PC per family, and dial-up internet. The early days of the Internet are starting to feel like something ancient, but the World Wide Web actually began in 1989. AOL and IRC were all the rage in the late ’80s, which makes them more than 30 years old.

The years of the early Internet had a lot of interesting phenomena. That’s why one Redditor decided to ask fellow Internet veterans: “What’s something ancient that only an Internet veteran would remember?” Mine is probably the old-school message boards, specifically the Dragon Ball Z-related ones. If there are any Internet veterans out here, let us know your picks!

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For those who don't recall or are simply too young to remember, let's go through a couple of old Internet things. Dial-up internet, for example. Gen Xers seem to be so nostalgic about the modem sound. But how did it all work?

Long gone are the days when you needed a telephone line to have internet access at your home. Back in the '90s, you had to dial a specific phone number given by your internet service provider and establish a connection through a modem.

The computer then used the modem to convert digital data into analog signals that could be transmitted through a telephone line. The analog signals then went through the internet provider's equipment, which converted them back into digital data and connected the user to the internet.

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Google also wasn't always the default search engine. What we today know as Ask.com was one Ask Jeeves. Reginald Jeeves was a fictional butler from P.G. Wodehouse's comics who would answer etiquette questions from his employer, gentleman Bertie Wooster.

This predecessor to Google, Alexa, and Siri is the brainchild of American venture capitalist Garrett Gruener. He came up with the idea of a virtual concierge in 1992 and launched Ask Jeeves in 1997. People asked Jeeves all kinds of questions, from how to get rid of skunk smell to where one can find the best hotel.

Although other search engines like Yahoo! and Alta Vista were already popular, Ask Jeeves stood out with its quirky butler character. Why did people stop asking Jeeves? When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, advertisers fled from web development. The company reportedly lost $425 million, and in the coming years, Jeeves morphed into Ask.com.

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How about: the sound of dialup??I remember when Amazon was just an online book store.The hit counter on the bottom of webpages that told you how many people visited the page.An internet that didn't have any advertising.AskJeeves.Winamp.ICanHasCheezburger Its still around, but not the same at all. I can remember my mom and I howling and laughing together. She died twelve years ago and I still think about how much we fun we had with that website.Getting booted off the Internet when someone in the other room picked up the phone.Hampsterdance The ICQ "uh-oh!" noise Guest books on websites. Sign my guest book!Dancing baby.Getting internet in the mail.Peanut butter jelly time!Limewire.--<-@ "Here's a rose for all the ladies here" Man, we thought we were so f****n smooth in those chatrooms.Having a "computer room".Netscape.Discussion boards for specific topics. (And not aggregated under the same website like reddit) I have fond memories of these. I met a lot of cool people, some of which I'm still in contact with a good decade and a half later.Badger badger badger badger.Charlie wake upp, you silly sleep head, wake up. We found a map, a map to candy mountain.Instant messenger door opening noise.The Napster and Lars Ulrich drama.MSN messenger shaking and ringing a bell when your friends wanted your attention.Learning basic HTML to pimp out your MySpace profile Bumper stickers on facebook Uploading a digital camera album of your night out Leaving moody asf away messages on AIM.Flash games."All your base are belong to us".Rotten.com. I remember checking out this site in internet cafes and hoping no-one else was looking in. Gross, but informative.Home Made Angelfire Websites with Under Construction signs and Flaming Torches.Treating chat rooms like real, physical places. Like, with an established setting and stuff. People would narrate what they’re doing in that space as they talked. Usually with a font or marker to designate the action: goes to the table and sips coffee.Ebaumsworld.Google not existing Netscape Navigator Excite, HotBot, Lycos, Altavista, Webcrawler Amazon is just an online bookstore IRC ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Trillian Yahoo Chatrooms Yahoo Games Usenet AOL CompuServe Prodigy NetZero Edit: More below: As u/TheOCDGeek reminded me, Juno (free email and later free internet). There were a ton of free internet services (dial-up) for a while. Most were backed by one company that I can't remember the name of. About.com Ask Jeeves Metacrawler (get results from many search engines on one page) Digg (Reddit before Reddit) StumbleUpon Webrings Guestbooks to sign Geocities (before it became Yahoo Geocities) Tripod Angelfire.
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