What were the first days of the internet like?

Sergeant Politeness said:
It's funny but I can't actually remember my first contact with the Internet, which wasn't so long ago. Must have been in 2005 or something like that. It must have been a magic experience for young me to discover that everything could be accessed in only a few seconds/minutes.

Actually, one of the earliest things I remember in this video on Youtube, but I don't think it was the first I ever saw.

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I remember this video a bit too well.
I remember being in Primary School back in 06 and finding a shitty video sharing site that was unblocked on my School (this was before YT made it big), and I remember watching this along with a bunch of other really shitty videos which weren't funny (but as I had no other way of laughing my ass off, it had to do).

I kind of miss the days of Pre-YouTube, it was a much simpler time and discovering a funny video felt more rewarding.

There's some real good funny shit out there, like I remember once watching an advertising for buying a Chinese child on Ebaums World once.

I don't think an 8 year old should have been watching half the stuff I did, but it was sure entertaining. Those early Internet sites really do bring back a lot of memories.
Still, I'm glad David Firth is still doing stuff, even if it isn't as frequent as I would have liked.
 
Millim said:
I remember this video a bit too well.
I remember being in Primary School back in 06 and finding a shitty video sharing site that was unblocked on my School (this was before YT made it big), and I remember watching this along with a bunch of other really shitty videos which weren't funny (but as I had no other way of laughing my ass off, it had to do).

I kind of miss the days of Pre-YouTube, it was a much simpler time and discovering a funny video felt more rewarding.

There's some real good funny shit out there, like I remember once watching an advertising for buying a Chinese child on Ebaums World once.

I don't think an 8 year old should have been watching half the stuff I did, but it was sure entertaining. Those early Internet sites really do bring back a lot of memories.
Still, I'm glad David Firth is still doing stuff, even if it isn't as frequent as I would have liked.
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Hm...I dno't think I ever knew the Pre-Youtube days, but then again I was really young back then...

Eh, makes me wish I could be a kid again. Those were the days.
 
My first internet memories, first of all, loud as hell connecting, this has been poked fun at in various sitcoms and shows, I know *SCREEEOOOOUUUUCH - bee-baa-bee-bi-boo-bup! BRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!! BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! BRRROOOOHHHHHHH!!!*

Then - THE MAGIC OF THE SEARCH ENGINE OH: MY: GOD!
See - the internet is like this: You have a box, right - and IN this box, you can type: A WORD. ANY WORD! ANY WORD YOU CAN THINK OF!
Since I was into dinosaurs - I typed:
DINOSAURS

And guess the fuck what, guess motherfucker guess! DINOSAUR RELATED ARTICLES SHOWED UP IN A LIST!!!
Mind - blown!
I decided to be hardcore about it, and typed Megacervixosaurus tibetensis.
I got - A COUPLE OF RESULTS

*bam!*

In fact, I went right to work making a dinosaur website, and my humble lame little site became one of the first dinosaur websites out there. To be fair to everyone else, there were shit-tons of lil nerds having the same idea, so - there were shit-tons of "firsts" :D

Oh and chatting, chatting was cool. I chatted on IRC, mIRC to be specific, and chat days so honest and naive and free, I remember actually just chatting people up "oh, you're from Africa? Wow! You smoke weed in Africa? =D"
 
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Man you guys are making me feel old. I remember using these computers when I was young.







Gateway and Windows 95/98 became a big deal when I was growing up. That damn cow was everywhere you looked. Shittiest computer I ever had. Of course you had to use AOL at the time, unless you got lucky and had satellite or T1. Gamespy was HUGE at the time. If you played Counterstrike or Team Fortress you were on there. It blew our minds.

Back then personal homepages were becoming a thing, so you would get your family emailing you a link to their crappy site with a couple pics that they never updated again. Like a pre-cursor to Facebook, along with the message boards. Email was actually useful at the time, along with Yahoo Messenger and the stupid games they had on that. Weezer had that Buddy Holly music video on the first PC my uncle got, which at the time seemed so cool. Stupid stuff we don't bother with now like DVD movies you can play on your pc with extra content were just becoming a thing as DVD's actually became more prevalent. Hell I still remember going to Walmart and all VHS tapes being sold for super cheap because of that.

Newgrounds was the place to go at that time. They put out some Columbine related stuff up which my Grandpa showed me funnily enough. Oh and this was real big back in the late 90's, around Fallout timeframe...



Youtube didn't exist until I got older and joined the Army. I remember being at the Motorpool and a buddy telling me I should go to Youtube and watch some video and wondering what the hell he was talking about. Then a few nights later we spent hours on there watching all kinds of crazy stuff. I hadn't piled around a computer like that since the 90's.

LAN gaming was the thing since connections were spotty. Oh and that fucking hamster would not shut up. Now it's in my head! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
 
Mid 90's for me, had the chance of trying internet at some sort of convention. I sat at a computer and randomly typed "Star wars" and "Alien" in the search bar, which led me to fan websites which were basically just text about these universes' respective lores. It blew my mind to know that I now had access to random strangers sharing their informations, and that I could gather it, just like that. Remember that I still used to send postcards, back then, so...
Next year, my parents received a modem which made a lot of noise everytime we had to connect. We also lost the connection every 30 minutes or so, and had to restart the modem everytime. It shut off when my older sister used the phone, and she did that a lot, considering that there were no portable phones in my house.

Internet was too slow and clunky to be used for entertainment for a long time. It was mostly for gathering information, and in my case, mostly about history, movies, translating texts etc.
Then came the next years, and the days when you watched a movie at the theater, came back home, searched for the said movie in Kazaa or Emule, and download it. Slowly. Often took an entire night for a shitty screener, but it didn't matter. It was also the glory days of AMVs about Final Fantasy cinematics, the first sologirls who jumped on the digital, entrepreneur porn train, the beginning of fan forums such as this one. Interesting times! I never minded the clunkiness and how slow internet was, since we had nothing to compare it to. It just was the way it was. The time when the guy who sneaked up the Unreal tournament CD into school, and installed the game in the old PCs of tech classes was a hero.

I recently realized that I spent my entire education without social media and youtube. Made me realize that I now have no idea how young people at school deal with their lives, and social interactions. This has created some kind of gap between two generations, which are supposed to have a lot in common.
 
Sergeant Politeness said:
Hm...I dno't think I ever knew the Pre-Youtube days, but then again I was really young back then...

Eh, makes me wish I could be a kid again. Those were the days.
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I remember pre-YT days fairly well.

Some of the sites now have legendary status among people and early internet humour was a weird breed.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

What were the first days of the Internet like?
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Something you don't see much of anymore, was when an adult would get their first introduction to the Internet. Kids now, grow up with it; (so much so, that kindergarters will attempt to slide the images in printed newspapers). But you used to see people in their 20's & 30's that had either never used a computer, or never used one online; and when they first did... you might not see them for a week ~that's ALL they did once they understood the resource it was. I remember building a PC for my mother as a gift; she thanked me and asked what is it [good for]? It sat unused for two weeks; then I installed an Email client, Word, and a Browser... it was days before she'd leave it alone.
 
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TorontRayne said:
Man you guys are making me feel old. I remember using these computers when I was young.

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I was playing quite a lot of qbasic in school. Not sure why as i remeber playing it about the same time i started using the net... Must have been a big difference in computers on my school.
 
TorontRayne said:
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Oh man, I remember that game like it was yesterday. It also reminded me of Tank Wars, which me and my friends played the shit out of back in the day.



Kind of hilarious how easily entertained you were back then, compared to what we desire from games these days.
 
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