24 Early Internet Things That Only True Veterans Remember
PocketEpiphany
Published
12/07/2023
in
ftw
It may feel like you hopped on the internet just yesterday. But it's been a long, strange trip over many years.
That trip has provided some crazy memories. And here are a few things that only internet veterans even remember!
- List View
- Player View
- Grid View
Advertisement
-
1.
Having your own webpage that you hosted for free on Geocities or Angelfire or Yahoo homepage or something similar. When I was a kid, everybody had their own "website" which was usually just a landing page with a hit counter, some pictures/photos, an .mp3 of their favorite song and some general musings, maybe an about section or a blog if they were serious about maintaining it. They were always slapped together with the most basic HTML editors with godawful formatting and infested with banner ads and popups. I actually really miss those days, because the modern social media sites are creatively bankrupt and hosting your own website and actually making it good has become a more complex affair than it used to be (it's still around, but lacking the same charm). -u/AntiTheory -
2.
The under construction banner and construction worker digging gifs! -u/mystik213 -
3.
Alta Vista -u/CassandraCubed -
4.
Winamp skins -u/tossaway69420lol -
5.
Weird little squares with blue and red on them that would sort of take the place of graphics until the graphics would actually load. The text would be visible but the graphics wouldn't be there yet. -u/hellogriff -
6.
Webrings. You go to a site, often a geocities site, for something you are interested in and see a little arrow at the bottom of the page; this arrow will take you to another site on the same topic. If you are crazy/diligent enough, you will eventually return to the first site. -u/jrparker42 -
7.
When a TV show would say to check out their website at "h t t p : / / w w w ." Having to spell it out every time. -u/BigBoyTetranadon -
8.
When it was called the 'information superhighway' -u/attictapes -
9.
The .com version of a .org/.gov site being an "adult website". -u/VapityFair -
10.
AOL sending discs through the mail offering 500 hours of free web access -u/Keithninety -
11.
ICQUh oh (in a high pitched tone). -u/DictionaryStomach -
12.
FTP, Gopher, Mosaic, running download jobs overnight hoping that the multikilobyte download from overseas running at 100 bytes/seconds didn't crash. -u/magick_68 -
13.
Making webpages using simple html -u/HeyHx2 -
14.
Using offline mode of browsers to get back to some webpages while you were disconnected to save money. -u/Dangerous_Biscotti63 -
15.
Using the internet or the phone, not both -u/Myrko6902 -
16.
Actually running out of pages on the internet to look at. -u/FighterWoman -
17.
Amazon only selling books. -u/Shiaomimi -
18.
Mapquest. Now we just have Google navigation and Apple maps -
19.
Encarta :D -u/yellowochre25 -
20.
asl pls? -u/Waaswaa -
21.
Internet dial up sound -u/Usernamess -
22.
Printing out pages and pages of cheat codes for games. -u/VastNewt -
23.
Rotten.com was the dark site that actually showed photos of the horrible things you heard people say were available on the intertubes. Photos of some guy, dressed in sexy lingerie, self choked to death in a masturbation marathon of some kind BUT who had been dead for a few weeks before being found and photographed. THAT was intertubes back then. -u/mossgard007 -
24.
Not HAVING internet and playing Minesweeper, Solitaire, and Pinball instead. -u/morenitababy -
25.
Readable Newspaper homepages -u/Karakoima -
26.
Readable Newspaper homepages -u/Karakoima
- REPLAY GALLERY
-
- 24 Early Internet Things That Only True Veterans Remember
Having your own webpage that you hosted for free on Geocities or Angelfire or Yahoo homepage or something similar. When I was a kid, everybody had their own "website" which was usually just a landing page with a hit counter, some pictures/photos, an .mp3 of their favorite song and some general musings, maybe an about section or a blog if they were serious about maintaining it. They were always slapped together with the most basic HTML editors with godawful formatting and infested with banner ads and popups. I actually really miss those days, because the modern social media sites are creatively bankrupt and hosting your own website and actually making it good has become a more complex affair than it used to be (it's still around, but lacking the same charm). -u/AntiTheory
26/26
1/26
13 Comments