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!
#1
I remember when Amazon was just an online book store.
Image credits: UnconstrictedEmu
#2
An internet that didn’t have any advertising.
Image credits: muffles4221
#3
Having a “computer room”.
Image credits: yada-yada-yada_
#4
Peanut butter jelly time!
Image credits: CH11DW
#5
Getting internet in the mail.
Image credits: SpacedApeDHD
#6
Dancing baby.
Image credits: Caboose848
#7
Limewire.
Image credits: Blurose3
#8
Getting booted off the Internet when someone in the other room picked up the phone.
Image credits: AnExpertInThisField
#9
The Napster and Lars Ulrich drama.
Image credits: itsamechproblem
#10
AskJeeves.
Image credits: gravylipstickmachine
#11
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.
Image credits: anon
#12
Winamp.
Image credits: barbarianking9
#13
Badger badger badger badger.
Image credits: Suspicious_Garlic_79
#14
Charlie wake upp, you silly sleep head, wake up. We found a map, a map to candy mountain.
Image credits: National_Tomorrow_42
#15
How about: the sound of dialup??
Image credits: Embarrassed_Spell_28
#16
—<-@ "Here's a rose for all the ladies here"
Man, we thought we were so f****n smooth in those chatrooms.
Image credits: Because_I_Cannot
#17
Angelfire/Geocities pages
I remember my friend was fancy, and made a page with frames, which now sounds like design hell.
Image credits: mkicon
#18
Ebaumsworld.
Image credits: UnexpectedRanting
#19
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.
Image credits: t0f0b0
#20
F****n’ forum drama. No matter what forum you were on, there was guaranteed to be age old drama that every knew, mod infighting, maybe even a rival forum.
Some had all of that s**t and more. Before the internet was massive, s**t was petty.
Image credits: Doobledorf
#21
Instant messenger door opening noise.
Image credits: MetaMarx02
#22
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.
Image credits: soulteepee
#23
“All your base are belong to us”.
Image credits: UncomfortableBike975
#24
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.
Image credits: Bigby11
#25
Netscape.
Image credits: Decent-Product
#26
The hit counter on the bottom of webpages that told you how many people visited the page.
Image credits: squashua
#27
Homestar Runner
Image credits: Afraid-Cobbler
#28
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.
#29
Come to candy mountain charlie!
#30
MSN messenger shaking and ringing a bell when your friends wanted your attention.
#31
Web Rings. Even people back in the day don’t seem to remember them. They remember page counters, and guest books, but never the web ring…
My Geocities pages had all of those.
#32
But I’m le tired.
#33
Rusty spoons….
#34
A/s/l.
Image credits: HavanaPajamaParty
#35
Hampsterdance
The ICQ “uh-oh!” noise
Guest books on websites. Sign my guest book!
Image credits: Disregard-my-opinion
#36
Flash games.
#37
YTMND.
#38
Rotten.com. I remember checking out this site in internet cafes and hoping no-one else was looking in. Gross, but informative.
#39
Home Made Angelfire Websites with Under Construction signs and Flaming Torches.
Image credits: The__Riker__Maneuver
#40
Gonads and strife.
#41
MIRC Chat.
#42
Schfifty Five.
#43
Compuserve.
#44
Usenet.
#45
That awful, grating sound that no Human can ever perfectly replicate, that came out of your modem before your Internet connection would actually become stable.
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