Some did this because it was a long time ago and the internet was new and only a few people had it.
Some people did this because the internet wasn’t new, and the parents knew what kind of trouble giving a 10 year old unmonitored access to the internet could lead to - which meant that they would have to travel to that one friend’s house whose parents didn’t give a damn.
Then there are those that grew up after the age of smart phones and can’t understand how two people could read from the same phone screen at the same time.
I’m in that first group and can still hear the squeal of the dial-up modem then, “You’ve got mail!”
Some people did this because the internet wasn’t new, and the parents knew what kind of trouble giving a 10 year old unmonitored access to the internet could lead to…
Happy Tree Friends and helicopter dick jumpscares, among other things.
That’s just what we did until like… Jeez… 2006?
Not even, I was playing EverQuest in 2000. And WoW in 2004.
okay and?
People weren’t just hanging around looking at what the Internet could do in 2006, they were using it for all manner of shit. The Napster/ Metallica lawsuit was in 2000. Shit, the first YouTube video was uploaded in 2006.
Methinks people don’t remember their timelines, and are forgetting how quickly we stopped gawking at the Internet, and actively utilizing it.
i think you might be a bit confused. No, no 17-20 year old sat with their friends before a computer just to gaze at the internet in 2006 in the USA.
But 10 year olds still did. And so did teens in countries where the internet was still new then.
Just because you all have grown up and it stopped being a novelty doesn’t mean it was a universal shift.
I remember my entire primary school class in 2010 gathered around the one kid who had a PSP, none of us spoke English so we were navigating it completely blindly through trial and error. I also remember being invited to my friend’s home to just, use the computer, now it wasn’t as fascinating as it could be for US kids (most of the internet was in English after all) so after playing a coop flash game or two we did other things but it was still a fascinating new device we didn’t get to use much.
the phenomenon of “kid goes to a friend to look at computer for a while” was alive and strong in 2006, and well after that as well. youtube beginning most likely gave it a boost
I think I stopped going to a neighbors to hang out and look at internet shit together around when I got a Facebook account. I was in highschool. It was when we bought a mobile broadband stick from Verizon. Before that us and the next-door neighbors had dial up and it was slow as can be imagined. Like… I feel like we mainly hung out and to use the internet together to show each other the things we’d found on our own and also because you had to do something together while you waited for whatever it was you were looking at to load. I think the thing we did the most was used limewire to download morning radio shows like Johnboy and just laugh at the antics of characters trying to sell boats and whatever.
I think you assume your personal experience was everyone’s experience. I didn’t have an internet connection good enough to watch YouTube until I started college in 2010. The neighborhood I grew up in still doesn’t have high speed internet except over 4g.
I had barely functioning dial up Internet, while my friend had cable before YouTube existed. My first ever experience was on January 10, 1997. I was 16 and we borrowed a friend’s AOL login info to use that “browser” for limited number of minutes.
Not even 3 years later was it possible to play games and have a lawsuit with Metallica due to p2p distribution. I’m basing my previous statements off of the popularity of these very things.
??? The fuck are you talking about? We’d go hang out together to play games and torrent shit. That’s literally what I’m saying we would go hang out in front of cathode ray tubes to do. None of those things are mutually exclusive?
Whatever. I’m apparently not explaining well enough, and / or you aren’t understanding. And I’m too tried. So just ignore me from here on out.
I guess you’re too young to get the meme then :)
Not everyone had a good Internet connection or even a computer during those times. We would still go use the library computers and sit next to each other because they had broadband and I only had dialup and my friends didn’t have a PC at all.
Not everyone has a good internet connection now. Much of rural America still awaits high-speed internet connectivity
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Yeah, and I was behind the times.
No I mean literally we as in my cohort did that until 2006. A we that I was in. Me and my people
My people too. Especially after discovering weed, smoking some bowls and watching 1.21 Gigawatts in my buddy’s computer room, and him and I absolutely dying of laughter, and his mom just wondering what was happening. Was probably 16 or 17 at this point. Maybe we were holding on, but so many memories of just pulling up some chairs around an old CRT and cruising the highway. Shit, I’m just about to 37 and we still do it. It’s just how we learned to share, and I’d rather share a screen than have everyone in their phones.
No I can’t relate to that memory because nobody had internet when I was 10 🥲
Nobody had personal computers when I was ten.
Not even a RadioShack TRS-80?
Not even an Altair 8800, at least in my country.
We got internet when I was around 7, Prodigy, 1994 or 1995. I never used it because there wasn’t shit for a kid to do. We had Prodigy until like 2002. My old man signed a long contract with them, it was a good deal, but wouldn’t you know, right after he signed it, cable internet became available. And you can bet 14 year old me wore him down, it was not a want, but a need.
Prodigy
I’m a firestatah
Twisted firestatahI would love to have experienced that generation of electronic industrial music, but I’m not sure it was anyplace for a 10 year old.
Living in a university town with a much older, tech-savvy brother meant I first used the internet in 1990 at the age of 13. I used the internet before pretty much anyone I know other than my brother, but I was on MU*s and Usenet like it was home and then I discovered IRC…
I’m not saying I was smart, just lucky. In fact, I was pretty stupid about the internet. I remember seeing an early website in 1993 maybe and saying something like, “it’s cool, but it will never replace Gopher.”
That’s an impressive level of early adopting :-)
Gopher was brought back to life later
Oh, me too… When i was 10, i was visiting friends to play Pac-Man together on their brand new Atari.
Or pong
User name checks out :']
Now we’re talking! #TeamAtari
Y’all remember the computer room? Like that guest bedroom or whatever that wasn’t really used for anything other than housing The Computer?
The dads of two guys I knew remodelled their entire basements to accommodate “the computer.” Now writing this down, it sounds like they bought VAXes or something, but it was just plain old Pentiums, plus printers and stuff.
They were just looking for an excuse to remodel the basement and “the computer” made it seem like something they were doing for the family.
Remember? I still have one.
We call them “home offices” now but ultimately they’re still the same thing lol
Me and my brother established ourselves as like The computer kids so my extended family just dumped off all there broken and old computers
Now we have a room, not for using them but to store all the random tech we have accumulated
Yeah, unless you grew up in the Bible belt then it was in the corner of the dining room with no privacy.
When my mom took my computer out of my room, I used to crawl to the computer room after she went to bed to use it. Fun times.
After my dad had locked me out of the computer room, I learned how to pick locks. And I’m not even kidding.
I knew a kid whose mom didn’t want him using the internet after she went to bed so she unplugged their cable modem each night and locked it in a goddamn safe lol. I think he eventually found a similar model at CompUSA or Best Buy and just got his own.
And it was always cold because someone’s father would always say something like “I’m not paying to heat that room no one is ever in it.”
I can still hear the white noise ringing of the hard drives that hit you as soon as you walked in. So good
I could never find the computer room.
Yeah, it’s called an office, I still have one to do work and game in.
Plus all the accoutrements that invariably went along with The Computer.
A printer and a scanner
A filing cabinet for all the things you liked to print and scan
A rack full of CD-ROM disks like Encarta 95 and Ecco The Dolphin and CorelDRAW 4
A beige container with clear plastic lid for storing floppy disks, that for some reason had a lock on it as if floppy disks were the Crown Jewels
I still have all this stuff and the room. probably because I am not good at cleaning. also the office chair straight out of 90s. Maybe if enough time passes of not throwing things out I will be able to open a museum and make some extra
We definitely upped our chair game since then. That’s for sure
I don’t know, I feel like office chairs are made for some aliens. Never found one that is comfortable so I always sit like some fucking crab in a jar, feet on the table, hands desperately trying to maintain stable connection to peripherals.
Truth to be said I gave up on sitting. I do all my work reclined, slightly stoned, half nude with an air fan on max setting in a 25 wet bulb celsius
…i miss having no responsibilites.
I had about 4 different boxes of floppies, with different keys for each. Any key worked in any lock. The handle of a spoon worked in any of the locks.
Just don’t forget to put the dust cover back on the CRT monitor and keyboard when you were done!
A do miss the degauss button.
Edit: There has to be an app that would simulate the button, right? I did a quick search just now and found one for iphone, another for android, but too old so it’s no longer available/working. I’ll look some more tomorrow.
So many accoutrements! This was also the original home of the box of random cables that lived under the bed. Some day I’ll be buried with those cables.
We put internet on mobile and things went to shit.
Being constantly connected is bad for us because we haven’t figured out the right coping mechanisms. I bet the generation Gen Z raises will do a lot better since Gen Z will be familiar with exactly how hooked on simulated connectedness you can get
I doubt that. My mother was addicted to CompuServe back in the day and I was a neglected child because of it. I give my kid all the attention I can, but he wants more than I can possibly muster.
Well. Then maybe the next gen after that will be the cohort that for the most part raises their kids like you are. We all try to protect our kids from the trauma we went through, and raise them to interact with the world in better and healthier ways than we do. Right now the fight is to make sure the next generations get the chance to do better
I agree and hope that continues to get better for more children. I just feel bad for the kids that don’t have as empathetic parents.
I doubt that since most of gen z is injecting the feed directly into their arteries. They suffer fucking withdrawals if disconnected for more than a few minutes without something else to occupy them.
Those withdrawal symptoms are what they’re gonna want their kids to avoid. They’re so addicted because their parents didn’t worry as much as they should have about if all that connectivity would be okay.
They’re addicts, they won’t look past their own needs long enough to think of others. Social media addiction isn’t as physically destructive as meth but is out it right up there mentally
id use it to play backyard baseball all day
10? I guess if “Compuserve over slow dial-up” counts as “the information superhighway”, then sure. Web browsers almost certainly weren’t a thing yet. Hypertext had more-or-less just been invented.
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Neighbor: gets nice computer
Me: is this for me 🥺👉👈
I remember sharing porn on floppy disks in highschool. I didn’t have Internet yet so a few of my friends were gods among men.
Click here if you’re over 18?
Not much has changed there. Unless you live in a nanny state of “small government” and “save the children”. Bitch you turned out fine! Let em rub one out in peace.
set to the tune of Treat the Kids Right by The Interrupters
Let the kids wank
Or you’re gonna get a spank
My friend used to print out pics on plain paper and distribute to us. what a champ
Son: Mom! We need more ink!
Mom: What!? I just bought ink last week!
Mom: What have you been printing!?
Son: IDK!? School Stuff!?
Mom: Okay sweetie. I’ll get you some more from the Office Max!
So this guy I knew was trading porn. Mostly pics, a few low-res clips. Some warez here and there, too. Most people did not have fast internet yet, let alone a CD burner. He’d lug around these large wooden crates filled to the brim with home-made porn collection CDs. It was totally out there.
Cardboard box of playboys in the woods, but for the digital age
I remember printing out pictures that, in hindsight, were Photoshopped, but it was before I knew what Photoshop was. I learned a lot between 2000 and 2005.
Her head wasn’t glued on quite right.
If AI figures out fingers, we will really be in trouble.Or that fire doesn’t belong in a tent I guess .
I think a few months ago I was hearing “GPT 4.0 has finally figured out fingers” and seeing examples of correctly generated fingers.
Still seeing AI images with fucked fingers, though. Guess GPT still isn’t that good at it, or maybe they’re using some budget AI.
I’m guessing the OOP was born early to mid 80s.
Not necessarily, I did that as a kid in the late 2000s. My friend’s parents had an old mac in their basement that we would play flash games and watch stupid youtube videos on.
I did it being born in 94. It wasn’t about who has access to the internet, it’s that I wanted to hang out with my friend in person like a normal 10 year old but the Internet was the coolest thing to do at the time.
Hell, friends and I were doing it 2008 in college. 6 or 7 of us all gathered around a single 24" monitor watching the latest episode from Nostalgia Critic or something similar.
One of things I miss most about my college years was when I lived off campus in a rambling old house with a bunch of friends, and we had an entire room for our PCs - so we weren’t crammed around one monitor, but we were physically hanging out together while each using their own rig. Permanent LAN party, for three years!
83 baby here. Perfect timing. Grew up during the early internet, before Facebook and phone cameras. No such thing as online bullying and nobody could film you getting beaten up.
Could even be late 90s or early 2000s in some places
Born in 2000, my parents had a computer (running Windows XP) but it was only for work. Went over to my friends’ houses to experience the information superhighway.
The internet? At those prices?
We had to go to each others houses to look at CD-ROMs!
Load up Encarta.
Or Mavis Beacon!
and where in the fuck is Carmen San Diego
Funny… I remember “where in the world is Carmen San Diego” but I don’t remember “where the fuck is Carmen San Diego”
Oregon Trail was my jam.
Fancy. Who could afford a CD-ROM drive at those prices?
We had boxes of floppy disks and BBS to get us through.
I remember looking at the CD Roms before our computer had one.
Oh, I remember loading lemmings from a floppy as a 7 yearold
Luxury.
I had to load my games in from tape!
That’s how I started too.
Tape?
Now let me tell you about punched cards…
… that were used long before I was born.
My dad used punch cards.
He’s dead.
Back in my day we had books, that we had to share, and we LIKED it.
Books? Back in my day we had cuneiform tablets.
A literal god or the worst ever homeschooled kid walks among us.
'course I say tape, it was more like a code listing in a magazine, but it were a tape to us!
Old enough to remember a world without the internet.
Sure I memba!! I also memba getting yelled at for tying up the only phone line 😭
Heh, I ended up getting a job to pay for a second phone line.
Back in the day we use to use dield internet after midnight cause one would pay only one phonecall that would last until you hang-up. I used to go to a relatives house that I hated, only to play Doom at their’s PCs. I mean, only to watch her playing.
I remember learning about the Internet in school and coming home and asking my parents if we could get it. I was then informed we had the Internet for over a decade (both my parents were in IT and remoted in to work). I was so excited to go to pokemon.com but while lecturing me about URLs and spell checking my mom typed in pokeman.com. Very different site…
Talked to my friends the next day and none of them had internet so I got to brag about the pokemon info I had and about a cool wrestling site I found.
I’m a 2000s child and did this
As a kid, all of us nerds got our own computers eventually after much begging. (Commodore 64s and such.)
And occasionally, we had the magical moments when we got to visit the occasional person who had a big computer. (PC clones)
No information superhighways yet!
