also going online should still force you to sit through 30 seconds of robot noises just to make sure you really want it and end with the sound of a door slamming when you leave
Back in my day if you wanted to watch a video of the Oregon State Highway Division use dynamite to blow up a whale you had to think long and head about if you were gonna tie up the Internet for a few hours
Also, you should have to use dial-up. And you should have to pay hundreds of dollars in long distance fees when the number in your town has too many connections.
Oh, how I miss those days of dial-up, no local access phone number, desperately trying to get into the AOL thirty-something chatroom...and BANG!! $800 phone bill.
I joke all the time that dial up was like a kind of forced meditation if you had ADHD
Can't turn away or you won't come back for 2 hrs, can't leave the internet connected like that bc it's the phone
Must
Watch
For
Connection
Sign
To
Look
At
Fishnet
Butts
And
...
Traumatizing
Memes
Ofc
OK but... I mean you could generate cards for continuous free AOL... and visit all the BBSs within a few town's non-long-distance range (thanks, Joliet!), and run your own BBS after your parents go to sleep.
Life, uh... finds a way.
I wonder what the equivalent of that is in today's terms...
I still have my AOL address from over 30 years ago when I had dialup. Their email software is really good; far better than Gmail. But, alas...I am old...😐
Those coasters sucked, too. The hole in the middle just collects all the cup sweat and does more damage to your coffee table than just no coaster would. Better to run it through the microwave for the cool little circular lightning storm.
I definitely do (and as an American we never really got teletext on a wide scale for various reasons). Teletext was honestly better for information delivery
Growing up with BBSes and the early internet taught me the importance of discerning truth from fiction. Critical thinking is essential in today’s digital world. Some people definitely need a time limit—five hours might be a good start—to avoid getting lost in misinformation or endless scrolling.
Kinda miss being called a nerd for being on the internet. If it still had that social stigma, a lot of ill equipped people wouldn't be corrupted by it today.
Before they went to $19.95/unlimited, people bitched about $600 a month and not being able to get online, after they still bitched, but only paid $19.95. Tech support was fun.
I'd like to return to the days when AIM was the only social media. I still remember some of my old away messages, and I'd love to use them again. LOL. Remember that feeling when you saw someone on your Friends List come online? Let's bring that feeling back.
I gotta tell ya, while AIM was the only SM for much of America and the world. There was this little thing that started in the 80s called USENET (iykyk)....
Ah yes Compuserve!!! Though I've always done local ISPs in the 90s, then Bell Atlantic in the late 90s, I always thought Compuserve was good. Anything but aol!!AOL!!! 😆😆😆
I didn't realize at the time that everyone didn't have access to internet except AOL and Compuserve (There was another big one whose name escapes me). In the Philly area where I grew up there were tons of ISPs. All with dubious performance issues. (The era of the 14.4, 28.8, 33.6 and 56k lines!)
I'm pre-dating you :) I used Compuserve in the early 80's. Also, a Trash 80.
Have to admit, I was an avid AOL user for a few years. My big set-up? Remember Gateway computers?
Oh who could forget the cow box computers! It was wild for me when I worked for Citibank in the mid 90s and they had Gateway systems running windows 3.11.
Ah yes, the TRS-80! There's a blast from the past! I knew I wanted to work in computers when my parents got me a Commodore Vic-20 in '81. My mom was a nurse and my dad was a respitory therapist, so I thought I'd be in the healt field til that xmas in 81!
Oh god the computer desk 😍 I was a medical transcriptionist from home in my 20s/30s, and I can’t even remember how many stupid giant desks I bought in those years of chaos. 🤣
In the early days of Prodigy (I am a former employee) and AOL...the average user was on for about 15-20 minutes per day. The power users were on for a few hours per day - and we thought they were weird....spending their time in bulletin boards/discussion groups on their hobbies, sports, etc.
i saw one of those nostalgia collages on IG the other day and they showed the original AOL login and my chest felt heavy yearning for the before times.
That all changed on December 1, 1996 when they offered unlimited internet access for $19.99. That day was the start of the future and beginning of global brain rot.
would be interesting to compile a list for different fields of work. I reckon if I substitute with libraries, better plan how I download papers, articles and podcasts, get a book of puzzles 🤣, and listen to radio news, I could get my time down to an hour a day.
Are you in something tech related?
Here's the thing, I don't handle the warehousing. I handle SPECIFICALLY the shipping. I need to know what flights are canceled or delayed AS they happen. I need to know what streets are closed or having slow traffic and why. I have to be able to look up information on everything.
Haha, right? Back then, 30 hours felt like infinite possibilities—chat rooms, GeoCities, and the thrill of waiting for that one friend to log on. Now we’re online 30 hours before breakfast. Maybe AOL was the OG digital wellness app. 💾⌛️🛜
Lmao was literally having this conversation yesterday… Everybody looking for ways around Google and other big tech going back trying to find their AOL accounts
Right? I started an app that pays people to use less social media. https://Dayo.co We have to starve them up their resources and come up with alternatives.
How many companies are contributing to that App? In the end it's just another marketing idea, but well, 5 Bucks IS a word but someone has to pay it. I don't think that it will pay out for the sellers.
I worked for a telco. People rang in and complained when the data size for internet usage was lifted because the price went up.
The data size went from 5 to 10 gigabytes.
You could still wikiwalk if you were bored, but there would never be an edit war on a page you constantly needed to reference and if something was wrong or biased you had the corporate contact info and stock market code for who exactly to blame.
Hahaha, I was using news groups. So you downloaded all the messages from your favorite newsgroups to hard drive 1x/day, wrote your answers and new messages offline, and uploaded all of them the next day. Slow burn.
i would 30 hours in 2 days now, i would die, well, i would play videogames n be a bit stupider, n less social. Then I would die of boredom n no social connection. can you imagine phones making dialup sounds tho?
Trump thanked Elon and referenced the voting machines in his speech. There is evidence of widespread voting irregularities that indicate the election was rigged. This demands investigation. #ElectionTruthAlliance
#TruthMatters
Damn, never heard that. I guess we should all be looking for the right number. But what about the front of the camera? I mean, a Member of Congress and all...
I liked it so much better when the the Internet was like a place you visited for an hour or two, rather than the 24/7 firehose of ads and propaganda it is now.
I got my first smart phone in 2015 bc it was convenient for my job. Before that, I had a flip phone in my purse and a laptop that stayed on my desk at home. The last 10 years of having social media apps on my phone 24/7 have ruined my attention span and my sanity
Comments
only local outlet with retransmission rights.
Can't turn away or you won't come back for 2 hrs, can't leave the internet connected like that bc it's the phone
Must
Watch
For
Connection
Sign
To
Look
At
Fishnet
Butts
And
...
Traumatizing
Memes
Ofc
When everything, every product, every experience, was slightly less convenient, and infinitely more satisfying.
It's like comparing 30 hours on the Mayflower to 30 hours on Concorde
Streaming TV, playing games, reading books, Wikipedia, news articles, etc are all fine worthy of the internet.
Socmed and YouTube radicalization into terrorists are not.
Life, uh... finds a way.
I wonder what the equivalent of that is in today's terms...
That ship sailed long, long ago.
Thankfully, it's old enough by now to know it'll journey to the internet afterlife without bitcoin on its eyes.
Have to admit, I was an avid AOL user for a few years. My big set-up? Remember Gateway computers?
Nostalgia check!
I blame ikea.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/aol-shifts-prices-execs/
"The company also will offer a light-usage program providing three hours of AOL per month for $4.95"
Are you in something tech related?
Some of these mofos need to have the Wi-Fi privileges revoked!
https://bsky.app/profile/drjohnfrancis.bsky.social/post/3lak4oqp3hg2k
If you do, please help us. We are struggling to find food for our family today. Our children are crying from hunger.😓💔😶
I mourn the passing of comforting flat text. At least my homepage is still a Gopher emulation.
(Insert titanic 84 years gif)
what would you click first!
"Oh no, only 10kb of your 100kb Cheryl Tiegs gif downloaded… try again tomorrow!"
If we consider the tiny amount of content we got in those 30 hrs at 56kb speeds and phone modems etc😆
The data size went from 5 to 10 gigabytes.
You could still wikiwalk if you were bored, but there would never be an edit war on a page you constantly needed to reference and if something was wrong or biased you had the corporate contact info and stock market code for who exactly to blame.
https://www.wattpad.com/1518054685-a-step-beyond-a-fateful-encounter
https://www.wattpad.com/1514109567-the-twilight-zone-true-united-hope
https://www.wattpad.com/1508291100-the-valentine%27s-day-promise
https://www.wattpad.com/1516041298-a-step-beyond-heartfelt-guidance
https://www.wattpad.com/728628545-mister-matinee
#TruthMatters
There may or may not be a correlation but damnnnn!
So there’s that