The Internet before pop-up ads and spam emails....what was it like?

[UpsideDownFlag]

:shrug: I can't remember.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. It was really nice

It was also better before AOL made the Internet available to clueless shitheaded assmunchers, too.

I'M ON AOL!!!! OMG!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'VE GOT TO SEND ON THIS EMAIL WITH ALL THE HEADERS FROM THE LAST 85 PEOPLE ITS BEEN SENT TO!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Assholes.

[mcscajun]

11. Even AOL was okay, until...UNLIMITED ACCESS!!! Aieeeeeeeee!!!

I was online for a bit before AOL, and well, I gotta confess, I spent some time there in its early days. But the day AOL started with unlimited access was when the kiddies (and the script kiddies) flooded the joint. It went downhill fast, and the adults started bailing.

I switched to Mindspring years ago and haven't looked back.

[CornField]

2. Imagine IRC with only one "net"

Imagine that everyone on IRC had to connect via UNIX.

In the beginning there was only EFnet... then came undernet... then came the idiots, connecting through chat programs (easily hacked).

Now there are more 'nets' than an ordinary mortal can shake a stick at and they're all full of idiots.

Remember Mosaic? I really miss Mosaic.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. Remember gopher?

Ah, I remember gopher.

[CornField]

6. Oh yeah... Archie and Veronica too!

I remember when my university's 50kbps lines into ARPAnet were switched to T1 lines which also connected to CSnet and NSFnet. Those were then upgraded to T3 lines a couple of years later.

[Magrittes Pipe]

8. The Rutgers gopher server had EVERYTHING cool that was ever online.

It's all been downhill since.

[R3dD0g]

4. It was really pretty empty and mostly text n/t

[Dufaeth]

5. Get Firefox,

except for the spam, it's like the good old days

[Astrochimp]

7. about the same or worse, pop ups vs dial up. N/T

[malmapus]

9. I remember Compuserve in the late 80s

Played my first online game Islands of Kesmai and ran up my parents bill (got charged by the hour ouch!!)

[Renew Deal]

10. It was OK. Not that good.

It wasn't that developed yet.

[skygazer]

12. Slow

And a lot of places didn't have local access numbers so people ran up long distance bills. I remember my first long distance bill - that was a shock.

It's kind of like the people who talk about the "good old days", conveniently forgetting that they had to shit in the outhouse and boil water to wash their clothes in a tin bucket. There are good things and bad things about "progress".

[malmapus]

13. Yeah I forgot about the BBS's too

There was a couple of them I would sign into but they were like in New Jersey and I lived in Georgia, had explaining to do when that phone bill came in lol...