Pre-2007 Internet

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>>52570023
best time of my life

>>52570033
How long is this gif lol.

>>52570139
i gave up omg

No, it was actually really shitty.
Dial up was suffering.
But it was shitty in a charming sort of way. Most people were part of many smaller communities rather than a few huge ones. I believe there's an image that shows how website traffic has changed over the years that shows this pretty well, but I don't have that image.

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2003-2007 was the best

>>52570165
This.

Neonet has way better technology to deal with.
I just wish it wasn't so centralized. Especially considering some of the main people benefiting from its centralization do should not have that much power i.e Zuckerberg.

I wouldn't even mind the centralization much if the companies at the center didn't have an obsession with invading privacy.

>>52570023
You mean pre-2005

>>52570033
It's still going.

The chat has ended, but the gif hasn't reset.

I'm the anon that posted >>52570139

I had a Facebook account in 2005 OP
But yes the internet was generally cooler the further back you go.

>WebTV audioscope webrings, WebTV transloaders so you could save images to your Geocities, and 8 second porn wmv porn clips

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YouTube is definitely different from how it was 10 years ago, but back then there was hardly any actual original content on it.

>>52570312
Do you think there was more OC?

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Most people who believe this are either
>a) the underage b& who have no idea what they are talking about
>or b) were teenagers around that time, and they're blinded by nostalgia

>>52570334
Ratio of content to OC was better but there is way more OC now due to people being online literally 24 hours a day

There was a period of time in between widespread broadband uptake and social media garbage that was pretty nice.

>>52570023
Yes.

>>52570033
topkek is this fake? I'm curious about the sequel tbqh.

The technology wasn't better, but the community was.

What I miss the most is what >>52570165 said about smaller communities, now everything is too connected and everyone is an entitled bitch that gets offended by everything.

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The best time of my life.

>>52570329
YouTube was essentially a TV warehouse. You could find whatever type of show you wanted there.

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Remember when we had nostalgia threads in 2004?

>>52570023
I miss the old MySpace and Netlog, the only good social networks ever made.

>>52570242
This, I got a facebook account in 2006, though it was ONLY available for college students at the time (you could only create an account with a valid college email address).

>>52570621
>good social networks
>good
>social networks

Not really.

Finding information was a chore, back before web crawlers and search engines, you had sites that just aggregated links to different websites. It made searching for content tedious.

Multimedia didn't start to appear until the mid-'90s, and was extremely limited to very small photos and grainy poorly-encoded videos... you had to download the videos - no flash or way of playing them in your web browser.

Usenet was pretty rad though. Just about the only means of mass communication.

And then there's dial-up. Ughh. Had AOL, their web browser was awful. Had to buy my own phone line because my family got tired of me hogging it up.

Pirating stuff was nowhere near as easy as it is now. Early on all you had were BBSs, then IRC, then Hotline became really big, but they were all very technical and complicated to use.

Even with easier P2P programs like Napster and LimeWire it was still a pain. Downloading stuff over dial-up took FOREVER. Used to wake up, queue all my Napster downloads, and let it run all day while I was in school, hoping it would be done by the time I got home.

>>52570633
>no phone nummber reuired
>no real names required
>no shitty apps everywhere
>people used the sites for actual socialization

I myself didn't use them very much but they were alright.

Internet was better without normies.

>>52570023
Hmm, I remember always chatting with my friends via ICQ, using LimeWire to pirate music, watching funny animations and playing flash games on Newgrounds, playing some RTS and MMO games, and bouncing around between a few different interest-specific forums.

The internet was a totally different beast back then.. so different that I have a hard time even remembering exactly what it was like or how I wasted so much time on it.....

>>52570023
Just games and IRC.

>>52570329
Not even a single tab for Digg......

Before Facebook, anonimity was a right and common sense, now if you don't dox yourself on the internet people ostracize you, the internet itself ostracizes you because almost everywhere they want to know all about your personal life so they can monetize everything, can't even use some sites otherwise.

>>52570666
> no flash or way of playing them in your web browser.
That's good retard.

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>>52570812

>>52570897
Kek

Limewire and old runescape. So nice

>>52570523
Kek

>>52570023
Get on the wayback machine and find out.

>>52570023
yes we actually had websites then, instead of the few hundred that exist now. And sailor moon erotic fanfics. Hentai was better designed as well.

>>52571585
>sailor moon erotic fanfics.
oh boy

"It's a good thing these are magical," Moon said as she moved to comply. She removed the rear bow and the skirt, then slowly stripped away the entire white leotard. She gobbled up a breast again as she caressed Mars' naked form. She ran her hands all over Mars' body, over her back, her ass, rubbing her other breast and stomach. She moved her hands up the inside of her thighs until she reached the top. She rubbed her hand over Mars' neatly trimmed bush, and slowly allowed her fingers to trace down and find her clit. She grasped it between her thumb and forefinger and gently twisted back and forth.

"Oh yes, Sailor Moon," Mars breathed, "touch me just like that, yes." She spread her legs wider and moved her hips with each twist of Moon's fingers. She tried to maneuver her hips to get Sailor Moon's fingers to slip inside her, but Moon was being very careful not to allow that to happen. She stayed near her clit on purpose, even though she could tell Mars wanted more. Moon's gloved fingers were already soaked through with Mars' juices. Mars felt so sexy, naughty, she moved like a porn star.

"Oh, please Sailor Moon, finger me. I can't stand the teasing anymore. I'm so wet, please finger fuck me."

Sailor Moon smiled. She liked hearing Mars beg for it. "Not just yet," she said, continuing to massage her swollen clit.

Mars pushed Sailor Moon backward onto the bed suddenly, roughly. She grabbed Moon's soaked hand and positioned her finger over her pelvis, to point up towards the ceiling. She climbed up on the bed and straddled herself over the finger and slowly lowered herself onto it. Moon allowed her to do it, and kept her finger steady and stiff as Mars began to gyrate.

Before smartphones, the Internet was a place for outsiders, for mavericks, for freaks and geeks and degenerates. It was for people who didn't accept the status quo, who wanted to listen to music beyond radio. It was a Frontier, undiscovered. It was for people who wanted something new. In short it was the anti-TV.

Now it is just TV. For better or for worse.

>>52572108
>dad, get off the phone and eat your dinner!

>>52570023
If by Internet you mean the WWW then no. I had ISDN until 2010 and used the Internet just fine. Mailing lists, irc and still messed around on usenet. I only used the WWW for shit like fark. I missed the heydays of myspace and youtube.

>>52570033
Are you any of the users in the chat? Which one? And is there more to it after everyone leaves the chatroom?

>>52570033
Biggest fucking gif i have seen

>>52570265
Gifs don't have to loop btw

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>>52572127
>"..When did it all go so wrong?"
>"..I never wanted to be this guy.. the suburban father.."
>"I wanted to be a researcher.. an explorer of knowledge and science.. I - I wanted to do research for IBM.."
>
>"DAD! Mom said dinner is ready NOW!"
>
>"What does it matter anymore? The time's gone and I'll be dead before the real big stuff happens anyway.."
>
>
>"I'm coming!"

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>>52570033
for what purpose

>>52570023
i loved it.
usenet
hackers lounge yahoo chatroom
original hackers.com
cyberarmy.com
playing zebulun
and the gopher protocal

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>>52572127

It was pretty good just before myspace and facebook.

I used things like YahooClubs, Yahoo Games, and to talk to people you used AIM or MSN Messenger.

Most of my time was spent collecting Dragonball Z pictures and doing Weaboo shit.

Also before Facebook and Myspace people used FaceParty and Buddy Profile.

>>52570023
it was ebin tier

>>52572718
>yahoo games

I remember playing pool

fun times.

>>52570666
If you want good information, it's still a chore. Google et al only turn up the most popular stuff, maybe one or two useful links, thousands of news media forum clone shit.

If you want the good stuff you still have to dig deep into forums and stuff.

>>52570165
Pretty much, remember when you stumbled upon little websites about whatever you were into? Like some little HTML page about NES games, for instance. Nowadays even "big" sites about specific niches seem to be less of a thing, everything's consolidated now.

Did we reach cyberpunk dystopia on the internet? Are we now cybercyberpunk?

>>52570675

You don't have to give them your real name.

>>52570165
>pre-2007
>dial-up
Fuck off, kid. By 2002 we all had broadband.

>>52572900
Finding expert and scholarly info is still impossible since none of it is cataloged, as all of it is behind paywalls.

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It was the greatest time in history, my friend.

>>52572718
Damn I forgot about Yahoo Games. Yahoo used to be big shit. I used Yahoo Chat in the late 90's quite a bit. Now whenever we see "Yahoo" we get annoyed because they aren't Google.

No, losers say this because they've fallen for the age meme and think it makes them look knowledgeable. Nostalgia is cancer that retroactively makes hideously bad memories good.

>pre 2007
This wasn't even that long ago.

Other years mentioned in this thread
>2003 - 2007
>pre 2005
>2004
>2002

When you're a bitter fuck and only keep to your dumb little obscure forum pond, it doesn't matter how many "normies" "infect" the internet since you ignore them anyway.

>1995
>on obscure irc circlejerk
>2005
>on obscure irc circlejerk
>2015
>on obscure irc circlejerk

It's very rare and not seen on this board, but I've seen "normies" pine for the "good old days of the internet" and mention the cut-off year being 2009. I've even seen 2010 and 2011 a few times. Soon an 80s fag will show up to the thread and start spouting kid kid kid and insist 1993 was the best year, muh eternal september, etc. Why is it, that all of these years mentioned by number, are always when the poster was 12 - 15?

The sad part about having this conversation is it's essentially impossible without psuedo-condescending "kid" talk. There are archives of old posts and old sites, but you're viewing them on modern hardware and on modern internet infrastructure. You can access the former but not go back to the latter, and this is how nostalgia makes up this little fantasy where you pine for the good ol days (less than 8 fucking years ago?) yet can never actually go back to see how shit they were, creating quantum bullshit that you can't disprove like "old tech was the best!". When "oldfags" jerk off to their old tech they've collected, they usually leave it turned off forever. To turn it on would be to remember, and therefore finally admit that it was shit. I've seen amiga forums where the majority of the posters' fucking precious amiga didn't even turn on anymore, but they were STILL insisting that their 80s consumer garbage is better than modern PCs, as if they even have a clue what a modern PC is.

>>52573055
>Did we reach cyberpunk dystopia on the internet? Are we now cybercyberpunk?
We live in a cyberpunk world, it's just not as cool as we'd hoped.

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like this if you cri errytim

>>52570190
holy shit oldfag
Been here since 06?

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>>52570023
My last good memory of the internet was when YTMND became so popular. I think lack of anonymity on the internet has mostly ruined it for me.

>>52570023
>le wrong generation thread
Fuck off.

>>52574814
Amiga? The real men used Sun, kid.

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>>52570165
Here's your image

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>tfw BroodWar is alive and SC2 is dead

feelsgoodman

>>52570023
yes

>>52574814
>I've seen "normies" pine for the "good old days of the internet" and mention the cut-off year being 2009
Did they say why? I'm genuinely curious.

>>52570329
Ah back when youtube was good
Back when Copyright Content didn't get deleted all the time

Back when there was no likes/dislikes only star ratings
Good times

>>52570523
omfg...those "x" hit me straight in the nostalgia boner

>>52570341
Or c), the rise of government over regulation in the late '00s and the removal of barriers of entry have harmed the diversity of content and tone of the internet. The only people who believe it was worse then who were alive during that time were terrible at using computers or lived in a place with a shit connection.

>>52570190
In 2003 this place was dull as shit and didn't pick up proper till 2004. I'd say 04 - 07 where the best times for this site, but '97 - 07 for internet as a whole.

>>52570023
Yes. I stopped using any social media (except 4chan :-) ) some years ago due to flood of feral, behaving disorderly children and idiots shitting everywhere. Some discussing communities I've enjoued much quickly became public children playgrounds - and not these of good neighbourhoods. Every time you want to talk to sb in public chat You fell like you accidentally stepped into gypsy slum.

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Who here remembers all the Bush Flash Games?

>>52574814
Oh fuck off you contrarian faggot

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>>52575846
Never seen one... But I remember the cult following "Clinton Fucker" video :-)
>You've lost, its your wife
>You've lost, its your wife

>>52575187
I'm surprised Yahoo is still so popular to be honest
I mean I get they have that gay shit Yahoo Answers but they don't have much else that Jewgle doesn't have

>>52570023
The wide availability of internet ruined everything forever.
As always, when something increases in popularity, it decreases in average quality.

Will the internet ever go back to what it was?

>>52575187
Damn interesting. And it will progress so top5 takes the entire internet. What if the tops start to consolidate?

>>52575846
PUNCH GEORGE BUSH AND WIN AN IPOD

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>>52575955
This other one was THE SHIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THj7VvsI9HI

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>>52574814

Grandpa here, I was there from the start.

Internet today is much better, you just have to avoid cancer sites like reddit, your local newspapers, gawker media trash etc...

Turning point for the internet to really go mainstream was somewhere around 2005 with birth of Ajax web development techniques that made internet easy enough to use for the masses.

I miss chatrooms desu.

I loved being able to have a group of people who were friends online to talk to.

I miss forum drama.

I felt more connected to random strangers back then then I do now

>>52576293
I respectfully disagree, sir. I think the golden era was mid 90s to early 2000s. After that it all went to shit, especially with the advent of social media which in turn destroyed our society

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>>52570023
>user curated search engines
horrible

>>52576296
>forum drama
This. I miss the days of forums

>>52570329
back in the time when you could add friends on youtube

>>52576293
>Internet today is much better
disagree
it's soulless trash now

>>52576638

No man, there's so much more interesting stuff than before, you just have to dig little deeper and don't get clikbaited on the front page into mainstream trash.

>>52576706
>muh darknet and cp

>hurr Internet is ruined forever
It's not? There is still IRC, there is till Usenet, there are still obscure forums, there are still mailing lists, there are still MUDs and old-school MMOs, there are still millions of webesies that are not Facebook and domain names and hosting costs are much lower now, so you can host your website, IRC server, mailing list etc Shit, there are even working BBS's! What the fuck do you fags even need?

>>52570023
In the sense that EVERY single retard and their dog have the internet, yes it's worse. So many cancerous comments everywhere. Social justice alike have let it be known how fucking loud their voices are.

>>52573989
I was late to the party and upgraded from 56k to 512kbps ADSL in 2003.
most of my friends already had either ISDN, cable, or DSL before that.

>>52570023
Not really. I do get slightly nostalgic for some of the things we had back then, but that's offset by remembering how much other aspects of it sucked.

>>52570023
Golden era of the Internet is 2005: icq, forums, all was legal, no Internet laws, dial up and cozy sounds of the modem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0

>>52575846
I played the shit out of all the osama and war on terror flash games on newgrounds back in 2002-2003

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>>52576758
Faggots not flooding the internet with their stupidity, i.e. when retards went home and watched TV, hooted over football, etc instead of shitting up the internet.

>>52576740

Nah, by little deeper I mean away from front page of youtube and reddit.

As for cp no one cared about it till shortly after y2k, newsgroups where full of it.

You could fire up newsbin in the evening and in the morning there would be enough material on your computer for 20 years in prison by today's standards.

The internet is much faster, has more content, and more libraries with a wealth of content than ever before.

However, since the rise of social media, every single fucking person, from young kids, teenagers, adults, and seniors have access either via their computer, smart phone or tablet.

SO MANY FUCKING RETARDED UNINFORMED OPINIONS. EVERYWHERE.

Not just that, the fucking rise of this social justice bullshit. No, I don't mean it in an edgy way. But these fuckers DID NOT exist before 2007.

Of course feminists were always around, but we never had this hoards of thousands of people all over the fucking internet with these ridiculous radical ideas flowing around the web.

The internet booming age has opened the gates for idiots everywhere to force their shitty, uneducated, uninformed opinions upon everyone.

God, and the memes. I can't stand memes.

I could go on, but I'll sound more autistic than I do now.

>>52576804
>all was legal
back in 2003 when I used kazaa for warez, there was CP showing up everywhere in the search results, and the feds didn't seem to care.

In 2007, I was talking with filipinos, new-zealanders, australians, scottish people, a frenchman, a dude from Luxembourg, a guy from Switzerland, a guy from Montenegtro.....

All over an online game. Jesus Christ, we have the means to do so much things today, yet...

>>52576838
>faggots not flooding the internet with their stupidity
That's pretty much what I'm saying in my post.
>>52576866
Fuck, even 6 year olds own iPhones now. With access to every fucking website known to men. The sheer excessive amount of stupid comments I see fucking everywhere all over the internet astounds me.
>>52576873
Feds only care about hardcore uploaders in serious crime rings.

>>52576883
It just seems way too saturated now. Are le edgy wrong generation types? Or is it just too flooded with people?

>tfw you're 21 playing games online with actual kids

>>52575187
>global audience
>north american results

what the fuck were they thinking

>>52576873

Irony is that cp was considered more normal than gore back then and easier to get.

>>52575187
wait how is microsoft getting so much traffic ?

>>52576928
At least cp served a purpose to people who wanted it (as fucked up as that is, whatever gets you going though). Gore is pretty pointless.

You know what?

4chan, being the contrarian site it is, will eventually in the future start to get better at socializing while the rest of society communicates strictly through social networks and chats.

I can't wait till that happens.

>>52570242
Seconding this, once social media got crazy, internet started getting consolidated and flooded by normies.

Back in the late 90s-early 00s you had many small communities, and the most classy people all built their own personal websites and even their forums.

And you also had to put effort into file sharing, a lot of communities had their stuff piled up and exchanged, since you didn't have gigantic sizes that torrented everything. Those only started coming around in the mid-late 00s, and even there it was a treat to find new stuff, you didn't have the archival level of content that What or HDBits has.

>>52576931
>Downloads
>Error searches
>Update features
>Hardware (mice, keyboards)
>Random searches
>Service pack downloads

>>52576947
>Programming reference

>>52576944
Shit man, even as a young teenager before the actual boom and rise of smart phones (think 2007-2010) and social media this sort of thing still rung true.

I used to shitpost on wikipedia

>>52576970
Haven't we all at some point or another?

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>>52576970

>>52576873
Yeah, I think Kazaa circa 2004 was the only time I actually seen real CP.

Wasn't even any good.

>>52574861
lol

>>52576987
lol

>>52576938
>implying
The stereotype that we're all anti-social autist virgins is largely untrue for the majority of us. Most of us do have jobs, social lives, friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, husbands/wives.

That doesn't mean we can't vent our frustration somewhere online. We just choose to do it on a website that isn't governed by heavy censorship and rules and moderation.

>>52576994
lol

>>52576994
lol

>>52577000
Well shit.

I'm sorry about that.

I was most likely projecting my own faults on other people.


In fact, I also have friends, but never a girlfriend. My life is filled with action, but just not during the cold winter.

sorry for blogging

>>52576987
>>52576994
>>52577010
>>52577011
stop that

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Downloading this and thinking you were part of something.

>>52577023
All good man. We all have our faults. We're all pretty fucked up in our own way man. At least we can admit it on here without being chastised by normie fags.

>>52577036
>6pgpiscool
>pgp is cool

fucking timetravelling /pgp/

>>52577024
lol

Simpler times back then

If I wanted to play CS online all I had to do was install the game, then install some tool like ASE, find a server and bam

>>52575298
You realize that likes/dislikes were added because people only voted 1 or 5 stars right?

>>52577060
Now you have you install third party applications, download the game, patch shit, create an account, sign up with your email. Everything is so incredibly regulated now you have to jump through a thousand hoops before getting to where you want to be.

>>52577074
Not discrediting your answer, but that sounds so flawed. That implies that no matter if it were stars or likes/dislikes, it's either "bad" or "good".

>>52577089
The end result is exactly the same.

A star rating or a bar showing ratio of like:dislike.

>>52577089
Maybe you should stop treating Youtube as Rateyourmusic

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>2004
>/b/ full of cheese pizza
>Nobody cared

>>52570033
I watched it to the end. Was ok

>>52577042
Having a folder with an old Forte Agent setup is definitely time traveling. Glory days leaving the modem connected on the dl for 24/7 and coming home to see if that CD of osr2/1111 adobe ps finished.

>>52577024
>>52577047
lol

>>52577114
I don't. I don't use RYM either despite being a huge /mu/tant.

>>52577135
Then perhaps you should pull your head out of your ass and realize that any your faggy "delicate" rating attempts would be steamrolled by literal millions of kneejerk emotionally reactionary huehues that think that 5 follows after 1. Look at what's happening to Metacritic, or most apps in Memedroid's play store.

>>52576933
There are people getting off to gore tho

>1992
>Be me
>The discovery of MP3 compression and Winamp
>Public FTP
>Napster
>eDonkey
>Forte Agent
>AudioGalaxy
>Bearshare
>Limewire
>Kazaa
>Soulseek

Good times.

Finding MP3 singles has become a lot harder of late.

>>52577157
Metacritic has always been mocked though.

The Google Play store is incredibly flawed. You get idiots all over the world rating perfectly working applications 1 stars for the stupidest reasons. It needs to be moderated. If it were possible:
>"1 star it doesn't work on my $50 chink phone".
>"1 star doesn't have feature that other apps have"
>"1 star I don't like it"
>"1 star it wouldn't download"

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>>52575187
Fixed

>>52577181
>finding mp3 singles has become a lot harder of late
I've found this to be mostly untrue. If I ever want a single (rarely) all I do is google the album that it comes from and only select it from the torrent file to download. Simple.

>>52577182
>You get idiots all over the world rating perfectly working applications 1 stars for the stupidest reasons
Same principle applies to Youtube.
Face it, where there's normies, there's cancer. And cancer has no standards.

>>52577181
Audiogalaxy was insanely good for its time, though only for single songs, not full albums.

>>52577166
Probably but CP there are more people into fapping to CP than gore I suspect. BTW many may not agree with this but they should legalize existing CP whilst the creation of new CP should stay illegal obviously since the damage is already done and it's just a bunch of pixels anyhow. I would much rather they fap to pixels than abuse real kids.

>>52577193
It's pretty sad really. I genuinely believe that giving every man and his dog access to the internet has made it worse. I don't mean that in a "wah I was born in the wrong generation" type way.

It's just got more idiots than it used to spewing their opinions and incoherent sentences all over the web.

>>52575907

They have Flickr

>>52577202
>BTW many may not agree with this but they should legalize existing CP whilst the creation of new CP should stay illegal obviously since the damage is already done
Even this wouldn't stop them. It'd also reinforce the idea that it's okay to get off to infants.

>>52570746
>TFW I still have an 8 digit ICQ number.

>>52577204
My biggest issue wth everyone having access is that all the minority groups who shout the loudest are having an effect on social issues IRL. SJW's, feminists, mumsnet and their ilk. They are a cancer.

>>52570023
yes

>>52577218
They do anyway. But without having easy access to said material I fear they may go out and do it for real out of frustration.

>>52577242

It's how the western type of democracy works in general.

>>52577202
I'd agree, but try to say that in public and you'll be written off society forever.
>Omg CP can have mitigating effects instead of being permaHitler in video form? You've literally molested the histrionic void in my skull!
>>52577218
Only a hypothetical argument, you'd need some empirical statistics to support that.
>>52577204
Meh. At least people don't look at me like a freak of nature for sitting behind a computer all day anymore, since most do the same nowadays. Normies are a minor problem compared to cancerous crap like TPP.

>>52577242
That's one of the main things I was getting at. If you look at the history of it, none of these apparent "issues" even existed before all of the social media boom. No one was talking about "gamer gate" or "Black lives matter" or "notallmen" and shit like that. NONE of this was even a thing till Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr created a voice for fucking everyone. And as the internet is so prevalent in society, it's become part of us, hence effecting us inside and outside of the internet. All that, despite it being the lazy form of "activism" or "slacktivism" as it's known.
>>52577252
You'll never stop criminals. It's like this "rape culture" bullshit. Normal citizens know rape is bad. If someone wants to rape a woman/man whatever, they're going into it knowing they're breaking a law.

>>52577272
>TPP
Trans Pacific Partnership? I've not heard the term, sorry.

>>52575942
The pendulum never swings in only 1 direction. So it probably will, it's a matter of time.

>>52570023
The code was horrible. And ie monopoly. But because everything was so bad, people had to optimize things. That was good. You can do way more and do it way better than back then.

>>52577292
>If someone wants to rape a woman/man whatever, they're going into it knowing they're breaking a law.
You're speaking of people who get off to rape, not people who get off to kids. Those people rape because nonconsensual kiddy diddling is their only option. They'll go to jail for porn, they'll go to jail for the real thing too anyway - guess which one will they prefer?
>>52577301
Yes. Look it up.

>>52577329
Both quoted posts are me.

I was talking about rape in general. Not people who are explicitly attracted to children.

I'll look up TPP though.

>>52577375
The Phantom Pain

>>52576931
Botnet

It was better because it was new to us. Now that we know every secrets of thé internet, it's les funny.

>>52577304
What makes you think the Internet is a pendulum?

>>52576866
BBS we are still hear and we require the level of skill the fuck tards of the www don't possess and you will find the communities you remember only older and slightly wiser

>>52575907
Flicker
Tumblr
Yahoo

They have a big marketshare in Japan and that area

>>52570724

Nigra, internet was composed of under age normalfags as much then as it is now.

I liked the internet most when it was disproportionately composed of Star Trek fans.

>>52577292
>slacktivism
so what's your excuse? i'd be careful with those buzzwords.

>>52570329
snyggt

>>52570023
>/g/ Was the internet really better back then? Before Facebook and smartphones?
Yes

It kind of sucked. Security and connections to the Internet were complete shit back in the 90s. It actually cost more for a second phone line + dial-up subscription fee than I pay now. My local dial-up provider gave FTP access, but gave everyone permissions to delete or modify any file on the FTP server. Some guy thought it was hilarious to alter everyones files to Mr. T Ate My Balls. Also, fuck webrings.

>>52570023
Yes. Back then, the internet wasn't limited to what you could open with your browser, or even worse, from an app.

>>52574814
>meme
A meme isn't something you dislike.

>>52570023
IT WAS... COMFIER?

>>52570329
MAN THIS SCREENSHOT HAS MADE ME FEEL INTERNET NOSTALGIA

>>52574814
>This wasn't even that long ago.
It was before Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, and iPhones, or before they became relevant. Social media and smartphones have changed the web a lot, and not for the better.

>>52577202
>it's just a bunch of pixels anyhow
Would you want pictures of your children (or children of a family member) being raped posted all over the Internet?

>I would much rather they fap to pixels than abuse real kids.
And where do you think those pixels come from?

>>52570023
no

>>52580591
Drawings, because I fap to loli.

>>52570023
What happened in 2007?

>>52580678
IT WAS NICE!

>>52577242
This so goddamn much.
I think the modern internet has a lot of amazing things to offer and much better performance compared to the old, but goddamn social media is the cancer that'll kill modern society.

>>52580678
Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube and iPhone were launched around that time. Big Bang Theory aired too, and Portal was released, and suddenly we had all these "omg I'm such a nerd" people shitposting on their new social media accounts from their iPhones.

The subjectively best period was 2006-2010
Switching from dial up to dsl, but people online was much less.
Content size and formats were still reminiscent of the bad times, so fairly small.
Plus where I live cables are shit, so I had a better connection in 2008 than now that everybody and their grandmas have an internet connection and the lines are saturated. Dropped from 7.8 Mb out of the 8 advertised to 5 out of the 20 advertised. Ducking normies stealing my internet for their YouTube and Facebook.

- popup and layer ads everywhere
- IE 6 used by almost everyone
- Having a personal web site was the way to go
- sharing videos on the internet was horrible
- web sites had their own small communities
- e-mail was used for more than spam and automatic mails, mailing lists were a thing
- people who used the internet for more than a hour for enjoyment were seen as "nerds"
- PDAs were a thing

>>52570329
I keep hearing about Stage 6 being superior to youtube in every way, was it really that good?

>>52577060
You might like an FPS called 'Urban Terror'. Search for it, works on windows and linux. The community is pretty old, its a game based on (a long time ago) quake III.

I only got internet ~2009 and it's already changed so much.
Facebook has killed internet forums and communities are just nowhere near as organised as they used to be.
Image hosting has went to shit, so many communities that I was a part of have lost so much of their resources from the websites shutting down.

>>52570329
i guess i've been using Adblock for over 10 years...

I'm not sure whether the end of the good times was when Facebook let everyone sign up not just students, or when everyone got smartphones around 2009-10, or the death of Megaupload in January 2012.

>>52577292
>If you look at the history of it, none of these apparent "issues" even existed before all of the social media boom.
Actually feminism was a thing in the early 1990s

>>52581256
>Image hosting has went to shit
Amen

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>>52580225
I never really understood webrings. It's just web sites which link to partner sites, so what?

>>52577181
Everything is on youtube now.

>>52570329

I feel physically ill every time I see XP.

No idea how I used that shit for so long.

>>52575188

>tfw broodwar custom maps are kill

I look at the front page of youtube and it looks like fucking TV, makes me sad

>>52581707
this

>like and dislike
>not /5

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>>52581553
Look at this!
>>52581707
At least TV has better content than minecraft lets plays

>>52581553
I think the normal theme on XP looks fine.

XP's UI is easier to read than 7/8/10's

>>52581731
Lovely

Spent my childhood playing Skulltag desu

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>>52581731
What about XP made it so comfy?
I grew up with 98/2000 and it was miserable compared to XP.

It was the best, I wish we could go back to this

>>52570023
Was the internet better before a handful of corporations effectively owned it, and lured the brainless messes onto it with facebook and netflix? absofuckinglutely.

>>52570139

It's like a 15 minute conversation, dude.

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>>52581809
The themes made it look different and more recent than 9x/2k. Though I can't really say that I disliked 98, it ran stable on my Pentium (and it wasn't even the second version)

What are some web sites which still look like they did when they were created? One of the oldest I know is this:
http://www.art.net/whats_new.html
Literally the same since 1994, and still updated

>>52581430
It was a good way of bringing more traffic to your site. Before search engines became really good at indexing, you had to get listed in directories like yahoo, and you had to exchange links with other websites that catered to similar interests. Web rings made it easier to do the latter.

The complete commercialisation of the internet is an interesting parallel to what happened to bulletin boards in the early 90s. People that turned BBSes into a for-profit industry all but killed off the hobbyists. Then the internet came along and all but killed off the BBS industry. It was like the next layer and then the next had been taken over by big businesses, but the rest of it was still relatively uncharted territory for the hobbyists to make their websites and stuff. Then the big corporations slowly started taking over that layer as well.

>>52581898
http://doom2.net/ is deliberately retro I think.
I'm not sure when it was created though.

>>52581979

Looked almost like it does today in 2000
http://web.archive.org/web/20001204150300/http://www.doom2.net/

>>52581979
>http://doom2.net/
http://www.wolfensteingoodies.com/archives/olddoom/home.htm

>>52581898
http://maddox.xmission.com/ only difference is he's SJW now.

motherfucking slashdot

i miss it so much. don't know where the exodus was but I think most /. moved on in life to work for the companies that took over the internet

>>52581553
this
I'm posting from it right now though, but I find the Media Center theme more tolerable.

>>52581553
WHAT'S WRONG WITH XP ANON?
THE XP STANDS FOR XTRA PAWESOME
IT'S TRUE YOU KNOW

>>52570023
If you genuinely need to ask "Was the internet better before every fucktard with a cellphone and a memebook acount had access to it 24/7" get the fuck off of /g/.

>>52582030
He seems like the opposite of SJW to me. What makes you feel that way?

>>52570023
CP was more widely available that's why /g/ likes old Internet, you bunch of pedos

>>52574814

mfw this site (if it still exists) will be full of todays kids by 2026 circlejerking in threads like this one talking about social networks and smartphones.
>remember back when vine was good?
>pre-2017 twitch was the best
>who remembers all those old memes?
>i still have my old iPhone 7s Plus in my parents attic
>omg right in the nostalgia
>i feel so old

>>52582030

That will be the day, when he is SJW......
Keep dreaming

>>52582399
Probably because he baited gamergaters with one of his troll videos.

>>52570033
I watched the entire thing and I'm still not sure what any of this is supposed to mean.

>>52582422
>remember when we had to go outside in "real life"? At least we have VR now

>>52576866
>But these fuckers DID NOT exist before 2007.

Raiding Habbo and Gaia was good for lulz. There were plenty of lulz to be had with Hal Turner but that's when people started paying attention to the power of the masses on the internet. The Hal Turner raids also had the effect of drawing moralfags in to the raiding community. These are the people who participated in the Hal Turner raids because they disagreed with his racist views not because he was a lulzcow. Then this group of moralfag raiders decided to do a raid on Scientology and this morals based mass action drew in moralfags by the thousands. That was the point of no return for interbuttz activism. Yes basically Scientology raids ruined the culture of internet anonymity and amorality.

>>52582701
>remember apps? they seem so primitive looking back
>now all we have to do is think of the shit we want and it appears in front of us in VR

>>52577181
Soulseek is still active and full of content though.

>>52582324
Though not ./ in its heyday, there's soylent news, friend.

>>52577000

jobs, yeah

social lives, ehh sorta. For me it went 4chan -> girlfriend -> back to 4chan. Never really had the urge to visit this place when I was getting my balls drained and I'd imagine it's not too different for the other people on here.

>>52576822

100% this. Me too.

>>52582955
Still astounds me that soulseek hasn't been shut down, but I'm not complaining. It's invaluable for me.

>>52570341
I was a teenager and not blinded by nostalgia. I still have myspace program that I used to rip mp3's off the player.

remembering those days is neat because I am probably one of the only people on the net that have the demo of a moving units song called paper hearts that isn't even in soulseek.

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ctl-f, no SomethingAwful

>>52570023

>yahoo

webcrawler was the first 'google'
then yahoo became the second google
then google pretty much raped all of you

>>52570023
Define better.
There has always been irc drama and image macros. The only relatively new thing I think it would be SJW but that's about it.

>>52584790
Do you hate Google?

>>52575878
Of all the replies to my post this was my favourite.

>hey guys, look at this old useless garbage I'm pretending to use!
>Um, this sucks.
>...contrarian

>>52572345
it loops tho

>>52574814
you sound young, very young
Im not even sure if you had any real point to this, I would have thought this was all common knowledge, when you nostalgia youre just indulging in some ideas of how good it was back then becasue you feel good about those times

>>52582399
Have you listened to his podcast? He's anti trump and pro BLM.

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definitely not

>>52585095
so he's a sane and intelligent person? yeah fuck him

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>>52585128

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>>52585095
>being anti-trump makes you an SJW
sure is /pol/ around here

>>52577202
>. BTW many may not agree with this but they should legalize existing CP whilst the creation of new CP should stay illegal obviously since the damage is already done and it's just a bunch of pixels anyhow.
How would this be enforced? Would the Fed's check all CP shared in a giant CP database?

>>52570033
Jesus that's big
http://www.gif-explode.com/?explode=https://www.filepicker.io/api/file/DodH7U0SkGEx3pej725c

>>52570139
>>52570265
>>52570500
>>52572297
>>52572297
>>52577123
>>52582676

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>>52585476
>being this much of a cuck

>>52570329
>groups
Oh the joys of youtube forums

>>52575846
[spoiler]YOU JUST FELL FOR THE TRAP[/spoiler]

>>52581149
Assault cube isn't too bad. Lots of hours in ctf.

>>52584790
Metacrawler was the shit before google

>>52570633
>>52570621
CLICK HERE TO GET 1000 FRIENDS!!

>>52585682
>not flipping the last panel text bubble
0/10

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>>52570023
>Was the internet really better
Maybe not better
But a lot more friendly

>>52575907
email

>>52581374

when FB became public it was the official death.

well, that and myspace having glittery graphics everywhere.

livejournal was the writing on the wall really. having to actually pay for that shit or get invited was the best way to do social media. kept all the plebs away.

i'm surprised facebook hasn't went subscription yet. 2.99/mo or some shit like that.

>>52587026
What is gmail?

>>52581809
it was the right amount of "oldschool", with the right amount of "new", with the UI being very colorful, and Bliss as the default background adding a lot of color and comfiness. Most of it's default backgrounds were great.

98/2k were basically just building off of 95. though id say they had their own charm. it's all subjective.

>>52581871
>tfw saving animated gifs onto your desktop
>when you turned off the internet they stopped working and youd end up with a bunch of squares with x's

>tfw having to "connect to the internet"
>parents used to be able to prevent kids from going online by password protecting the internet

good times

>>52587137
a lot of people have yahoo email addresses and they won't change it just because gmail is better.

>>52587137
lots of people still use yahoo email though. Especially since verizon uses them for email, as verizon yahoo. You can sign into yahoo with your verison email account.

>>52574814
Internet dinosaur here, been around since the early days of dial-up BBS. Maybe even before that; the first PC I ever laid eyes on was a VIC 20.

Technology has gotten smaller, faster, lighter and more affordable than ever, and there's near-infinite content to consume on a daily basis. But the one constant is that your average internet user is still either a clueless noob or a bitter, jaded asshole that treats everyone like a clueless noob. I'd rather have the new tech, DESU.

>>52570023
no it really was not (i have memories of internet from 1995 or so)... i just looked up some old chat/comment logs from 1999, they are exactly the same vicious, ignorant, retarded shit you see these days all over the internet, just that: now you see it much, much more

i think the illusion that the good old days were in fact good comes from limited participatory content on the web back then

as soon as people were given an opportunity to take a public shit on anything and anyone without the need to write a little html and publish your "valuable thoughts" on a server it became too easy for children and other mentally underdeveloped people to do exactly that: shit on everything

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before Wikipedia, this was the shit

>tfw playing mind maze

mid 00s
yahoo chat rooms were great
korean mmorpgs were great
dota is great
friendster was great
god damn emo forums(and weekly meet ups) was great
dota forums was great
newgrounds was ok
4chan was fun
WoW was fun
facebook was just farmville
yahoo fucking music tv was great
mtv still shows music videos
drinking was great
rnb on clubs was great, songs they play still had lyrics on them and was cool to cruise on


even post 911 prior the 2008 recession things were well

I guess I got old but not having every event in my life in facebook was the best part of it

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>>52570023

Pre-2007 4chan was unusable because everybody are too busy with Gets and American Psycho guy.

>>52587462
I was invited to the Twitter beta. I think they were partners with esnips at the time.

it's funny because even back then I could tell it was pure cancer.

>>52570666
yep, this is a good description of everyday life mid-90s

though i have to admit, in search of good content me and my mates went so far as to share links written on paper...

sounds cringy i know

>>52587522
I got a Facebook invite back when you had to have a college eMail address to sign up. Shit was so cash. Just kidding. It was just as lame as it is now, just less old people.

>>52587570
I remember my friend trying to play an mp3 on a 386. If I recall you had to wait ~2-3 minutes for it to decode the first half of it, then it could decode the rest while it played.

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I remember when before youtube, you had to google vidya music and get some sick midis

>tfw jamming to X vs Zero midis

http://www.kingdom-hearts2.com/zerov/midi.html

holy shit this place is still alive

>>52587477
kek, proud owner of the 1995 edition

>>52587573
weird, this is the second time someone mentions you had to have a college e-mail, but i don't remember that at all

registered in 2004 i think... all i needed was an invite (but they were flying in the mailbox every day)

>>52587590
...yep, that was definitely an issue. another issue was going from physical recordings (tapes in my case) to sound card input with some halfbaked diy cable (being very young and inexperienced sure didn't help), recording to wav or something equally stupid and trying to convert into mp3 only to find your hdd has run out of space

why would anyone have nostalgia about these times is beyond me

Using Trilian because aim/msn/yahoo/icq all in one.

Trillian was the shit.

also ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

TAKE OFF EVERY ZIG

>>52587775
The only thing I'm really concerned about with modern technology is how locked down it's becoming. It feels like soon the only way you'll be able to have full control over the hardware and software you own is to buy from specific sources and only use open source. It's already happened with "smart" devices, and it's creeping into PCs now, too.

>>52587819
trillian doesnt seem that old, really. I was using it up till maybe 2 or so years ago on my laptop

>>52587834
i'm not sure i follow, i've never even felt a need to be "in control" of the hw/sw, what do you mean by that?

>>52587862
I use Trillian on Android. Of course I'm using adAway and MinMin Guard.
>>52587880
Rooting/jailbreaking.

>>52570329
Youtube was so fucking good back in like 2005-2007

It was not ok. Blinking banner ads and popup windows every 2nd link.

Every website looked worse than reddit.

Googling "index of/ filetype:iso inurl:edu photoshop"and getting page after page of university file servers legit copies of photoshop was pretty good, tho.

>>52587932
>It was not ok. Blinking banner ads and popup windows every 2nd link.
>tfw going on porn sites and a pop up would stay behind and my parents would find it

>>52570023
no 4g lte

>>52587932
Even back then, there were adblockers and popup blockers. They had to run as seperate programs, or fuck with the hosts file (If you even had one to fuck with)

>>52587862
>>52587898

you guys still talk to people on a chat service that's not facebook chat?

i hate fb chat as much as the next guy but every single person i know ditched aim yahoo and msn once it became the dominant chat service.

i wish we could go back to the aim days. aim is the only thing that aol ever did right. i don't recall most sn's i had from that era but i know my aim name and password by heart even this far down the line.

>>52587898
>Rooting/jailbreaking.
gotcha! though i have to confess, so far i have not felt the need to do that

as for personal computing, i feel like it has been relatively "closed" ever since the first microprocessors hit the scene and a sys-admin wasn't some dude with a screwdriver and soldering iron

>>52587972
steam, mostly.

>yahoo adult section

most of the porn stars i used to fap too are probably dead
and the porn stars i have liked in recent years are becoming old and obscure

facebook and twitter have sucked up all other media and shit on everything
my feet hurt

>>52587972
Still have a few screennames on AIM but most have not been logged on since 2012 or so. I mostly use Hangouts, Skype and Facebook Chat.

>>52576847
This is true. People that think the internet have worsened just aren't using it correctly. The volume of shit has grown exponentially but so has the interesting stuff

>>52587985
I only got into "smart" devices last July. The first thing I noticed was how locked down it was, how little control I had over what was running/installed on the device and what I could change/modify. I lasted about a week before I was rooting the thing.

>>52576296
You know this stuff is still available right?

>>52588103
Forums are slowly moving to the same status IRC and usenet has. Old, obselete and only bitter jaded internet fogies use them.

>>52588070

i just logged into aim for the first time in probably 5+ years maybe closer to 7.

nostagia as fuck looking through the offline names.

>5 people online out of like 500 people
>all those names starting with x
>all those aLtErRnAtInG cApS
>all those edgy as fuck names

maybe it wasn't a better time after all

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>>52575075
i have

-- wait, that was 10 years ago

hmm.

>>52573989
i switched to broadband in 2006

>>52588140

samefag, i check the [H] hardforum dot com forums daily because they're like a non-autistic version of /g/ but it's slow. i used to be a forum junkie but 4chan pretty much killed forums for me, so did facebook groups.

facebook groups is shit but people that didn't grow up on forums like that better.

we used to have a sportbike forum that was local and rockin' as hell. facebook killed it. nobody wants forums anymore because everybody is a fucking pleb.

4chan is the last bastion of good ol' internet.

>>52575907
i know one person who uses yahoo mail, that's it

>>52581058
They had full movies on it.

>>52570190
second

>>52576866
>God, and the memes. I can't stand memes.
i enjoyed them for a while early on, but these days it's beyond perverse, it's basically synonymous with "joke" at this point, everything is a meme, any kind of joke? meme. anything that looks remotely like any previous "meme"? meme. text on an image (not even a joke)? meme. and so on...

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>>52570033
pretty good gif

>>52570023

yeah it was because today's internet is a censored shitfest owned and ran by a handful of major corporations. The internet used to be free and unregulated. Today's internet is basically the government and companies raping people in the ass repeatedly without lube.

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>>52570033
>>52572297
>>52572387
>>52585590
Reminds me of this.

>>52581553

XP's silver theme is better than your soul

>>52588549
>not turning off themes in XP

>>52588520

fuckin' li'l cheetus.

every time mayne.

>>52576320
>>52576296
They called subreddits now, and they still have drama

>>52585128
>Pro BLM
>Sane & Intelligent

Pick one

>>52577181
I just type in the song I want and then add site:mediafire.com in google.