Internet Cafe Thread

Does the local public library count?

My 16th birthday was a 24hr lanparty at my local LAN arcade at max capacity. We played a lot of SW:JKII, Quake III, CS, BF1942, and MoH:AA.

LAN arcades were awesome.

I just used my neighbors AOL account

>>3702153
Internet was never expensive if you stayed away from AOL/had unlimited long distance

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so glad the wayback machine caught this.

Netplay Gaming Federation. This place was the shit back in 2003. We'd grab the squad and go in for an unlimited day pass. Battlefield and Day of Defeat. So good.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040923094918/http://www.netplaygaming.com/

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Only a few of us had anything better than dialup so this Netplay place was amazing. T1 lines they advertised! T1 was mythical.

>>3702203
Hello, youngfag.

>>3702153
I only ever recall seeing Internet cafes in shit their countries. I still see them when I go over to South America.

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I never really got the appeal of these, (they were called "cyber cafe" or simple "cyber" where I live), I mean, they were useful if you didn't have internet at home, and needed to check something real quick, but everytime I went there I felt uncomfortable, these places were full of weirdos looking at porn, or little kids shouting and being obnoxious while playing counter-strike. I wanted to check my mails as fast as possible and leave.

I do remember, however, certain ones that were specifically designed for gaming, they were HUGE back in 2001/2002, it was mostly counter-strike, that game got everyone hooked, everyone had a team and played tournaments.

Everyone except for me, never got the appeal.

Anyway, I have lots of nostalgia for ICQ, IRC and java chats. Some of my best IRL friends that I still have today I met through ICQ or IRC back then.
I guess I was lucky I actually had internet at home in 1999, and by 2001 I got broadband. Man, that was life-changing, being able to be online 24 hours and not occupying the telephone line.

>>3702243

Imagine, a super fast line to the web, no 56K, no having the line cut if someone calls you, not paid by the minute.
Amazing! But us normal users will NEVER get something like this...

>>3702186
pls get off

I need to make a call

>>3702375
lies

back in the day people did not look at porn in library or internet café

t. Obama

>>3702481
I remember ratting on some kid I hated when I caught him browsing cumfiesta.com at the library.

>>3702153
>back in the day Internet was expensive and a bit cumbersome
No it wasn't.

>so people went to internet cafes to do their homework or play games like Quake and Unreal Tournament.

No they didn't. They went to internet cafes too get expensive and cumbersome internet. Most normal people got their internet by simply using dialup - preferably using services like Netcom which had unlimited hours for like 20 bucks a month and possibly a second phone line for another 30 bucks. Internet cafes have always been a worse and more expensive way to internet for those with extremely limited resources and or intellect.

Why the fuck would you go to an internet cafe and spend in four-five hours what you could have all month whenever you wanted? Unless the answer is "because I'm a little kid whose parents won't let me" or "because I'm homeless" the answer is usually either "I'm an idiot" or "I wouldn't". If you couldn't afford an internet connection you couldn't afford an internet cafe.

>>3702360
He sounds like he's older than you since he understood that shit.

>>3703498
The OP is maybe from a third world country. Internet cafes werr popular because internet was really expensive back in the day. It is still relatively expensive in where I live, which is also a third world country for the record.

>>3702481

I remember, around 2001, a guy was looking at pictures of cocks, seems like some guys sent them to his hotmail account, probably scanned pictures too, because digital photos were still in diapers.

>>3703498
Not him, but why are you so angry? You sound like you have issues. "Because I'm an idiot"... wtf are you talking about? Is imagining scenarios where other people are acting stupidly how you get your kicks online? Get a life.

Internet cafes were super popular here and a lot of it is because we only had 56k for the longest time. So people went to LAN arcades for gaming, which had much better connections. They're still open and doing lots of business.

Also internet was extremely expensive. It was like a euro an hour, and that was if you went on after 6pm. Before that it was something ridiculous. That's how dial up worked, you used the phone line. So I don't know how much of an edgelord you think you are coming in like that you fucking faggot.

>>3703498
at an internet cafe, you generally had speeds nearly a hundred times better than dialup, which is pretty much the whole reason you'd go
shit, my family had a dedicated phone line for internet for years (like, '96?), but didn't get DSL in the area (up in northeast PA) until like 2006, that was awful

I'd run out to download something big (which would then take minutes instead of hours), I remember it taking like an entire half hour to download a 5MB file at 2-3kB/s at home and it'd take all day to download PS1 rips (with all the music and video cut out so you could download them on slower connections or if you didn't have much disk space, they were made for emulators, they'd range from like 10-50MB compressed).

>>3703730
shit, that must have sucked dick, what country?
it was like a relatively flat fee/month here in the states
can't remember, it was like $20/mo and you had unlimited dialup internet, and then into the 2000s, the price dropped a fair bit

You guys with 56k were so lucky Internet was blazing fast when you got on.

I started on Prodigy with my 14k modem. And we were charged by the minute.

>>3703869
Ireland. Flat rates came in eventually, but still were more like $35-40/month. We also still had 56k until like 2008. I'm definitely never getting nostalgic about 56k!

So where they a thing in big countries like the USA or were they only needed by poorfag south americans like me? What about those cybers where you rented consoles instead of computers? I saw those even well into the ps2 era.

I'd go to the local cyber to download some roms into a floppy, while some emo girl to my left is solving her relationship drama over messenger, to my right a group of kids watch shitty flash videos, a bunch of loud dudes play Winning Eleven on the CRTs behind me, while the owner does a line of coke over at the counter. Those were the fucking days.
Around 2006 or so suddenly everyone could afford internet and modern consoles and thus these places disappeared overnight.

>>3703937
At one point I had faster internet than I usually got at the cafe and I still went there because the chink owner had some high level PCs, like a Core 2 Quad when they had just been released. Can't say I miss the fucking fish smell of both the fish they ate and the qt3.14 chinkess.

>>3703937
They didn't disappear, like I said many are still going strong, particularly LAN arcades. Admittedly LAN =/= internet but let's not split hairs. They make lots of sense: comfy chairs, good music, top range PCs and connection, plenty of people come in and out to game, do their business or hang out online there.

>>3702153
Had a place called the lanslide and roughly 20 people could fit inside. Since the town was so small we all go to know each other really well. Cs, dod, wow, 2142 and even kingdom of loathing kept us coming back for all nighters every week. I miss it a lot. Those of us who had jobs would pitch in for pizza, bawls and pot.

>>3702203
I lived in singapoor not korea or japan, anon.

>>3702375
I'll never forget my ICQ number even though I haven't used it in 12 years.

17775130

>>3702153
>Internet Cafe
[muffled Smack My Bitch Up playing in background]

Am I the only one downloaded abandonware hentai games in a Internet cafe?