Do you remember the old internet? What was it like?

>>105636828 (OP)
>What was it like?
bot less. 80% of /g/ posting at least is from bots now, like this thread.

https://desuarchive.org/g/search/image/SA4cNemNGFY8f8cxSjCJMg/

nitrome games

People cared more about having fun instead of just rage baiting to earn internet points

When I think about it I think about the whole world that existed outside of web browsers. Exploring IRC networks. FTP servers. Instant messengers. There was so much going on.

>>105636976
Genuinely wonder what the fucking point of this is. Why is someone doing this? To what end?
CAPTCHA: DAMNT

>>105636828 (OP)
It was better as a place you visited, not a place you had in your pocket

>>105637079

>>105636828 (OP)
Have you ever been to a white majority country or gated community? Like that but full of nerds who had a baseline technical prowess to be there.

>>105636828 (OP)
it was a friendly place where people would stop by and say hello, ask you how you've been. people used to care about people and there was always a friendly face.

>>105637134
yeah bro because it required so much technical prowess to use a 56k modem under windows 95 with internet explorer.

>>105637230
this but unironically
you underestimate how retarded most people are
>1995: What in the god damn hell is a modem?

>>105637230
given that nothing worked properly half the time you had to develop a technical prowess unless all you did was aol lol

Only idiots would put their IRL identity online.

Anyone you talked to online was assumed to be an obese 40 year old sex offender living in his mother's basement until proven otherwise.

>>105636828 (OP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm-alaXKXbI

going on the internet was something you did.

Welcome to -=DarkSasuke=- Clan Server!
Server Rules:
1. Do whatever the admin XxX1337Slayer420XxX says
2. Have Fun!

>>105637230
did you see the average /sqt/ or /g/ question? people somehow found this website and the board and the button to post a thread or comment but dont know how to search the same question online or even ask any free ai to answer their braindead questions that can be answered after reading the first paragraph of the topics wikipedia page

99.99999% people are braindead npcs

>ywn be leet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwAGylrHbyE

>>105636998
This

>>105636828 (OP)
Game servers are sortable by ping so there are no 3rd worlders. Heck, they weren't even online.
When you join a server, you would see familiar names. Sometimes mods are online and do fun shits.

You can say whatever offensive shit you want. But when there are outsiders who's being an asshole, you can vote kick them.

IRC was something else. I miss the communities on there. Until a few years ago, a server I used to frequent was still online but mostly dead. I'd pop in from time to time and play math games blackjack or mastermind with bots. But the domain suddenly died. Maybe the owner passed away or something. Programming your own bot using mIRC was fun too.

I also miss not being terminally online. You can't chat on ICQ until you get home.

>mostly smart whites and asians from well educated middle-upper class families.
I'm so glad the internet has become more diverse, accessible and culturally enriching nowadays haha

It was fun because I was a kid not because it was better

>>105637230
Half of people in the 90's didn't know how to use a mouse, anon

>>105636828 (OP)
It was white

0 indians, 0 chinese, 0 south americans

>>105636828 (OP)
I was around 14-17. Information was scattered, only popular information could be found. Any sort of intermediate research still required reading. Fandoms were split into forums and blogs. Everyone I knew had a xanga/livejournal/etc. Primary communication was on AIM, IRC was real nerds/pirates.
Before popular p2p programs like Morpheus/Napster/Kaaza, it was pretty hard to find music online. I spent like 3 months trying to find out the title to a popular Gorillaz song at the time ("Client Eastwood"). A few more months to find a decent copy.
Granted, most of this is from the perspective of a dumb teenager and a budding internet.

Does anyone remember pre internet? Was there a similar competition with newspaper and broadcasters (radio and television)?

>>105636828 (OP)
People typed in proper English, capitalized "Internet," and were generally a much higher grade, intelligent, and nerdy group of people. The Internet, before it had gone mainstream, was absolutely wonderful. You had a forum for pretty much any niche, and you relished human company in areas that you seldom found peers for in the real world. I dearly miss it.

P.S. There was a certain kind of excitement to finding people who actually knew what you were talking about for the first time in your life. Video games were also highly looked down upon, and not nearly as well adopted, and so, finding those people on the Internet was a genuine rush.

>>105637079
Picrel and for simulating board activity to scam advert costumers.

>>105636828 (OP)
It was comfy. No corpos, no excessive ads and trackings, no social media, no walled gardens.

Just people making britney spears fan sites out of passion with frontpage/dreamweaver/html.

As a web dev it sucked trying to get designs working cross-browser, especially around the IE5.5/IE6 days.

>>105638090
>There was a certain kind of excitement to finding people who actually knew what you were talking about for the first time in your life.
This.

>>105636828 (OP)
no:
>niggers
>k*k*s
>troons to a minimum and completely made to submit and behave
>infinite teen pussy
>actual hivemind
>actual h4x025
>funny meems
>raids
>a sense of belonging
>sick content non stop

>>105638570
sounds like something a 13 year old would write

>>105638570
>>infinite teen pussy
I miss the era when lolis would post themselves on /b/

>>105636828 (OP)
Paying for cee p with real credit card

>>105640566
fucked up all we lost

>>105637291
>2fort
Bring me back to those days... I want to go back...

>>105638570
>infinite teen pussy
jailbait websites were amazing.

>>105640698
I have everything every 4chan incel dreams of, yet would gladly return (at least for some time) to those careless days of childhood, playing CS 1.5, TFC, flash games and HoMaM 3, trolling and shitposting on websites I was too young to be visiting. The carelesness and sense of exploring the unknown was something no amount of money can buy.

>>105640705
"18 yos" would come to us every night to masturbate, cum for us pussy then ass, every night, several of them, in live cam, shit was cash

>>105636828 (OP)
A truly magical time. For a while politicians and other malignant parties were oblivious to the internet so it was a kind of wild west for nerds.

>>105640798
>wild west for nerds
is the exact term to describe it for me 2bh

instead of gravitating to the same 3-4 sites, i'd have a ton of bookmark and interacting with a hundred of communities
making friends was so piss easy by simply having the same interest and being from the same country
everyone was genuine and trolling was either made as a joke or got you banned swiftly

realistically speaking though all the tech was trash compared to now but we lost a lot along the way

>>105638354
What was there to dilute on /g/ 5-10 years ago? Instruction for buying burmese slaves on Archetyp?

>>105640698
>>105637291
let me tell you about my hero dust runs, I would literally not but helmet and armor, no grenades, just glock and an mp5, run towards the enemy base with knife in hand, and one by one kille every single one of the enemies by myself, that happened several times in years, in servers where the people were always there, so they weren't plebs, I love ice-thingy map too, any map where the position of the enemy would be 100% predictable for me was my jam, just headshot them face to face and up to the next one, all of this with a cheapo non-brand mouse

>>105637321
>bunny hopping
pre-1.3 was truly special

>>105636828 (OP)
Slow and shitty.

>>105636828 (OP)
The prefix "old", is redundant. The internet does not exist anymore. So you could just say, "Do you remember the internet".

>>105636828 (OP)
It was mostly made up of english primaries. The barrier to entry meant that even mundane things like shitposts were things that were genuine. Very little was monetized or with an ulterior motive. There wasn't much content and so odds are you shared a culture with everyone else since what good content existed, you were all watching. Now you'll notice all everyone talks about is the current twitter bot interest farmed zeitgeist of the week. It was (mostly) disconnected from the real life culture war until ~2008 or so. To talk online you would usually be on a hobby forum, IRC or server/MMO guild's group chat. You were generally doing something to speak online, not just endlessly scrolling in a daze.

I miss it dearly. The closest I can get is still keeping in touch with people through discord and steam that I've shitposted with for nearly 2 decades now but once in a while I'll go on an alt and explore new communities but it's very grim, gen Z and A are discord addicted lonely introverts, slaves to corporate TOS, algorithm pushed interests and parasocial activities. The kind of toxic positivity that modern social media puts on display would put old 4chan's ragebait and calling you a faggot to shame. It's all a much more evil game of social competition and manipulation.

>>105640841
It was about the whole site in general.

>>105641043
you made me remember something, going to some chat I don't even know where with the name "sweetrape" and women starting to message me top lmao

>>105640698
skial 64 player 2fort US 1

>>105636828 (OP)
you didn't have to create an account or have a phone number for absolutely everything. also not everything was politics propaganda. memes weren't political. flaming noobs was an art. there was tons of weird personal websites (that could easily be reached via a google search) and weird fanfiction/fanart and stuff like that. flash was a thing and people would make cool flash animations. there were no captchas or cloudflare. you could make as many email addresses as you wanted. torrent sites were popular and socially acceptable.

>>105636828 (OP)
>the old internet
>Counter-Strike v43/1.1.0.6
hey listen, eternal September was in '93; I personally was seven years old and not online yet so like no I don't, but you don't even seem to remember that there was a real old internet before the one you call the old internet.

>>105636828 (OP)
Imagine no social media

>>105637872
Bullshit, 80s maybe. Amiga and Mac introduced mouse to the masses back then.

>>105637366

hobbies were more fun because it was communities that interacted with each other rather than discord hugboxes/stan culture bullshit that treat everything like a gang war
And the most retarded shit is that these places all have the exact same people in it now, every single one, all using the same memes and spouting the same shit yet still arguing they are not like the other girls
it doesn't even matter where you go anymore everywhere is the fucking same staffed by the same faggot jannies

>>105641893
65% of india doesn't have electricity. 24% can't even read.

>>105641504
think about this, pham, we made cloudflare into reality by ddossing tumblr and visa

>>105641895
The social competition game is the most vile thing about modern internet culture imo, every community is run by mentally ill terminally online dorks vying for clout and disingenuously and selectively using corporate terms of service as a shield and weapon to control discourse. It's never been worse. These people used to not have power in the real world but now that the world is plugged into the internet they'll affect the average person when they browse twitter, reddit, or the public discord of your choice.

I know most people on /g/ have their friend group of 10+ years at this point probably if you're old and don't go outside of that and a few imageboards but seriously, go make an alt right now and see what the outside ecology of the internet looks like, it's wild and nothing like what it was even in 2015. It's no wonder the teenage suicide rate started to spike once social media took off. It encourages staying online at all times for attention and validation, your every move is a social battle that can and will be scrutinized and attacked. The introvert nerds of younger gen Z and especially gen A are going to be beyond fucked growing up living in a discord call

>>105642069
>disingenuously and selectively using corporate terms of service as a shield and weapon to control discourse
nta, this is also happening on 4chins as well
>rest
discord has been the seed and root of massive psyops, not one, but several, all against board culture and others poorly posing as board culture, all in all just fucking burn it all down, it can't get worse
>it can
>it most likely will

It was much more fragmented and less homogenized, communities were often quite focused and different to each other, like a collection of nation states or towns with their own cultures and lingos. You had to lurk and try to fit in more. Also, you learned alot of things through word of mouth. Feuds and raids between commmunities were funny and interesting. My entry into the internet was a fan community of an ancient game series I liked back then, people there always claimed how community X was the worst thing ever and all, after a while I got curious and went there and stayed there for a while, and in X they again claimed how community Y was terrible and evil, eventually I checked it out and went there(which was 4chan sometime around 2007 or so). And all these places had their own charm and invited to stay for a while. It's like the difference between a cosy European village with comfy beautiful old buildings everywhere and an airport designed by Zaha Hadid. Modern internet is sleek, sterile, and hostile to humans in comparison, maybe busy, lots of people just passing through, as if it's designed to prevent people from lingering and getting too comfortable, and of course there's someone trying to sell you shit or scam you at every corner.

>>105641946
bharat superpower by 2030 sirs

>>105642210
I find it interesting how you always went to meet the undesired people.

The real world and the online world were separate things. People weren't afraid to have passion and be massive dorks online. Internet wasn't serious business. Old 4chan culture was like that. So many utterly inane memes and injokes.

But then came the post-ironic detachment >imagine caring about anything ever, obsession with lolcows and cringe then everything is about trannies eventually leading to soulless noise. 4chan isn't even le edgy anon culture website anymore, most "hot takes" here come via xwitter screenshot posts nowadays.

>>105636828 (OP)
Fun. No bots. Sincere. People actually gave a shit. Less mental cases overall. Just using the internet felt cool; it was exclusive, like you were part of a secret society hidden within society, especially if you hung around on really obscure forums. Most importantly, people didn't treat the internet like a second job.

>>105640698
24/7 2fort servers still exist my dude. Tf2 hasn't gone anywhere, either.

>>105642519

>>105641857
I knew people in the late 00's who would wave the mouse in the air on their first try with it.. Young people.

>>105637260
>2011
Facebook normalized sharing private info in public 5 years earlier.

>>105637366
2018 UK internet users - 63.6 million.
2018 UK total population - 66.4 Million.
Sounds like bullshit once you factor out pre-school children, the geriatric pensioners and the huge amount of brown skins immigrants who can't even read or write.

>>105640749
>CS 1.5, TFC
I don't play video games anymore, but I still think about these every now and then.

free

>>105636828 (OP)
free, fun, full of wonder.
basically only nerds were on it, everything was soulful and weird and interesting.

I hate it here. I want to go back.

>>105636828 (OP)
>What was it like?
Better in most ways
Worse in a few ways (speed, reliability)
Nostalgia circlejerking is at an all-time peak right now, it wasn't magic

>>105636828 (OP)
Same as it is now.

>surface web was shitty over-commercialized slop for normies
>deepweb was nothing but gore, kiddy porn, stolen media, and raging autism
>mods on every forum were power hungry neckbeard dildo sitters

>>105637114
this. it was an actual place you went to like a library or your home desk if you were rich enough for one. when you were done the internet stayed there and you were back to focus on reality.

I still remember when it was about directory listings, or looking at random angelfire websites by literal schizos
or even typing random words with a .com at end at the address bar

>>105636828 (OP)
We were younger back then. The world still had its magic.

>>105637237
True. You had to tinker with drivers, know how to use switches on hdd and so on.
In some games you even had to set IRQs to have a sound.