I Miss the Internet 1.0

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Due-Introduction7826@reddit

I was a receptionist at a small office in the '90s. We sent out a lot of packages and so FedEx gave us this little dedicated machine to print its labels. That's all it was supposed to do -- connect to the fedex database and print labels. It has a screen and connected by dial-up. Don't ask me how I did it, because I don't remember, but I managed to connect to the internet through it (from my local internet provider which I think was pipeline.com). I could get my email and not much else, but at the time, there wasn't much else to do online, so it was a nice distraction for a few minutes a day.

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liquilife@reddit

I was able to reverse engineer Net Zero on my PC to work as a standard Internet connection for my Sega Dreamcast. I felt like a true hacker.

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jcostello50@reddit

One piece of ancient internet culture that survives in technical corners: mailing lists.

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Mobile_Analysis2132@reddit

Yes, I am on many technical mailing lists. A lot of information is passed around on them.

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crab_races@reddit

If that last sentence is true it is GOLD. :D

I do all, too, all the tiem. For some reason I remember it as IRC --internet relay chat-- and I remember how over a few years MIRC text-based chat got super enshittified...

But there and on BBSes I actually did make friends. And chat boards. I miss them too.

I was a SecondLife guy for a while, made a bunch of friends there, too.

The problem I think is always that people want to and need to make money. And that corrupts everything over time. I did hear there are some attempts to recreated Web1 on Web3... but i haven't seen it... but admit i am largely out of touch.

[-]

Mobile_Analysis2132@reddit

mIRC was one of the most common clients on Windows to access IRC, Internet Relay Chat.

IRC is still around though much smaller in size. Libera Chat is a good network. https://libera.chat/

I use HexChat to connect from Windows.

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SergeantChic@reddit

The mistake was monetizing every last micrometer of the internet. It's led to enshittification, grift and a bunch of worthless content ("content" is a word that just makes me think of a plain white block of tofu or wax anyway) made for no other reason than farming ad revenue. Someone once responded to a comment I made on a YouTube video with "Well, if it's not monetized, then what's the point?" The point, originally, was that you made something because you liked it. You had a niche hobby or weird fixation that you wanted other people to experience too, just to see if anyone else might like it too.

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Epicassion@reddit

The weaponization of extreme groups by pulling them together easily and anonymizing the backing is also a huge problem with it as well.

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SergeantChic@reddit

Absolutely. Facebook is essentially beyond repair in that regard, but then again, the people running it consider that a feature rather than a bug.

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TheCanadianFrank@reddit

Forums were the best

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nborders@reddit

I miss my local fly fishing forum community. I would always go there for a laugh and some inspiration. Westfly.com

We used to meet for fishing meetings “Rondis” on the river where we would swap stories.

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No_Community_5696@reddit

I could do without all the social media platforms but, I can never go back to dial up again.

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melyssafaye@reddit (OP)

I was spoiled because I worked for Bell Atlantic and my (now ex) husband was a lineman. They asked employees if they were interested in trying out a service called DSL. There were lots of requirements like having fiber line etc. I signed up right away and had the hubs get me on the instal list. That was like 95/96

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No_Community_5696@reddit

Your husband was a “lineman for the county “. Sorry had to say it. 😆

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melyssafaye@reddit (OP)

But we didn’t live in Wichita.

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EvilOne187@reddit

MUDding.. Like right after school, all night to fall a sleep at the keyboard. Go to school (maybe),work, do it all again:) I started with a Commodore64 and a 56K modem... MAn those wild battles would break out and my screen would be scrolling for ever. Good times.

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WorldsMostDad@reddit

They made a 56k modem that worked for a Commodore? 300, sure, maybe 1200. 56k is wild.

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EvilOne187@reddit

Yuppers. CMD sold the swift link cart. Swift link to Bocamodem. Desterm for the win!

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WorldsMostDad@reddit

US Robotics and the 14.4 dual standard eat your heart out!

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FormCheck655321@reddit

Who else played Utopia?

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Windyday2024@reddit

I think we are the only two. We had intellivision...yay

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Pupation@reddit

MUDs were the best!

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Dancinfool830@reddit

Bruh, what I wouldnt have given, my parents had a 1400 baud dial up modem, no, there is no missing comma or zeros, still managed to get a level 23 paladin with no scripting. The theatre of the mind worked well when your entire game was text based

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GuitarHeroInMyHead@reddit

I did all of that too but I don't miss it. It was fun and we are nostalgic about it because it was new and we saw the potential. We have seen the potential go way beyond what most imagined. So much more powerful and approachable today.

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PositiveStress8888@reddit

It was perfect, right up untill Facebook, then it all went downhill and only picked up speed.

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Vegaprime@reddit

So many divorces, so much disinformation.

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F-Cloud@reddit

The best period of time I spent online was 1997-2002. Surfing the web was so much more fun back then. It held so much promise for the future, for connecting people, and self-expression. Monetization of everything and the explosion of algorithm-driven social media poisoned the experience. That and online retail sites that had great customer service going public or being bought out, and abandoning the values that made them popular.

Being online sucks today. It's no fun anymore, it feels like a trap. I miss the wild west days of flame wars and script kiddies, and discussion forums where anything goes. The connections I had with others online felt personal. It's not like that anymore.

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Vegaprime@reddit

I feel like it peak around 2005 with online gaming. Everything since we could live without.

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RocKarde@reddit

People used to have to read. Actual conversation and paragraphs. Even the flame wars were creative or lengthy. Now if it isn't a 6 second video nobody can pay attention and we've lost the ability to learn or interact with others. Things might have been slow with dial up or early college Internet but having to work for it made it all the sweeter finding those gems of the net.

Get off my lawn younin's!

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FrustratedPassenger@reddit

Ahhhh flame wars. Those were wonderful.

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airportspongebath@reddit

No YOU they were wonderful!

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Due-Introduction7826@reddit

Usenet groups and listservs saved my life after I lost my baby. The support I found there... It was almost 30 years ago but I am still friends with some of the women I met through those groups.

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cjc4096@reddit

Usenet was a wonderful thing. An unmonetized global community. With strong local groups.

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airportspongebath@reddit

Couldn’t agree more. For a while there, it WAS the internet to me.

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mp3bear@reddit

Charlotte web browser on SNA 3270…

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BoozeAndTheBlues@reddit

Token ring was such a better protocol then Ethernet is. Accumulated clarity.

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nocturneOG@reddit

Such a lame old person post. I miss leaded gasoline

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Physical_Guitar_7258@reddit

Child, why are you commenting on a GenX when you're not one of us. Shoo fly, you're bothering us, son.

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JT-Av8or@reddit

Totally. I’d love to see the social
Media internet crash and go back to dial up. 56k was good.

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CaptainZippi@reddit

Bring back usenet and text only clients. All this graphical nonsense doesn’t add one whit to the debate.

(I may not be joking here)

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AnnieB25@reddit

Did anyone else get on BlackBerry Messenger chat rooms or Sidekick chat rooms? Those were a blast.

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CtrlAltComment@reddit

I miss PowWow, ChhetahChat, mIRC, Trillian, paltalk, Camfrog, Limewire, Napster, etc.

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AnnieB25@reddit

I was just thinking about Trillian the other day and how awesome it would be to have that style of program to combine DMs.

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rogerm3xico@reddit

Man I went through this old Kung Fu movie phase in the early 2000's and I downloaded so many more crazy, obscure titles from links I got out of irc newsgroups than I ever found p2p or in torrents. It was definitely the wild West back then. When I was a kid my uncle set me up with his old modem on an older computer he gave me. The operating system was "Norton Commander" He also taught me dos and gave me notebooks full of unix and Linux short commands. I learned html from a ripped copy of a tutorial that taught you html by building a website for a balloon company. I had to set my phone on the modem for it to communicate. I'd get my bbs lists from the Babbages newsletter back page. These are all just random memories and are in no particular order. Now I have an older Chromebook and an older laptop with an older copy of mint on it. I haven't booted it up in probably 5 years. Crazy how much time I used to spend behind a screen at a keyboard compared to now just messing around on my phone scrolling.

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Neener216@reddit

I miss Usenet so much. It's one of the main reasons I enjoy Reddit - this is about as close as I expect to ever have that experience again.

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Exciting_Turn_9559@reddit

Usenet still exists though.

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Neener216@reddit

If you were there in the dusty 80s and 90s, you know it's not what it once was. So yes, it exists, but it's not the same.

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Exciting_Turn_9559@reddit

I predict it will make a comeback as the internet becomes more and more dystopian.

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2_Bagel_Dog@reddit

I really miss that old Usenet. Forte' Free Agent at home (and could access through Netscape at work for a couple years).

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DelBocaVistaRealtor-@reddit

Miss Usenet? Dude, it’s still there.

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arkensto@reddit

Yeah, reddit is Usenet with voting.

I am so glad it has been years since I have seen a First! post.

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froggz01@reddit

lol, that’s reminds me of the old
Firingsquad website. There was always some idiot posting that.

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Neener216@reddit

lolol thank you for unlocking that memory. I also kind of miss all the dorks 🤣

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SwanCityDominion@reddit

I miss LJ so much. What an awesome time that was.

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GirlScoutSniper@reddit

So, so much!

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qrpc@reddit

Back in 1992/3 before the web, I used to hang out on a MUSH that we used as an online chat. You would telnet in and walk from the starting room to where folks gathered. Once in the room, it worked like a chat.

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melty75@reddit

My online journey started on a C=64 in the 80s. I miss the BBS era sometimes. Mostly, I just miss people not being assholes. I left FB for that reason during covid, and now insta, which I liked for photos and art content, as well as funny reels, is also starting to suck more.

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misttan@reddit

I remember plenty of assholes on the BBS, maybe because I was a girl I guess.

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rollins215@reddit

When I met my now-wife in 1998, the thing that impressed her most was my low 5-digit ICQ number.

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Fun-Position7750@reddit

Mine was a 6-digit. I met my late husband on Excite in 1997. I should tell the kids how we actually met someday. He was always telling me not to tell the kids any of my ‘stories’. He thought parents had to be perfect.

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melyssafaye@reddit (OP)

Damn, that’s sexy!

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Ray_The_Engineer@reddit

Yep, I loved the early internet. I was on in about 1993 with a SLIP connection via 19.2K modem, doing a lot of stuff from the command line. I was present in a few BBS's. Going a bit later, I miss the forums that became a big thing in the late '90's and early 2000's, before social media became dominant. It was more pure, somehow. I was actual a Mod and then an Admin for one of the car forums, and had a bunch of friends there that I actually met IRL, as time went on. I still talk to a bunch of them via Facebook, but it's not quite the same thing.

I liked it when it required a little bit of effort to use the Internet..it acted as a bit of a filter, it was definitely a different kind of person that you'd meet on an average day.

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AffectionatePeak9085@reddit

I miss asstr.org. Is that ok?

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CountHonorius@reddit

Still remember my ICQ number. Web 1.0 was peak humanity, and we will rue the coming of social media in future decades.

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Wasting_Time1234@reddit

Social media on its own is fine. The cancerous rot that’s rewiring people’s brains to become addicts is unconscionable. Social media, online gambling and even the online games are similar to being addicted to drugs.

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MAY_BE_APOCRYPHAL@reddit

Ah yes, ICQ. I had some interesting chats. One woman was looking after her husband who had PTSD from Vietnam. Another dressed as Frankie in a movie house that showed Rocky Horror every weekend

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TheWarDoctor@reddit

Shockrave, Tripod, Webrings. Those were the days.

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obxtalldude@reddit

It's wild how much time I used to spend on message boards.

The one for my architectural program was a real community.

They truly helped my career.

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ImMxWorld@reddit

Usenet.

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jcostello50@reddit

One of the crazy things about usenet was that the stars weren't as insulated from the plebs. I remember my jaw dropping when I first saw a post from Marvin Minksy looking through one of the comp.ai groups.

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DiogenesXenos@reddit

I miss before it was all monetized.

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bsensikimori@reddit

I occasionally log into telehack.com to relive those early days

Oh someone take me back to 1987

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grimmless@reddit

Fuck yes

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Pdxfunxxtime51m@reddit

I met so many people through rec.music.phish

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RunOrBike@reddit

Found one of us, had to scroll way too far for someone to mention USENET. Anyone remember FidoNet?

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Rowaan@reddit

I'm still on IRC. I have friends of 30+ years there.

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typhona@reddit

Irc is still a thing, and if i remember correctly, discord is basically a 'fancy' gui on top of irc

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Jealous_Crazy9143@reddit

Before stealing everyone’s data for a Corp to get rich and use Targeted ads and algorithms? Yeah

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Ok-Mention6768@reddit

Isn't LJ still a site? Or did the Russians ruin it?

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dewihafta@reddit

Yes, it is. I know one person who still uses it, but i havent in years.

I used to be fairly active on it, and miss the hell out of that community. Nothing else ever came quite as close to the way it was.

And all the algorithms are monetized now, which just ruins the whole experience.

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SwanCityDominion@reddit

My page is still there, so I get the occasional email telling me so-and-so just posted after a long time. It's nice to pop over and say hi. I miss the glory days there so much.

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YogurtclosetVast3118@reddit

ruzzians ruined it. it was a great place

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supenguin@reddit

YES! One of my most fun memories of "Internet 1.0" was a site I found during college in the late 90's - the Center for the Easily Amused. They had a pen pals page. You could post your email address and something like 3 sentences about yourself. Of course at the time most people included A/S/L - Age/Sex/Location.

They kept a few hundred entries on the site, I assume the most recent people to share their info. Somehow there was no spam and of course no bots at the time. I think I ended up writing to 30 or 40 people from that site and am still friends with 3 of them.

I revisited the site a couple years ago. It had been bought up by another company and was more or less just serving ads now. It made me sad.

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SwanCityDominion@reddit

I was partial to the Useless Pages. I could spend hours exploring their weird-ass links. One of my favorites was For Sale By Mental Patient.

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ZarinaBlue@reddit

I remember using IRC in college. All typed commands.

Then with mIRC you had channel splits and occasional takeovers.

Got my first corset pattern off of LJ.

Used to play this old game Heaven and Earth. Puzzle games basically.

Really miss the old internet.

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DelBocaVistaRealtor-@reddit

You act like IRC and mIRC are dead. My God, I am on it Every. Single. Day. And have been for 30+ years.

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ZarinaBlue@reddit

Oh I know that they exist. But that was a time in my life with people and places that are no longer there.

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Imaginary_Natural516@reddit

Yes

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Ill-Primary-5553@reddit

I don’t miss the old sites and services but the internet was definitely a different scene/vibe in the 90’s and early 2000’s. My thought is this was mainly because access was limited to the more “nerdy” population. I could be wrong but it felt like people mostly wanted to be helpful to others and folks were mostly polite

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LotsOfWatts@reddit

Definitely. A much more innocent time, before anything and everything on the web was out to get you and your $ or use your data for $.

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pnw-fun-cpl@reddit

I miss Yahoo chat rooms!

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Plenty-Run-9575@reddit

I miss them so much.

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brendini511@reddit

Me too! I'd spend hours in the local room late at night. I had just moved to a new area and I didn't know anyone. It gave me the social outlet I needed.

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SnarkHabit@reddit

All of these things still exist. People refuse to use them and then say they miss them.

IRC (Internet Relay Chat):

Bulletin Board Systems (There are like 1000 of them, accessible through the net):

Telnet BBS Guide
IPTIA Consulting - BBS, MUD, MOO, MUCK, MUSH, Talkers, STS, Diversi-Dial
Fidonet - Dogshit, but it still exists, along with a few dozen other messaging networks.

Gopher:

Floodgap

The Old Web:

Neocities - Geocities, for our present time.

Shell Account / Freenet-ish:

SDF

The WELL - Still around

WELL

[-]

melyssafaye@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the info! I didn’t know any of that. I got rid of my laptop a couple years ago and mainly use phone/ipad. Now I have a reason to fire up the pc again

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TraderValen@reddit

Simply No

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GracieThunders@reddit

Doodie.com, Joe Cartoon, Netscape, Northern Lights, geocities, Napster and a half dozen napster-likes that came after.

Oh and software key generators and crackers, pretty much all of my software was "borrowed", including my OS 🏴‍☠️

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icallthebigonebitey0@reddit

I miss CompuServe. Was such a fun platform to fart around on being 23 and at my first corporate job bored out of my mind.

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elvee68@reddit

mIRC, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, MSN before it was Skype. I used a skinnable messenger client called Trillian to sign into all these accounts at once. Man, the flame wars we used to have!

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SplinteredInHerHead@reddit

loved trillian! forgot about it!

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cabhop@reddit

I think Internet 2.0 was peak internet.

Then the barriers to entry were pretty much removed. Social media became a thing. And everything started being monetized. In that order.

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hedge36@reddit

I don't miss having to write entirely different codebases to support each of the browsers, no.

But ICQ? Hell yes. Goofy sounds and all.

Signed, 3591936

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DelBocaVistaRealtor-@reddit

12785380

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melyssafaye@reddit (OP)

Yeah, Palace used a code called Ipscrae no one uses it now.
The browser wars were real!
Signed
7897557

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TOW2Bguy@reddit

Wow... i can't remember my ICQ Login at all. I think I stopped using it when I got married and moved out of the barracks, and 1st wife talked me into getting my first Nokia leash. Prior to March of '01, I couldn't afford/had avoided having a cell phone though I was enamored with the one Val Kilmer used in The Saint.

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DelBocaVistaRealtor-@reddit

Miss mIRC? I’m on it every fucking day.

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StrictFinance2177@reddit

I miss the pre-www internet too.

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cjc4096@reddit

Uucp or nntp?

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MidnightNo1766@reddit

ftp wuarchive.wustl.edu

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psychometrixo@reddit

omg I forgot about that! core memory unlock

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Ok-Limit-9726@reddit

Would i trade it for modern reddit, callofdutyMobile pokemon go no

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Windyday2024@reddit

I loved the irc and icq. I just tried the link someone gave for libera but honestly could not follow it anymore.

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SnowblindAlbino@reddit

My high point was Usenet, c. 1991-1993, though I was on it in the 80s. The text-only internet was superior IMO, in part because the barriers to entry (i.e. access limited to .edu, .gov, and .mil accounts mostly) meant the riff-raff was at a minimum.

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mneptok@reddit

One word.

Gopher.

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Curtiskam@reddit

I really thought it showed more promise than the World Wide Web, then someone found graphics in the web specification and everything blew up :o

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Jim_E_Rose@reddit

University of Minnesota for the win! Rival school at the time but I took my hat off to those rodents

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mneptok@reddit

Dirty lil' gophers.

But golden. Truly golden in those early days.

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MartyFunkhoosier@reddit

I had just started college when I first head of the internet. 1993. I have very fond memories of going to a computer lab on campus to log on and get messages from something called Cobra that was all text prompts and stuff. And there was some way to “chat” with friends if they were on, too. I had gone to middle and high school out of country and my high school friends were spread out over the whole country, so this was amazing technology for me.

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897hayes@reddit

Same!!!

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Chateaunole-du-Pape@reddit

Shoot, I remember in college learning about something called the World Wide Web, accessible via Netscape Navigator. I spent a couple of weeks trying to figure out how to configure Winsocks on my PC in order to get it to connect properly over my 2400 bps connection.

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ShizHeadSoup@reddit

Yep…went to an event in late 1993 as a grad student complete with giveaway t-shirts announcing the “information super highway”…crazy to think about now. Still consider it a flex to have been online, at home, w/ dialup via an i386/win 3.1 pc all those yrs ago. Amazing. Those were the days!!

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Partsslanger@reddit

I miss internet forums

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billallen1967@reddit

Fido Net

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WorldsMostDad@reddit

I remember that! Randomly chatting to a woman from Florida without having to pay long distance.

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Phantomswan@reddit

I still update my livejournal, although very rarely (maybe one a year). I started during
COVID, and I got a nice message from an old Livejournal friend I hadn’t heard from in years. No other messages, though.

I really miss the old days of checking Homestsrrunner to see if there was a new Strongbad email.

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Confident_Luck2359@reddit

ISCA BBS

And downloading FidoNet forums for offline reading with SLMR - Silly Little Mail Reader - so you wouldn’t tie up the phone line.

I remember the progression from 300 baud to 1200 to 2400 to 9600 to 14.4K to 56k to DSL.

Akfe18.!kMfz/CARRIER LOST

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ttkciar@reddit

To be fair, IRC is still alive and kicking. The main network these days is Libera -- https://libera.chat/

I loved USENET back in the day, but Reddit is a pretty good modern approximation. I do miss that the rn client would iterate through all of your subscribed newsgroups and show you all of your unread messages if you just hit the spacebar enough times. I'd like a Reddit client like that, someday.

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TheSpatulaOfLove@reddit

Reddit is just enshittified Usenet.

I might head back to Usenet - join me.

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uninspired@reddit

I never left. For binaries, at least...

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TheSpatulaOfLove@reddit

gif

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FrustratedPassenger@reddit

Omg Usenet! So many hours wasted there. It was the Wild West

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MaximumJones@reddit

Back when cool people did not get on the internet.

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ChrisRiley_42@reddit

I still keep in touch with a group of friends from IRC. Even though people who I used to help with high school homework are now passing away from old person issues..

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FrustratedPassenger@reddit

X-No-Archive

Man I miss those days

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PalpitationLast669@reddit

/me misses Mirc for sure. I had so much fun there and met so many people (IRL)

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MammothComplete2500@reddit

The web was meant to be the wild west and then the corporations took over just like William Gibson said they would. We could all just start buying internet addresses again and get off these aggregators

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FrustratedPassenger@reddit

I can’t stand social media. All Monetized. Influencer driven. Sales sales sales.

Blah.

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mspong@reddit

These things are still here. If you miss them they're only a click away

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asscheese2000@reddit

I miss that the bar to entry was enough intelligence to operate a DOS/Windows 3.0 pc. Now with smart phones every idiot with a pulse has a platform and they have shitted the whole thing up.

Also, all your base are belong to us.

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Somone-Who-Isnt-Me@reddit

Someone sent us up the bomb

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asscheese2000@reddit

Do you have stairs in your house?

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Get_Woke_Go_Broke@reddit

I am protected

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MidnightNo1766@reddit

*set up us

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Kuildeous@reddit

I do miss when people typically had to know what they were doing to be online. This lowest-common-denominator shit is getting old.

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broohaha@reddit

Internet 1.0 for me was using nn newsreader, kermit, talk, and telnetting to MUDs. All pre-www.

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grateful_john@reddit

Usenet was lots of fun.

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MidnightNo1766@reddit

Came here to say this very thing. Usenet was my drug of choice.

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fcewen00@reddit

Usenet is still one of my drug of choice for certain things. slowly pushes his Jellyfin server out of sight

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geekandi@reddit

I shuffled a lot of UUCP traffic including Usenet back in the day

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fcewen00@reddit

I had forgotten about Kermit. I still MUD.

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kcnole78@reddit

I don’t miss dial up. But I’ve long said early days of high speed were the best of the internet.

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moxiemoon@reddit

100%. I say this all the time. I miss the early days when the internet was just nerds. I still remember my 7-digit ICQ number.

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u35828@reddit

Dial-up ducked, but for the brief time I had ISDN, I was a god.

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xBobaFattx@reddit

Yes, mostly I miss the absence of social media like it is now. I actually made connections back in the day, now it feels like everything is a sales or advertising opportunity.

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Hey-buuuddy@reddit

Geocities, webrings, ICQ.

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Weird-Ninja8827@reddit

"Uh oh!"

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Punky2125@reddit

Had to empty out the basement for a remodel which included cleaning out my desk. I found my box of coders used to hack Directv cards from many moons ago. All my friends and family had free tv for years. Lol The hours I spent in backdoor chat rooms getting code with lousy dial up internet. It is so much easier now.

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LonesomeBulldog@reddit

Browsing individually maintained websites was 90% of your browsing in the 90s. I can’t remember the last time I viewed a personal website.

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Bodine12@reddit

It was a great time. People used to put things on the internet because they enjoyed it or had a passion for it. Then Google introduced SEO to the world, and monetization ruined everything.

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geekandi@reddit

Email inline replies and trimming everything else

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SacriliciousQ@reddit

Yep!

IMO the Internet peaked right before smart phones. When high-speed Internet was widely available, but people still had to make somewhat of an effort to be online and the whole thing wasn't monetized to death. Now it's a big cash/clout grab. There is still good stuff on it, but the signal-to-noise ratio is terrible.

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Rencauchao@reddit

Kermit

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TOW2Bguy@reddit

I was thinking about ICQ the other day... and a Boriqua I used to chat with.

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HalfaEnchilada@reddit

Just the other day I was feeling nostalgic about the group #AskFemaleAnything on Dalnet. Funny group of people.

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sherlockjr1@reddit

Ding ding ding hisssssssssss!

Or

Get off the internet! I wanna use the phone!

And Usenet

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