If you bought your dial-up internet from your local newspaper, there’s a pretty good chance I was doing tech support for it.
I was on social media before web browsers existed. I am Legion.
Submitted 8 hours ago by BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dba47e57-3459-4350-bf0a-fdbfee294f5c.jpeg
Comments
ClownStatue@piefed.social 24 minutes ago
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
I will income the old words
A/S/L
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot slaps CaptPretentious around a bit with a large troutmusubibreakfast@lemmy.world 22 minutes ago
It’s like I’m back on quakenet!
W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
18/Cali/F
ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 1 hour ago
Adobe flash games.
ObtuseDoorFrame@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
It’s surreal to think about how genuinely good Facebook used to be, before they added the algorithm. It made our social lives better instead of replacing them. You could go on Facebook to peruse events in your area, having an idea of who would be there before you went.
LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 3 hours ago
rofl tell me you do not understand how FB got started without telling me…
That shit’s been a privacy nightmare from the beginning.
backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 7 hours ago
Back when I was booking shows it was great because you could blast a small event and know it was reaching a lot of people. Bands would share it, every band member would reshare it. But then I noticed the growing discrepancy between the amount of people who claimed they’d attend online and who showed up. Like so much on FB, the illusion of being a part of something became more important than actually being a part of something. But yeah, for a brief moment there was a bit of “social” in social media. Then came the yelling.
NoPanko@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
Events was what kept me on the site for far too long after they went bad. Being able to organise events with friends so easily was incredible. I can track the decrease in my social activity along with fb making their system worse and it makes me sad
chaogomu@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Before Zuck hired Joel Kaplan to specifically cater to right wing interests.
It was kinda nice yeah.
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
These kids have never been slapped around a bit with a large trout and it shows.
W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
W98BSoD slaps usualsuspect191 around with a large trout
jeffep@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
And still falling for the bait
VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
Assuming y’all aren’t just fucking around, reading the comments here is actually really cool, tangentially interacting with people who have internet stories from well before I was born
I’m just from the dialup era, and I still feel old online a lot of the time, but then someone here is like “yeah, Berners-Lee invented HTTP just to make a website to mock me”
Hikermick@lemmy.world 19 minutes ago
I got my first “home computer” in the days of the BBS’s when there was such a thing as a “long distance call”. Internet access was crazy expensive and not for the average geek. Back then it was a bit “underground”. There were professionals and there were passionate hobbyists. Most people didn’t have or need a computer in their lives. Things changed in the late 90’s boom. A cultural shift when suddenly everyone joined in. The geeks were no longer king
gluestick@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
We are of similar eras. I just missed the days of building phreak boxes and it was always a bit of wonder to me.
While it’s harder these days for a litany of reasons I think it’s still in our collective interest to be bearers of stories, old and new, to the neophytes of the current generation.
I guess what I’m saying is, I am in your camp but to my kid’s generation we are still warlocks
VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
So much of the wonder of computers and networks and just… all of it has been abstracted away
So many people just have phones or tablets as the majority of their computer experience
Hackworth@piefed.ca 8 hours ago
Oh, you think the darkness is your ally. But you merely adopted the dark.
hOrni@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Do not cite the deep magic to me witch, I was there when it was written.
wjrii@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I’m not trapped in here with you. You’re trapped in here with me!
Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
I came here to make this exact quote. Good job bro!
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
I was on BBS forums in the '80s.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
wasn’t usenet fun?
billwashere@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Well not sure about the other poster but the BBSes I used were ones you had to dial into and you were the only one there. Well unless it was a fancy one that had multiple phone lines. I even ran one for a short bit my junior year of high school on my commodore 128 and a 1200 baud modem. Good times. Then I got to college and learned about usenet and IRC. This was like ‘89.
forwhomthecattolls@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
I’m so sad that I missed out on this era of the internet. I only got online in 2020, just horrible timing. all you older folk were so lucky
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
If it makes you feel any better, I’m also so sad that it’s gone and not coming back :(
wraekscadu@vargar.org 1 hour ago
Why’s that? What part from that era would you like to see again today if you could?
CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org 1 hour ago
The modern internet can be more interesting than the old one ever was once you start to explore it, rather than hanging out on like three websites total.
ugandan_airways@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
I watched the Adam Friedland interview with Clavicular yesterday, and Gen Z is so fucked. I realize not all of them are like that, but that someone like Clavicular has gained any traction is a sign the youth is not alright.
starik@lemmy.zip 13 minutes ago
I don’t think many of them actually take Clavicular seriously. Gen Z culture seems to be all about “inside jokes” that everyone knows and self-aware lolcows. It’s annoying, and I’m glad they all had their teens stolen by Covid. They deserve it.
ugandan_airways@lemmy.zip 10 minutes ago
You know, I bet Covid really is to blame for this nonsense. Some developmental delay type thing.
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 hours ago
The only place I hear anything about that guy is on lefty podcasts and streams, I tend to avoid most social media so I’m not exactly tapped in to that shit but it kind of feels like the reactive coverage is his biggest boost. I tune in to chapo and hasan and friedland and denims and seder and holy shit I’m so sick of hearing about this irrelevant fucked up kid.
ugandan_airways@lemmy.zip 3 hours ago
That’s my rotation as well. You are probably right.
What is denims? Everything else I listen to.
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 4 hours ago
As an early GenZ myself, the only consolation I have is that I still had a pretty un-GenZ childhood and the lack of that rot will always give me a competitive advantage.
gluestick@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
I hadn’t heard of this person so I asked my 15 year old son if he knew about him or if his friends were in his orbit.
“He’s a loser. No.”
I appreciate you for giving me this intense moment of connection with my boy
ugandan_airways@lemmy.zip 46 minutes ago
Haha. You’ve got a good son.
PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Adam was bugmaxxing hard in that interview
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
fuck. i can’t remember my icq # anymore. it was 6 digits and started with an 8.
ClownStatue@piefed.social 47 minutes ago
Mine was somewhere in the 2 millions. I probably still have it saved somewhere.
YoiksAndAway@piefed.zip 7 hours ago
I’ve known adventures, seen places you people will never see, I’ve been on university work terminals and back… frontiers! I’ve stood on the back deck of Usenet bound for Mosaic with sweat in my eyes watching Netscape Navigator fight on the shoulder of the internet… I’ve felt wind in my hair, riding Lynx off of monochrome monitors and seen usegroups burn like a match and disappear. I’ve seen it, felt it…!
JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
Like ASCII tears in a digital rain
SanctimoniousApe@piefed.social 2 hours ago
The true measure of your worth: do you prefer amber, green, or true B&W?
FrChazzz@lemmus.org 2 hours ago
Pretty sure the first C prompt I ever encountered was amber. Will always have a soft spot for it.
JaymesRS@piefed.world 2 hours ago
My terminal used to be set up such that local terminal usage was green & black and remote was amber.
DmMacniel@feddit.org 6 hours ago
bye
finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Single colour monitors, kids! Single colour monitors!
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Team orange or team green?
monotremata@lemmy.ca 21 minutes ago
Oh man, I had to use the orange ones sometimes at my first programming job. They were VAX/VMS dumb terminals. It sucked getting stuck with one of those, because the job was making a visualization GUI for some data, and these ones literally couldn’t run the GUI; they were text-only. Eventually they started reserving one of the GUI-capable machines for me.
daannii@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I got a Gmail account back when you had to get an invite.
Drops mic
BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Moi aussi. My Livejournal user number was 3 digits.
gigastasio@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Friends, hear my story…
In the days of old, the days where 300 baud modems were bought by us, the Early Adopters, there were meetings in dark places where code was exchanged on cassette, to be loaded from our tape drives, to create a new BBS, and you - yes you, dear reader - could be your very own SysOp. A king! Let them fall before you as you interrupted their email to live chat. Behold a world where encryption dare not tread, and you, My SysOp, could read the thoughts of all your subjects! Enter a universe where mom picking up the phone downstairs, only to be greeted with digital screeching, turned your conversations into garbled, alien characters before your eyes!
This is where it began. This is where I began. And thus shall I endure, today, tomorrow, and all tomorrows. The lore is mine and mine alone to carry.
Post on, dear friends. I did all this for you.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Tom and I go way back. He’s never given you a thumbs up.
Monstrosity@lemmy.today 8 hours ago
Old man yells at the Cloud.
BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I regret nothing.
CIA_chatbot@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Have some damn respect old man helped build cloud while you get excited because your IPad is blue
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 hours ago
I’ll stop yelling at the cloud when it stops tripling my electric bill!
Surp@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Aol mp3 channel 1
MehBlah@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
I remember my CompuServe id. I remember the sequence to kick the operator off a call and jump into AT&T’s switching network for the free calls. A 300 baud modem was the shit in 85. Most these fetuses have no idea how anything works and what I used to do to get a connection would make their mind explode.
golgaloth@writing.exchange 4 hours ago
BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
You feel me.
orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
My ICQ number was 737916. A hacker stole it 20 years ago because I thought, “why would anyone want this?” and used the password “buddha” for some reason.
I loved that platform. Those were innocent by comparison days.
W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 hour ago
1576488 checking in; still burned into my memory from 30ish (fuck) years ago.
limelight79@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I tried to get into it on the relaunched site a few years ago, but it didn’t work. I might have used my university email account as the recovery email, and that account is long gone.
But…why? I doubt anyone else that I know is using it…
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
There’s no reason to use it anymore. I was using the OTR encryption protocol with it, which was the best there was to offer.
That being said, I did say “could have gotten,” not “could have.”
TheImpressiveX@lemmy.today 6 hours ago
I have usernames older than you.
tidderuuf@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Bragging about how long you have been on social media is like bragging that you are the coolest kid in a special needs classroom.
TTimo@lemmy.today 4 hours ago
9337000 checking in
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 hours ago
We built this city…!
Zerofactorial@noc.social 4 hours ago
@BonesOfTheMoon I was 76474.3012 on Compuserve
turnipjs@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
also they were like 20something when myspace started anyway
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 19 minutes ago
Yeah, seems there is a belief that past a certain age, you should have zero fun, be nothing but a wage slave, and die somewhere quietly, where no one will see what fate awaits you.
Well, I happen to think minors especially should not have access to social media, or at least somehow have minor only social media.
Prevents them interacting with predators, getting brainrotted, and most importantly: leaves us with more mature people to interact with.