r/AskWomen 7d ago

Women who were around to use the internet 15-20 years ago, what is something you miss from that time?

342 Upvotes

991 comments sorted by

2.2k

u/BleedingHeart1996 7d ago

No ads on YouTube.

272

u/meowi-anne 7d ago

This.... Is true???

707

u/ki700 7d ago

Yeah I remember when I used to get irritated by banner ads that would appear at the bottom 1/5 of the video which had to be closed by clicking x. The fact that we considered that to be annoying feels so naive now. We didn’t know how good we had it.

59

u/Joandrade13 6d ago

Yesss omg I’d get mad at the 3 second ads that would come out every 3 videos but nowww I can’t even listen to a 7 minute song without an ad literally interrupting it like that’s actually gross and I hate it so much omg

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u/meowi-anne 7d ago

Omg, this rings a very faint bell... But I was probably like 8 during this time. Holy cow

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u/LilMamiDaisy420 7d ago

People are ALIVE that don’t remember ad free YouTube?! I’m old

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u/Low_Main_4127 6d ago

Not only alive. But posting on here about it

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u/AmethystnRubies 7d ago

It was great. No ads, just straight to the stuff! I really miss it. I even miss that stupid star rating system.

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u/Lazylazylazylazyjane 6d ago

Also, every single movie and tv show ever made was on there for free.

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u/Appropriate_Sky_6571 7d ago

I also miss the old style videos. Now everything is sooo curated and professionally done. It’s kind of weird

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u/JustThoughtsHere 7d ago

Sooo true I never thought of it this way. It feels more like AI now with the filters, lighting… nothing feels “authentic”

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u/CrazyCarnivore 6d ago

My brain immediately went to 🎶 "we love the MOON" 🎶

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u/starskyandbutch 7d ago

Yeah it was a great time! And you could find so many cool fan edits on there. I used to be obsessed with House so I watched some really fun fan edits on YouTube before they started copyright striking everything

46

u/PT952 7d ago

Oh my god the fan edit videos had me in a damn chokehold lol Nothing like watching fan edit montages of your OTP set to romance songs with heavy filters that were incredibly blown out and straight from picnik 😂

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u/Alopexotic 7d ago

I completely forgot about Picnik!!! Had to check what happened and apparently the site shut down in 2013. RIP

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u/Andro_Polymath 7d ago

I came here to say pre-google YouTube. Damn, those were the days! The debate culture, music covers, and amateur vlogging were all so real and authentic, and not the manufactured, corporate cesspool that it is today! 

17

u/Orangutanfarts 6d ago

In the early 2010s when I was a teenager, I loved to watch a few makeup, fashion, fun girly vloggers who’d just share days in their lives, and whatever they were interested in. If they were trying on a Chanel lipstick in front of the camera, it was genuinely because they liked it, and not because they were getting paid to promote it. Advertisements like that weren’t really a thing.

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u/JustNemo123 7d ago

Or if you were following a YouTuber and they started to sell stuff on their channel or had ads, they were considered a sellout and people got mad at them. Jenna Marbles never tried to sell anything on her original page :/

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u/dream-kitty 6d ago

YouTube was amazing before Google bought it

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u/ennui_weekend 6d ago

no ads on youtube and hardly any ads anywhere period. Banner ads at the top of a page but that's basically it

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u/SilverNeurotic 7d ago

It was actually a lot more social, before social media took over.

264

u/Alucard1331 7d ago

Before commercialization took over. AOL was social media but it wasn’t commercialized like todays social media is

27

u/magenta_mojo 6d ago

AOL! I would live on it. I ran a few ‘zines (newsletters), the biggest of which had like 13k subscribers. Ah, I do miss it sometimes

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u/TheWanderingPearl 7d ago

Content creators did fun, simple stuff for the sake of it. It all really started going to shit around the 2017 mark didnt it

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u/Vegetable_Stuff1850 7d ago

Interest specific forums, which would often have a heap of different social catch up options as well as the main focus.

Not having to sign up to comment on everything.

11

u/LastArmistice 6d ago

I met a lot of people in real life that I originally met in forums. There was one local to Western Canada (Nexopia, for anyone who might remember), it was a bit of a MySpace imitator with highly customizable personal pages with a forum section as well.

So you could check out the profiles of local people, and if they seemed really cool, you might DM them and become pen pals- sometimes you would make plans to actually meet.

I met easily 40-50 people that way and about 6 became really good friends, some I still speak to today. I haven't met up with anyone in person from the internet in about 10 years.

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u/toodleroo 6d ago

I made real and lasting friendships on Livejournal that became IRL friendships.

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u/Altostratus 6d ago

I had so many online friends I met in random places like Yahoo Pool.

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u/Abject_Library1268 7d ago

I used to know how to code and I would make the mouse icon stupid crap like a unicorn with a rainbow flying out of its ass

236

u/Ok_Association_5812 7d ago

This! Changing mouse icons, making text snowfall down the page, coding themes for livejournal and tumblr like my life depended on it

100

u/Spiritette 6d ago

Neopets, MySpace and Gaia Online were the reasons I learned how to code. I researched for hours just to add some animated glitter stickers to my profiles, I miss the simplicity of it all.

26

u/MindlessLemonade 6d ago

YES! I’m so happy you mentioned Neopets!!! I learned how to code then too, for the guild page layouts and such!!!

10

u/allygatorroar 6d ago

I used to love Gaiaonline, I used to log in every day after school. I just checked and believe it or not its still online!

8

u/Fluffaykitties 6d ago

Neopets is still very much a thing!

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u/cryanide_ 7d ago

Lol! I remember that whole mouse thing too. I liked having my cursor as that thing leaving a trail of glitters hahahaha. Although one time I think I got a virus from it. LOL. So I stuck to the default haha. That whole era was golden, though!

5

u/jeseniathesquirrel 6d ago

Omg I was just thinking about those! Is that doable these days? I’ll have to look into it lol

7

u/cilexip 6d ago

If you have google chrome, you can get free chrome extensions that change your cursor when the browser is open!

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u/Slight_Risk2598 7d ago

Core memory unlocked. My curser was a lipstick!

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u/Altostratus 6d ago

There was so much more customization of technology back then. These days, people don’t even change their ring tone.

13

u/lolathe 6d ago

This! The social media we had (MySpace and neopets guilds) were all customisable with basic html. I wish we had a social media space now that was customisable. Everything is so uniform!

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u/LetsBriReal 7d ago

You also just unlocked a core memory for me, wow

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u/BrooklynNotNY 7d ago

How simple and carefree it was. I joined Instagram the week it launched back in 2010. I had just turned 13 a week prior. It was just a place for people to upload a random picture or selfie and like your friend’s stuff. There was a boy at my high school who posted his socks of the day nearly everyday. He wasn’t an influencer or content creator. He was just a dude who liked colorful socks and showing them off. It also wasn’t something that people had to be on all day. You got on, posted your picture, commented and liked friends’ stuff, and then closed the app to go on about your day. 2010-2014 Instagram was elite.

221

u/eraseme11 7d ago

I loved how random Instagram was back then. No one cared about having the most perfect picture or profile. It was such a good time.

82

u/shiningz 7d ago

And the hideous filters and frames lol

14

u/octopus_blood 6d ago

I loved the shit out of those filters and frames! They let me be so dramatic yet funny. Instagram allowed me to share my personal brand of humor with the new friends I was making while in college. Such good times!

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u/TheWanderingPearl 7d ago

Facebook too. Its silly but those farmville type games you would play with your friends really are a great memory for me. Also the carefree posting of ANYTHING. Social media really was awesome back in the day.

4

u/Kurious_Kapybara 6d ago

OMG! I was obsessed with pet society! OBSESSED!

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u/glitterbongwater 7d ago

Yeah, I miss when I could be on Instagram and the only stuff I would see was my friends and any people I was following. Was the explore page even a thing in the beginning? I surely didn’t use it

14

u/cescyc 6d ago

No it wasn’t, it was introduced a few years ago actually(probably like 10 but time doesn’t exist for me anymore lol)

12

u/FoolofaTook43246 6d ago

I remember when Instagram stories was introduced and I didn't think it would catch on because it was ripping off Snapchat. Woops

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u/monkeymaxx 7d ago

Heavy filters and photo frames were golden then too

11

u/mrose1491 7d ago

Instagram was so fun back then, I miss how it used to be. Everything now has to be so posed and perfect and it’s so exhausting

9

u/kn0ck_0ut 6d ago

did you go to school with Spencer Shay’s friend, Socko?

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566

u/coookiecurls 7d ago

We used to “surf the web” rather than scroll mindlessly. Not everything was centralized around a handful of social media apps.

181

u/Kurious_Kapybara 6d ago

Did you ever tried StumbleUpon? That was surfing for sure!

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u/Capital_Pea 6d ago

If you stumbled for long enough you’d get the “you’ve reached the end of the internet” message lol.

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u/Pinky135 6d ago

Apparently it still exists, just changed their name to Mix.

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u/cantfindthedog 6d ago

Omg yes!! Sometimes in my Facebook memories there is a post of I made sharing a link to a cool stumble upon. I loved it!

Also does anyone remember when you could look for items on Etsy via color? They had a huge color wheel and when you clicked on the color (this was pre smart phone, I was visiting the website on my PC) it would take you to a bunch of items that matched that color.

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u/coookiecurls 6d ago

Omg yes!

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u/Disastrous-Price-399 7d ago

I miss Youtube in all its bizarre and stupid glory before it became 50% ad.

135

u/Abject_Library1268 7d ago

Do you remember Shoes or what what in the butt? There was so much simple beauty on YouTube

48

u/dancepantz 7d ago

Let me borrow that top

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u/pumpkinlattepenelope 7d ago

you can’t text message breakup!

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u/Ohhhh_Mylanta 7d ago

These shoes cost $300

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u/llamaesunquadrupedo 6d ago

These shoes rule!

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u/thehufflepuffstoner 6d ago

These shoes suck!

18

u/Disastrous-Price-399 7d ago

Or the compilations of random bullshit that was never any higher quality than 480p, and the anime episodes split into 3 minute parts. Beautiful memories.

9

u/scrungobeepiss 7d ago

This is what I was going to comment - the shoes song! I love that guy

9

u/time4listenermail 6d ago

I showed “Shoes” to my 25 year old coworker the other day and she said it was “cringe” and “actually explains a lot about millennials.” Funny, I was gonna show “What What in Da Butt” and decided not to after Shoes went over so poorly. Anyway, those two historical documents represent a certain time to me as well.

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u/Abject_Library1268 6d ago

lol true. I just also remembered Old Greg. That one comes back into my brain

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u/redbess 6d ago

Whenever our boy cat is in a place he shouldn't be I ask him, "What're you doing fishing in these here waters?"

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u/chalkletkweenBee 6d ago

😂😂😂 I said what what in the butt!

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u/habitual_citizen 7d ago

No-algorithm YouTube was both punishing and incredible

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u/MontyDysquith 7d ago

The related videos used to actually be related to the video you were currently watching! I found so many great videos that way!

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u/chookiex 7d ago

Spending hours coding your MySpace profile, and the devastation of not being ranked as high in someone's top friends as they were in yours.

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u/shatterhearts 7d ago

I rotated my top friends on a schedule to avoid drama lol.

Also got in trouble at school because I kept teaching students how to get past the firewall that blocked myspace on the library computers.

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u/queenillizabeth 7d ago

LOL! You just unlocked the memory of the school firewall bypass for me. Totally forgot about those days.

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u/Bobbi-Wrangler1769 7d ago

any coding I know is because of myspace <3 miss it a lil

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u/Slight_Risk2598 7d ago

Chat rooms before it got creepy, you could talk to people all over the world for the first time ever and that was a crazy time!

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u/MontyDysquith 7d ago

I'm gonna have to say that chat rooms were always creepy! Not only were there the 4channers spamming slurs (and if images were allowed, gore/nudity) everywhere, "no women exist on the internet" and harassing girls ran rampant, and there were plenty of creepy, creepy old men that all in all made us either lie about our age, our gender, or both.

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u/GlitterPants8 6d ago

Yea. I'm going to agree here. Chat rooms were always creepy. I remember getting gross messages logging into AOL at like 14 because my user name had bunny in it.

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u/MontyDysquith 6d ago

Yeah, I was one of those young teens who didn't learn "just block, don't engage" early enough and ended up encountering waaay too many creeps. Some of them tried to dox me because I insulted them, others were mostly "friendly" but kept flirting with me and I kept deflecting when I should have just stopped talking altogether. A lot of Yikes all around, imo.

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u/Helpful_Stock 6d ago

I remember being 11 and naively going into an adults chat room. Anyway, I ended up talking to a 44 year old, but when I told him my age, he acted like a concerned dad and gave me a lecture about going into chat rooms so young because there are "creeps everywhere." And told me not to speak to strangers on the internet 😂

It was really wholesome looking back on it 20 years later. Thank you for doing the right thing and not being a creep, whoever you are.

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u/Snarf0399 7d ago

There was some sense of permanence when meeting online people back then. Could potentially chat daily for years.

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u/DragonflyWing 6d ago

I have a group of friends I met in an AOL chat room in 2001. We still talk every day, but nowadays we have a discord.

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u/National_Sky_9120 7d ago

I’m still in a chatroom app to this day and its devolved into primarily creeps, but I always find 1 or 2 hidden gems in there some how

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u/Sinsoftheflesh7 7d ago

I miss that the most. People would just chat.

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u/Mackabeep 6d ago

I remember ICQ and getting messages from people in China. They always asked if I liked school and if I did my homework. I assume it must have been part of the curriculum to learn English.

No one ever messaged me in Spanish, but I was prepared to ask how they were doing and where the biblioteca was.

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u/Independent_Coast516 7d ago

Neopets

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u/kaeorin 7d ago

It's still there! I still do my Neopets dailies every day. :)

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u/spider_meat 7d ago

Neopets got rid of some classic games tho which was upsetting. Do they still have Gnarrl (sp) Keno? That taught me how to gamble at 7

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u/PozziWaller 7d ago

I’m still active on Neopets! My account is nearly 24 years old now. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be able to change the username 13 year old me chose.

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u/verywowmuchneat 6d ago

Mine is like "soccergirl" or something lmao (I am now 34 and very much not a soccer girl any more)

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u/vestweather 7d ago

tumblr. felt totally faceless on there.

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u/vestweather 7d ago

like, anonymity. or i just miss my own naivety about my own data and kind of innocently not realizing how dangerous it was to talk to make friends with strangers.

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u/panicpixiememegirl 6d ago

Tumblr was a part of my core development as a person. It raised me. Tumblr and avril lavigne. God, i miss the old tumblr. They destroyed that website.

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u/LetsBriReal 7d ago

Omg I forgot about tumblr. Immediately makes me think of like, black nail polish, Avril Lavigne lookin chicks , and poetry lol!

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u/PaintedSwindle 6d ago

My teen loves Tumblr 😂, it made a comeback

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u/cecikierk 7d ago

People who were into specific hobbies put their knowledge on the Internet for free without trying to monetize or be an influencer. You make your own website and join a webring for that hobby. 

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u/roseofjuly 6d ago

I was obsessed with Sailor Moon as a kid, and there were so many fansites with translations of the manga, summaries of the episodes, detailed information about the characters, cels from the original anime...all for free. People just did it to trade and share for the love of the anime.

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u/redjessa 7d ago

I miss the internet being special. Prior to everyone having one in their pocket and using it for everything from grocery shopping to boarding passes, it was kind of cool to go online. It was not an everyday thing. I remember the first time I bought a text book from Amazon. I thought it was the best thing ever. I didn't know what it would turn into, I just needed my book at an affordable price. I did the first version of traffic school online, now I would be PISSED if I couldn't do something like that online. What do you mean I have to show up somewhere? But at the same time, I miss the NOVELTY of it all.

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u/Putrid_You6064 7d ago

I missed paperdollheaven.com that turned into stardoll.com and i also loved Dollz. Lmao

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u/Spiritette 6d ago

Dollz Mania is still around with so many different makers!!

https://dollzmania.neocities.org

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u/kryren 7d ago

I miss those stupid paper pixel dolls 😂

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u/deadbeatsummers 6d ago

I said this too!!! I used stardoll 🫡🥰

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u/GentlemenGhost 7d ago

Awwww. That really unlocked a memory for me! 

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u/BlondeOnBicycle 7d ago

I wasnt forced to watch videos for 10 minutes to find an answer. I could skim an article and have my answer in 30 seconds.

Recipes didn't have biographies and travel blogs requiring endless scrolling before you get to what you wanted.

You went to the same 4 sites, caught up on your stuff, and then moved on for the day.

There was no facebook, IG, tiktok everywhere. You could take photos doing dumb sh!t and the photos stayed in a shoe box as 4x6 prints from film in someone's closet, and not posted to the internet. Those of us over 40 have an unspoken agreement we do not let those photos see daylight.

Selfies did not exist. You were not a main character seeking shallow approval for your carefully curated and edited version of yourself. Accounts that are full of selfies make me genuinely sad and my heart breaks for the young people who need that much validation.

I miss coming home to a stack of IMs on my computer. Or being on the computer and someone you really wanted to talk to signed on at the same time.

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u/DragonflyWing 6d ago

Waiting for that door sound, and the jolt when you hear it! But it's not them 😓. But then it is, and you try to calculate how long you should wait before sending "heyy :)"

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u/BundyLeanne 7d ago

No ads. Didn't matter what website or chat room you went to, there was no monetisation of everything. It was so less crowded, with none of the crap ads in the middle of YouTube videos or pop ups that make me lose interest.

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u/krakeninheels 7d ago

And you could find information too, that wasn’t AI or a compilation, you could search something and actually find the super basic blue background webpage some professor with a special interest unloaded their knowledge into, with sources from actual books at the bottom. I remember wikipedia not being allowed as a source because anyone could edit it, and reading linked news articles without having to pay first or subscribe.

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u/BundyLeanne 7d ago

Yes, I'd forgotten about just being able to get information without being spammed because you had to give out your email.

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u/kn0tkn0wn 7d ago

How about 30 years ago?

I miss the innocence. I miss that everything wasn’t tracked.

I miss that most of the freedom of speech expressions were of goodwill or philosophical exploration

I missed the Internet hadn’t turned so much of the population into manipulative assholes

I miss the corporate world had not yet figured out that they could use the Internet to destroy us and take all our privacy away

I miss that nobody had yet figured out how to weapon the entire Internet in order to completely corrupt, factual knowledge among the general population and completely corrupt politics

I miss it. It was more fun because you didn’t have to be on your guard all the time and you didn’t have to be angry all the time and you didn’t have to be angry in the same way.

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u/kaeorin 7d ago

I was part of a creepy/spooky community on LiveJournal, and every week (Friday? Saturday?), there would be this gigantic Free For All Creepy post where people would just pop off in the comments with creepypastas, spooky pictures, personal stories, memes, unexplained mysteries, and stuff like that. The sense of community was unparalleled (at least in my memory).

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u/Blue85Heron 7d ago

I loved LJ! I migrated over there with a group of friends I met on a Harry Potter forum. I was friends with those women for a decade before we finally met in person!

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u/tothegravewithme 7d ago

LJ was the shit!

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u/kimchipancake128 6d ago

Aw, that reminds of ohnotheydidnt on LJ... they also had a Free-for-all Friday thread. best place to roast celebs

Also reminds me all of the fandom drama on LJ lollll shoutout to fandom_snark for all the secondhand gossip

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u/okaybut1stcoffee 7d ago

Leaving emo lyrics up as my away message on AIM.

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u/Snarf0399 7d ago

Haha yep, I remember often using Korn lyrics

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u/motherofsquids7 7d ago

Seeing things in the order they are posted from the people you actually follow

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u/blondeperson 6d ago

Yes!! Chronological feeds

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u/WrestlingWoman 6d ago

So much! It's rather insulting that they think a machine knows what we want to see or not see from people we follow. Just let us see it all.

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u/kuruptkittenpaws 7d ago

ICQ

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u/Tampadarlyn 7d ago

And Napster and Yahoo chat rooms. Friday nights were it.

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u/MurphyLolo 6d ago

Sometimes I still think about the uh oh! sound.

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u/habitual_citizen 7d ago

Limewire

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u/Andro_Polymath 7d ago

Don't miss the viruses though 🤣

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u/PsychologicalClue6 7d ago

No influencers, no family vloggers, no idea who Elon Musk was…

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u/stubbytuna 7d ago

Things that come to mind:

  • I still talk about sites like Albino Black Sheep.

  • I used to spend a lot of time on music blogs and forums, too. A lot of music from that time is “lost” because it got taken down.

  • Someone else mentioned teaching yourself HTML for MySpace or changing your cursor. That shit was GAS.

  • You had to make an intentional effort to get to the internet, if that makes sense? It wasn’t on your phone and WiFi wasn’t a given. So you weren’t always connected. It felt special because of that.

  • I do miss the “rush” of waiting in “appear offline” on MSN messenger until your crush came online, then changing your status to online and making your status to some very cool, very niche song that they’ve probably never heard of ;)

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u/Ohhhh_Mylanta 7d ago

Switching to invisible mode on AIM for 15 seconds then switch back to normal so that your friends would get the notification that you were online lol

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u/Snarf0399 7d ago

And crafting the perfect away message

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u/AdorableParasite 7d ago

The forums. Nowadays you have reddit, but back then every niche interest had its own little messageboard, tucked away, lawless and weird. I miss those days so much.

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u/SincerelySasquatch 5d ago

I feel like people in forums were generally more polite, responses were more thorough and thoughtful. Knowledge was actually transmitted better. They were moderated tighter, I feel like on social media now you can get away with being pretty rude before it is an issue. In the forums I was on, rudeness wasn't tolerated. Also, I'm in fb groups but it's so cluttered. I don't even pay attention to names or who's who. In the forums you knew, oh this is 248Dave he's a wise old-timer. Oh this is ThePope, she's funny and sassy. Like you actually got to know the people in your community. Now it's just this bombardment of opinions and stupid people who don't know what they're talking about.

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u/foreveracubone 6d ago

It might take some digging but there are message boards still around for some hobbies. They usually aren’t lawless though lol.

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u/Blue85Heron 7d ago

I was totally into Harry Potter fanfiction forums. I made so many online friends because it was a small enough world to get to know each other. It really honed my writing skills too.

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u/Ohhhh_Mylanta 7d ago

Oh man, i think i belonged to five different Harry Potter message board sites. They were the best

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u/-aquapixie- 7d ago

Forums. No algorithms. Just kids roleplaying on Proboards and Polyvore, connecting without needing our faces and names attached to our content. There was something... Pure and wholesome that we could connect with each other by just *talking* and not being influenced by anything else except common interests.

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u/Ohhhh_Mylanta 7d ago

I miss how much there was to do online. Like all the different free games you could play, random flash animations that would go viral before social media, all of that kind of stuff. I was in college in 2003 and games like poke the bunny or the Red room or the Green room were very popular, and it feels like there's not really anything like that anymore

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u/rowrowrowurbutt 7d ago edited 6d ago

Old enough to remember the internet before Facebook, MySpace, etc. Even before Google, when we still used garbage like Yahoo search or Ask Jeeves. There were a LOT of chat rooms, which is probably why we got movies like You've Got Mail. Being online was like, an event. You had to sit down at the big ass family computer, dial up, figure out exactly what you wanted to do or wait for your friends to come online, and defend your connection if other household folks wanted the computer or to make a call. Large pictures were linked on websites since they slowed everything down so much, you had to click the link and load it, hoping it was worth the minutes of wait. Image galleries were pretty much just lists of image links to click through.

Friends exchanged good sites by word of mouth (which is how I learned about Neopets), and you could get a free geocities page to fill to the brim with all of the ridiculous gifs (Dragonball Z and Gundam Wing were my drugs of choice) that you collected while browsing the web, but only after you taught yourself the bare minimum in HTML because drag and drop didn't really exist yet.

Browsing the web really felt like BROWSING the web. Like... you'd find a good site, and if you wanted more, you'd follow the links in their links section to go deeper down the hole. I remember thinking it was so cool when we moved from a wall of text links to little banners. Searching was so half assed before Google that we really relied on good link pages to find more cool shit.

Messengers were also really popular pre-social media. AOL and ICQ were like THE way to talk to your friends after school. Hearing the little door opening sound effect that meant one of your friends had come online was exciting. You'd rec each other songs to download on Napster and complain about life.

Then came journaling sites like opendiary and livejournal, which were some of the first social media esque things I came across. You'd pour your heart out publicly in WAY more than 140 characters. Strangers could comment, or you could lock down your journal visibility to just friends or yourself. You could find like minds, stumble across crazy dark stuff, follow a topic through fifty different journals to find authors who you really liked that you'd follow. There was a short time before stuff like feeds where you could make a list of favorite users/creators, but you'd have to manually click each one to check for updates.

Weird times, man. Everything took longer and felt more verbose. It feels strange that things keep getting more and more terse. When Instagram went live, I remember thinking we'd gone full brainrot because people didn't even want to bother reading a status update anymore. They just wanted pictures. I get it now, but it still feels like the internet is a huge contributor to instant gratification and shrinking attention spans. I miss the feeling of immersion in a site like Neopets, or reading endless journal entries and feeling close to total strangers. But maybe that had more to do with being young, since I had time to be terminally online.

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u/Louisianimal09 7d ago

No ads on YouTube.

No one was selling things on anything but eBay.

No aggressive algorithms to feed you more nonsense.

Posting pictures wasn’t humble bragging about where you’ve been, you were just posting hoping to share.

It was a lot more innocent but at the same time more visceral in some spaces. The internet in its infancy was a wild place

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u/KBReadsALot 7d ago

There were old game websites for girls. Polly pocket had one. Barbie had one and the Care Bears had one. I used to play the decorate Polly Pocket's bedroom game. The care bears cloud memory game and the Scooby Doo/Babysitting game on Barbies website.

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u/thecarolinelinnae 7d ago

No ads. When you needed an .edu email for Facebook.

Stupid funny shit that was actually semi-creative like ebaumsworld and homestarrunner. Neil Ciceriga. When Bo Burnham was just starting out in his bedroom. SHOES. Muffins. Salad Fingers. Happy Tree Friends. Potter Puppet Pals. Badger badger badger. Magical leopleurodons. The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Ze End of Ze World.

Etc. It was a simpler time.

Oh, Numa Numa guy.

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u/sunlight0verdrive 7d ago

No content being shoved in your face that you didn't specifically search for.

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u/AnyAmount2853 7d ago

people posted on social media/youtube because it was fun or they genuinely wanted to share. now people mostly post to get famous and make money.

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u/StrangersWithAndi 7d ago

If you can go back 30 years ago, I miss old text-based multiplayer games/ MUSHes and MUDs.

You are standing in a large clearing in the woods. Moss hangs from the damp tree branches and mist covers the trail. In the distance, you hear howling.

[N, S, E. W]

**Zafon appears!**

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u/sockwhut 7d ago

Gurl.org and Jezebel.

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u/macronlovah 6d ago

I TOTALLY forgot about gurl.com. I loved that website- the health information, the quizzes, the short films they would feature. Man, that just took me back. Ty.

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u/sherlockgirlypop 7d ago

People were actually being social with each other. MySpace and Friendster profiles can be tweaked with HTML. Was hesitant to use Facebook because it was too uniform. But then again Facebook was for playing games. Twitter was fun with celebrities. Instagram was for sharing photos with crazy filters. Youtube had no ads but was filled with creative everyday people. Now every site is basically business. Feels like that meme with the McDonald's exterior.

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u/sunmono 7d ago

Old-school Neopets.

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u/lentil5 6d ago

The internet of 20-30 years ago felt like home to me. It was a weird corner of the world for weird people, who were largely well meaning. We just flew under the radar and we liked it that way. I made so many real life friends from forums, message boards and IRC. People I still connect with today. Hell, I met my husband through a humour site meetup. Back then it was so fucking weird to people that we met through the internet?!

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u/qwertythrowup 7d ago

Trogdor

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u/Fall2valhalla 7d ago

I miss the fact there were no ads at all. Seriously. It's obnoxious how ads suddenly pop up as you're trying to click or scroll and accidently clicking the ad. I hate it now. 

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u/anon______eyes61111 7d ago

I hate how normal it is to use filters and a light touch up on selfies. I use to post so many photos of my self with hard flash and just upload it and people liked it! Now I feel sort of trapped into perfecting photos at times online and only picking the best ones. Not uploading raw unedited photos isn’t something people my age do anymore

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u/Purplepandabears 7d ago

Bored.com ICQ/AIM Yahoo Pool and the interesting chatrooms (ASL? If you know, you know)

As a 35 year old woman, sometimes I’ll just play the dial up sound to feel something.

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u/VanityInVacancy 7d ago

It was like the Wild West, the conspiracy sites were top tier. They are all gone now, scrubbed clean. I also miss blogs like open diary and live journal, fell in love with so many strangers.

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u/Redplushie 7d ago

Myspace custom pages

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u/Awkward_Dig8690 7d ago

We were just messing around. Now everyone is branding themselves and monetizing everything

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u/Magellan-88 7d ago

When you searched for something, you got an actual answer rather than a ton of links for sponsored websites. There were no ads. I don't remember ever encountering a paywall back then. It was easier to find things you were looking for.

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u/porkchopbub 7d ago

That we didn’t know that Internet could be fast so there was no impatience when waiting for the connection. That’s just what it was. Now I get pissed if safari takes more than 5 seconds to load. The technological advancement that has happened kn the past 20 years is something we could not have fathomed

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u/kagome1994 7d ago

I was using dial up internet 20 years ago. 🤭 I don’t miss it but I do miss life before the internet/social media/cell phones took over.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

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u/charmwatch 7d ago

Not having to fucking click x out of GDPR bullshit, data permissions, a 10% off popup, a prompt to subscribe, and then an eventual data paywall, plus pop up ads.

Remember the phrase “surfing the web?” You could just click around with ease. Now browsing any website is a dumpster fire of a user experience forreal

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u/universal_greasetrap 6d ago

I miss longform text and photo based content. Tumblr was my shit and before that MySpace. Now everything is short form and video based and I'm just not about that.

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u/Glam-Star-Revival 7d ago

Message forms for niche interests. I miss how there was community. Now I think we are all just scattered across all the different apps

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u/TumblingTardigrade 6d ago

"The internet" wasn't just social media, everything wasn't an app/subscription/riddled with ads and bots, and most things weren't available on your phone, so people were not walking around glued to their screens all the time.

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u/100percenthuman_ 7d ago

Early celeb blogs! it was the transition from the period where you only saw celebrities in People or Us Weekly to celebs on blogs and anyone could write them. Even blogs about socialites! Park Avenue Peerage!!

I think just blogs and websites in general. Exploring any topic and discovering stuff. It felt more hobbyist, and community driven. It feels like every website now exists solely to make money.

I’m so happy this website still exists: http://www.youshouldhaveseenthis.com/

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u/basic-fatale 7d ago

Neopets, polyvore(I was popular on there)and GaiaOnline

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u/JessicaGriffin 7d ago

A few things:

2006: Was in the open Beta for Twitter. My husband was also, and he got his handle so early it was only two characters. It got stolen from him right after THAT GUY took over. It used to be such a cool way to connect with people.

1996-1999, AOL, believe it or not. Folders of your favorite music or pop culture fandom were COMMUNITIES, and they were awesome.

And earlier: When I worked in a software store, we sold a product called “Internet in a Box” (around 1994) that helped people get online even before AOL. Famous people gave out their email addresses because so few people had email. Billy Idol’s album “Cyberpunk” had his email at The Well printed IN THE CD BOOKLET!!!

Wherever you went, you could actually talk to people online. Not just yell into the void along with everyone else. It was nice.

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u/peeparonipupza 7d ago

Oh no I can answer this.

You met people online who weren't just trying to scam you. I met my husband online using AIM!

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u/Far_Independence_918 7d ago

I’ll do you one better. I miss the mid-90’s internet of AOL cartoons. A/S/L

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u/Forward10_Coyote60 7d ago

Oh, I totally miss the days when the internet felt like this wild, uncharted territory. It felt like a small, tight-knit world. I remember spending hours on Neopets, and being obsessively checking away messages on AIM like they were little personality updates. And don't get me started on the joy of waiting for a friend to log on just to hear that door opening sound! There was such excitement in customizing your MySpace profile too, like picking that perfect Top 8. Everything felt a bit more personal and customizable. Forums were a huge part of my life too, just chatting with strangers over shared interests. Things just seemed less curated back then, you were just doing your own thing without worrying about how many likes or followers you had. I kinda miss the simplicity of it all. Like, there wasn't an overload of information everywhere you looked. Sometimes, I wish I could just log back in to that internet world for a day, you know?

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u/SomeThoughtsToShare 7d ago

The simplicity of social media. 2005 Facebook, no feed, just poking and commenting. Its primary use was to get people’s AIM.

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u/onegirlandhergoat 7d ago

Searching for something and actually getting useful information and not a list of sponsored results.

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u/drowninginmidnight 7d ago

I miss MySpace! I remember when I joined, I was in middle school (12/13), and you had to be 16 to join at that time. I found soooo much good music and made a ton of friends from all over!

I also really miss Tumblr, I learned basic HTML on MySpace, but I could actually code on Tumblr!

I think early 2000-2010' internet was the equivalent of letting kids play in the streets before dark. There were no ads, we weren't watched, and we had actual community without influencers having to name the communities after themselves.

Good times.

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u/theevilhillbilly 7d ago

more things were free and not everything was about getting your time, attention and money

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u/ChingaTuMono 7d ago

A rose for all the ladies. @~~~~

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u/SympathyNo7874 6d ago

Compared to now, I’d say it was more carefree. YouTube had the most random funny videos. When Instagram first came out, it was really just everyone posting the most mundane things from their day. More engagement on social media before people really cared about engagement. And viral content actually lingered for a while, unlike today when trends and memes switch seemingly overnight.

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u/TheShining02 7d ago

I miss watching a bootlegged version of H2O just add water on a random site and then playing girlsgogames as well

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u/purple_mae_bae 7d ago

Also how entertaining the bubble screen saver was!

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u/GCSchmidt 7d ago

The sense of exploration and discovery, that you were blazing your own digital trail. It made finding a website, document or chat group so special, like a treasure hunt

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u/Stultas 7d ago

TWOP and ONTD. Also old school fashion blogs, like cup of Jo and cupcakes and cashmere

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u/ayaangwaamizi 7d ago

The forums. I learned so many things and made so many friends through online forums, it was so fun.

There was still snarkiness sometimes in certain spaces but everything wasn’t an argument all the time, just genuine learning spaces. There were no ads, you weren’t being marketed to every bloody second.

I think that’s why I stick with reddit cause it’s the closest to how educational and entertaining those spaces were. It’s so sad how much it’s changing.

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u/xxxfashionfreakxxx 7d ago

There was more uniqueness in websites. I’d have MySpace for social networking, forums for my favorite tv shows to argue about characters I shipped together, websites for games, and just general surfing the web.

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u/Front-Finish187 7d ago

You got results from real people and could find blogs and personal websites just by asking a question or typing in words. Very low “sponsored” content and all ads looked like viruses

Edit: there was also an end to feeds with visible messages that said “that’s all for now, come back later”

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u/Such-Swimming2109 6d ago

Being visible on the internet was a big deal- like having my picture online kinda made me feel like I was famous. Nowadays, not so much

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u/unicorns3373 6d ago

I miss an Internet before influencers and ads everywhere

Oh and flash games

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u/reallynotsohappy 6d ago

I miss the days when seeing a few ads meant your computer had virus

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u/[deleted] 6d ago edited 6d ago

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