Random Thought Of The Day #605

Day 605

Does anyone remember how the internet worked in the 90's?

Do you remember actually PAYING to have browser software. You could go to one of the half dozen computer software stores... wait... stores? I'll get back to that. But you could go to one of the stores and actually have to pay money to for a browser. What was it? About $25 or $30 for a copy of Netscape Navigator? Does anyone except for me even remember that thing?

Remember when the video game stores and the computer software stores were the same? Babbages? Electronics Boutique? All those mall computer stores. I always had fond memories of those stores for some reason.

Do you remember some of the search engines from back then? Alta Vista? Web Crawler? Excite? What was the one that Mark Cuban owned? The one with the commercial with the scottsman in the kilt and the really fast dog going to pick up the newspaper or something for him? What was that one called? Which other ones am I forgetting about? And where the fuck did they disappear to? Did Google eat them all? Cause the only one that I think is even 1/10 of what it was in 1997 is Yahoo.

Let's make with the 90's internet nostalgia.

We all know the sad story of Napster. Jesus... I remember waiting sometimes a day and a half to get a fast enough connection speed with someone that was online long enough to actually download a whole song. You'd be stuck on 73.2% or something for a day and a half. Or sometimes longer. Do you even remember when it took more than a minute or 2 to download a song? Do you even remember not having an always-on connection? That grinding, screaming, skreeching sound of a modem connecting. Ugh.

When AOL IM was the shit. And if you weren't using it, you were a toolbag.

What about you? What do you remember?

Back when there really was only like 6 girls on the internet. I mean... that became such a cliche in the 90's that not only does the cliche still exist, but it also exists simultaneously as a punchline as well! I can't think of anything else that quite gets that distinction. Except for the "it's not a girl, it's a 43 year old man" cliche. But that was just the other half of the "there's no girls on the internet" cliche.

When the internet was still pretty much nothing but music sharing and porn. Err... I don't know if that's really changed that much. But totally not fast enough then to watch streaming porn. You had to still download your porn.

Back when those AOL cd's might have actually had some use. But by the time they were giving away more free hours in a month than there WERE hours in a month, that's kinda when they kinda lost their meaning.

Fucking Geocities.

So what's your 90's interwubz nostalgia?