Discussion What do you miss about the “old” internet?

[TheRiverStyz]

I miss the old Google algorithm, the one that actually showed the results based on relevance and not how much the website has paid to be at the top of the search results.

I miss torrenting.

I miss not having to make an account or using Facebook/Google to access every website (I'm looking at you, Pinterest).

I miss MySpace and the friends I made on there. It's hard to make friends on Facebook.

Most importantly, I miss being able to look at porn on Tumblr.

 

[TheRiverStyz]

Oh my god. I just realized I accidentally somehow managed to attach some random memes I copied before posting on here?! How do I get rid of it. :/

 

[stellabelle]

Oh my god. I just realized I accidentally somehow managed to attach some random memes I copied before posting on here?! How do I get rid of it. :/

Message a mod

 

[Broken]

The dial up tone!

 

[stellabelle]

The dial up tone!

Haha omg aol

 

[Wolfjob_dayjob]

I miss old neopets and Gaia and my runescape friends- yahoo chats with a stable bunch of 14-17 year olds just bullshitting about all our interests but having one thing in common- we loved chatting. The rush of fucking around a couple at a time in chat rooms with someone going "ASL?" And seeing "ey this a creep or another kid like us invite him to our chat lol"

Even if they brought stuff back it's boring and the culture has changed- just omegle a to watch exhibitionistsbe weird-I guess discord

 

[TheGoodGuy]

I miss MSN writing with many people and web video chat with them I did that SO much back then I even have downloaded a few videos showing the sounds and stuff on MSN just for nostalgia it was such a great thing I like how simple everything was back there were only a few things to do on there so it wasn´t complicated nowadays everything is so complicated it´s insane I don´t understand all this modern technology.

Arto (it was a Danish HTLM forum like myspace where you could customize your own profile and stuff like that)
Hundeparken (the dog park) a chat forum where where you were a dog and could achieve a new rank which would unlock stuff and you could buy things in their like gladiator helmets for your dog character you paid with bones you could get by digging them up this was the innocent times of 2007-2008 so no real money was involved like it is with everything today.

Adventure Quest Battleon I spend so many hours playing that game as a child

I miss how innocent the old internet was no adds are generic youtubers doing the same shit just to get famous and live off of it, I miss how little you could actually do on the internet because it also made games so much harder like if you were stuck in a mission in a campaign game (like most games were back then) you might be stuck in the same mission for days you couldn´t just google or youtube how to get out of it, I remember having so much trouble with many things in Pokemon Silver gen 2.

I miss how simple it was to manage nowadays it seems you have to almost have an minor education in IT to understand the basics of the internet.

I also miss all the free shitty games we could play some would become very popular here is a couple I remember was very awesome





A location from Hundeparken DK back in 2007

This was how to pay for items like hats playing this side game to get bones to use a currency.

One of the shops with some items hehe so many memories.

"Visdoms Bjerget" or in english the mountain of wisdom it was a place you could visit to rank up by answering some questions right in a quiz you couldn´t do this every day you would have to wait a day if I remember correctly.

 

[iiii5555]

I also miss all the free shitty games we could play some would become very popular here is a couple I remember was very awesome

View attachment 7462 View attachment 7463

Madness <3 <3 <3

 

[Othermind]

A location from Hundeparken DK back in 2007

Why is it in Swedish, then?

 

[TheGoodGuy]

Why is it in Swedish, then?

There were both a Swedish and Danish Hundeparken I actually didn´t even see it before you mentioned it the Danish Hundeparken looked exactly the same.

 

[iiii5555]

I miss Orkut which predated MySpace but was never a success in the USA. It was big in Brazil and I had just become genuinely fluent in Portuguese. There were all sorts of wars going on as well as fairly peaceful supportive communities. It was a very big world. I learned never to ever assume that the American I thought I was "talking with" was actually an American and not a Brazilian. They never believed I wasn't a Brazilian: 'Because Americans never learn Portuguese".Some Brazilians living in my state knew that I was an American because we talked about things only a resident would know.. I never tried to hide it. I never changed my name. They just assumed it was fake, likely because some Brazilians fluent in English took on American identities and the prior reason cited. Besides Brazilians I made friends in the small American community and with with people from Pakistan and India. I have one "friend' left from those days, an American who is on Facebook.
I had a few nice friends on MySpace.
There was always constant battles going on no matter what platform I used or where the person was from. And the brawling fostered a closeness with people on your side so you felt you belonged to something.

Orkut reminds me of being lonely and having others using me as a laughing stock. Such is life, i guess.

 

[Othermind]

There were both a Swedish and Danish Hundeparken I actually didn´t even see it before you mentioned it the Danish Hundeparken looked exactly the same.

Well "red" would have been spelled with the barred "o" in Danish (and Norwegian, too, I think) right?
I just know a little bit of Swedish and it caught my eye.

 

[TheGoodGuy]

Well "red" would have been spelled with the barred "o" in Danish (and Norwegian, too, I think) right?
I just know a little bit of Swedish and it caught my eye.

That is right red in danish is "rød"

 

[Othermind]

That is right red in danish is "rød"

Just out of curiosity, how do you call that letter? Or the "a" with the ball on top that isn't just an "o" beacause reasons?

 

[TheGoodGuy]

Just out of curiosity, how do you call that letter? Or the "a" with the ball on top that isn't just an "o" beacause reasons?

lol I really don´t know how to explain that I just tried finding english words with the same sound but I can´t find any hehe.

 

[Othermind]

lol I really don´t know how to explain that I just tried finding english words with the same sound but I can´t find any hehe.

Don't worry, I read the wikipedia page.

 

[faex42]

Orkut reminds me of being lonely and having others using me as a laughing stock. Such is life, i guess.

I saw many people who were set up for humiliation by phony communities on Orkut. The community "Two Many Brazilians on Orkut" had one American and the rest were Brazilians with impeccable English. They would wait until an angry Brazilian came to protest and would look through his or her profile and do everything they could to embarrass them. What they couldn't find they'd invent. I would contact the victim privately and tell her or him they had been set up. It helped them recover their emotional balance. I liked to defend people who didn't fit who were being bullied. I often was then attacked. My personal financial and employment data was released by an American supervisor of a credit agency to an American community. People were outraged and wanted me to turn him in. He had foolishly gone so far as to leave the name of his company. I knew he was acting out rage because I had interfered with his bullying of others. I guess I didn't want to see him lose his job or go to prison. People knew my financial status and employment status were pretty grim.
But there times when there were some many people in group acting my page almost 24/7 despite being to block many of them that I became overwhelmed and deleted the account and waited until things calmed down before I returned..
So Orkut could be a very cruel world indeed.

 

[TheGoodGuy]

It´s so annoying that you need permission to enter so many sites nowadays just trying to enter a News website from abroad and it can´t be shown in your country or News websites I use to look at 14 years ago I now can´t because I need a paid subscription; this is most likely because actual news papers don´t sell anymore so they have to make money other ways. But back in the day I could scour the News websites or any website without having to pay for subscription.

Also all the sites asking for permission not just cookies but like an agreement to enter the site it´s so fucking annoying everything on the internet seems so bureaucratic today where you have to give your consent to visit any site at all.

Something I also miss is on google I used to be able to click on a picture and then show the picture now that option isn´t there anymore I have to visit the website and find it in there to view it. But in general the internet just used to be so simple it seems the further into the future we go everything becomes more and more complicated, life used to be hard but simple back thousands of years ago but now you have to be an expert in about everything especially technology and if you don´t try and keep up a little bit with technological advances you are fucked.

 

[TheGoodGuy]

On the old internet there also werent ads on every video, nowadays people make off of every fucking thing.

 

[Pulpit2018]

Also all the sites asking for permission not just cookies but like an agreement to enter the site it´s so fucking annoying everything on the internet seems so bureaucratic today where you have to give your consent to visit any site at all.

This is so f*ing annoying.But the reasons is the Internet was never designed with the protection of the user in mind.
Web page creators could monitor so many things and do so many things that they should not have been able to do.The default was to allow everything and gather all the data.
The user 's privacy took a backseat.Now that users want more privacy and options,sites are forced to have options and opt-outs (GPDR is an example.It creates as many problems as it solves),and that costs time.
We need a redesign of Internet to have only opt-ins for ads and data.
Unfortunately at the moment,its up to the user to guard for himself.Its not safe out there.

 

[kkatt]

I miss when nearly all content was FREE
Usenet groups like ASH and ASM were unmoderated which has both positives and negatives
To SS Mods,you're very unique people. It's one of the hardest positions I can imagine online. Well done for providing this space.

 

[waived]

When memes were clever and funny.

 

[TheHatedOne]

i miss yahoo messenger, i miss stumble upon, i miss the old in browser MMOs, i miss the chatrooms under the xat . com platform, i miss the old Hi5, and definitely I miss when people were atually more nicer to each other.

 

[BrokenBliss]

I miss being able to click on a link to read an interesting article without being interrupted by a screen-covering pop-up ad two sentences in. That's just obnoxious and makes me hate your webste.

 

[lostautist]

To me, old-internet means before WWW... when I'd log into a shell account and use telnet, gopher and usenet. Or dial up BBSes. Then everything from Mosaic to the time AOL gave everone access. Then pre Google / Facebook times. Everything up to this point was pretty amazing. C-Net was 'big tech' lol. I miss all my messenger buddies and that whole bygone era.

i miss stumble upon

Oh hi. I was a relatively high profile user there.

 

[BrokenBliss]

I also miss, maybe just a little bit, the days before Amazon figured out how to add taxes to purchases, tho I really can't fault anybody on that one.

 

[TheHatedOne]

To me, old-internet means before WWW... when I'd log into a shell account and use telnet, gopher and usenet. Or dial up BBSes. Then everything from Mosaic to the time AOL gave everone access. Then pre Google / Facebook times. Everything up to this point was pretty amazing. C-Net was 'big tech' lol. I miss all my messenger buddies and that whole bygone era.


Oh hi. I was a relatively high profile user there.

i discoveredf so many things there and so many cool songs (forgot most of them; only two I remember) it was so wonderful and spent lots of time on there. arghh i want to cry in a corner, look how things are now. everything's sinking.

 

[lostautist]

i discoveredf so many things there and so many cool songs (forgot most of them; only two I remember) it was so wonderful and spent lots of time on there. arghh i want to cry in a corner, look how things are now. everything's sinking.

Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I had a great photoblog. Did you ever do any blogging there?

 

[Mr2005]

That it hadn't taken over the world. Tbh I hardly used it which is now a massive regret. It was reserved for geeks not mainstream like it is now and other than porn I didn't know what it offered. Covids made it quite clear although I feel like everyone else already knew and I was left out of the loop

 

[TheHatedOne]

Yeah, it was pretty amazing. I had a great photoblog. Did you ever do any blogging there?

not really. just browsed sites. i'd foind interestin science articles, creepy ass photos, cool radios with cool songs and thar's about all i remember.