25 Things About How The Internet Started That OG’s Will Remember - 1

25 Things About How The Internet Started That OG’s Will Remember

Unlike the tech-savvy Gen Z, Millennials didn’t experience the era of Snapchat, personal smartphones, or 5G connectivity during their childhood. Instead, we navigated the world of chat rooms, shared a single family computer, and dealt with the agonizingly slow dial-up internet. Even though the early days of the internet now seem like ancient history, it’s essential to remember that the World Wide Web itself began in 1989 . Popular platforms like AOL and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) were the talk of the town in the late ’80s, making them more than 30 years old.

Reflecting on the early internet brings to light a plethora of interesting phenomena. Recently, a Redditor prompted a discussion among fellow internet veterans, asking, “What’s something ancient that only an Internet veteran would remember?” It’s a trip down memory lane for those who recall the quirks and novelties of the online world during its formative years.

#1 How about: the sound of dialup??

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#2 Winamp.

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#3 Dancing baby.

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#4 Netscape.

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#5 MSN messenger shaking and ringing a bell when your friends wanted your attention.

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#7 Getting booted off the Internet when someone in the other room picked up the phone.

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#8 Peanut butter jelly time!

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#9 Discussion boards for specific topics. (And not aggregated under the same website like reddit) I have fond memories of these. I met a lot of cool people, some of which I’m still in contact with a good decade and a half later.

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#10 The Napster and Lars Ulrich drama.

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#11 The hit counter on the bottom of webpages that told you how many people visited the page.

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#12 ICanHasCheezburger Its still around, but not the same at all. I can remember my mom and I howling and laughing together. She died twelve years ago and I still think about how much we fun we had with that website.

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#13 Limewire.

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#14 Badger badger badger badger.

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#15 Learning basic HTML to pimp out your MySpace profile

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Bumper stickers on facebook

Uploading a digital camera album of your night out

Leaving moody asf away messages on AIM.

#16 An internet that didn’t have any advertising.

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#17 Getting internet in the mail.

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#18 Having a “computer room”.

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#19 Charlie wake upp, you silly sleep head, wake up. We found a map, a map to candy mountain.

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#20 Flash games.

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#21 AskJeeves.

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#22 Hampsterdance. The ICQ “uh-oh!” noise. Guest books on websites. Sign my guest book!

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#23 –<-@ “Here’s a rose for all the ladies here”. Man, we thought we were so f****n smooth in those chatrooms.

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#24 Instant messenger door opening noise.

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#25 “All your base are belong to us”.

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Shanilou Perera

Shanilou has always loved reading and learning about the world we live in. While she enjoys fictional books and stories just as much, since childhood she was especially fascinated by encyclopaedias and strangely enough, self-help books. As a kid, she spent most of her time consuming as much knowledge as she could get her hands on and could always be found at the library. Now, she still enjoys finding out about all the amazing things that surround us in our day-to-day lives and is blessed to be able to write about them to share with the whole world as a profession.

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50 Christmas Trees Taken To The Next Level

Don’t like fake Christmas trees and think it’s wrong to chop a tree just to keep it in your living room for a few weeks? Turns out anything can become a Christmas tree – you just have to get creative!

From trees made of vegetables, lab flasks and even bacteria – Bored Panda has compiled a list of the most unique improvised Christmas tree ideas and proved a little imagination can go a long way. Check them out in the gallery below!

h/t: Bored Panda

#1 Christmas Tree At A Public Library

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#2 Levitating Christmas Tree

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#3 My Lab Has A New Christmas Tree…

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#4 Made Our Own Christmas Tree Where We Are Deployed

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#5 My Living Succulent Christmas Tree

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#6 My Office Christmas Tree Portal Version

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#7 Two Hand Saws Turned Into Christmas Tree

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#8 This Tree That The Art Center In My Home Town Put Up

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#9 Christmas Tree At Local Sheriff’s Office

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#10 I Work At A Tech Company, This Is Our Christmas Tree

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#11 ‘Green’ Christmas Tree From Recycled Plastic Drinking Bottles

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#12 Our Slightly Different Christmas Tree…

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#13 I Made A Bacterial Christmas Tree In The Lab

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#14 Vegetable Tree

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#15 Really Tall Christmas Tree In Our Neighborhood

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#16 My Family Designed And Made A Gingerbread Christmas Tree. The Numbers Say “Christmas Tree” In Binary

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#17 I Made An IT Christmas Tree Made Of Monitors

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#18 Awesome Stranger Things Inspired Tree

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#19 Festive Christmas Tree Out Of Sandbags

U.S. Marines in Afghanistan built this festive Christmas tree out of sandbags to get in the holiday spirit. Merry Christmas to all of our troops serving during this time

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#20 When You Don’t Agree On How To Decorate A Tree

My wife and I don’t agree on how to decorate a tree. 4 years ago we started this as a joke and it is still going strong

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#21 UFO Christmas Tree

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#22 Who Needs A Traditional Tree When You Have A Ladder

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#23 Instead Of A Christmas Tree, My Wife And I Do This To My Upright Bass

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#24 My Christmas Tree

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#25 No Tree, No Problem

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#26 How To Have A Christmas Tree When You Have Cats

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#27 The Shop Christmas Tree

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#28 Christmas… San Diego Style

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#29 Kirby Sucking Up Our Christmas Tree

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#30 Christmas Tree Goals – Ballet Tree

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#31 I So I Finally Buckled Down And Got A Christmas Tree This Year

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#32 The Tree We Built

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#33 I’m Spending Christmas In Iraq This Year, We Didn’t Have Much But I Still Think We Put Together One Hell Of A Tree

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#34 Set Up A Cat-Proof Tree Tonight

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#35 This Christmas Tree Is Made Out Of Old Woods And Logs And Guess What It Took Just 2 Days For The Person To Built It

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#36 Some Lights And A Bit Of Decorations And You Have Yourself A Wonderful Tree

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#37 Christmas Spirit In Our Lab

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#38 Ugly Christmas Tree Turned Into Oscarmas (And Slimy)

While shopping for a tree this year, my husband and I spotted an ugly misfit – oval shaped, flat on the top with a huge gap in the middle. We were instantly inspired! Meet Oscarmas (and Slimy)

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#39 The Boys And Gals From The Intensive Care Unit Have The Best Tree This Year

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#40 This Prosthetic Tree

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#41 Christmas Tree At A Local Electronics Store Is Lit

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#42 My Wife’s Christmas Tree Alternative

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#43 My Hospitals Pediatric Clinics Tree

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#44 Our Office’s Christmas Tree

No one at work has taken responsibility for decorating the Christmas tree, for the last week it has been propped up in its box waiting. Today, I stepped up to the plate.

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#45 Simple But Stylish Christmas Tree

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#46 We Didn’t Have Room For A Christmas Tree So We Made A Silent Knight!

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#48 It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas In Texas

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#49 My Father Spotted This Christmas Tree In Colmar

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#50 My Roommate Likes Climbing – This Is His Christmas Tree This Year

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Aušrys Uptas

One day, this guy just kind of figured - “I spend most of my time on the internet anyway, why not turn it into a profession?” - and he did! Now he not only gets to browse the latest cat videos and fresh memes every day but also shares them with people all over the world, making sure they stay up to date with everything that’s trending on the web. Some things that always pique his interest are old technologies, literature and all sorts of odd vintage goodness. So if you find something that’s too bizarre not to share, make sure to hit him up!