Post

The internet café at the British Council library in my uni days sold 15 minute slots...

also going online should still force you to sit through 30 seconds of robot noises just to make sure you really want it and end with the sound of a door slamming when you leave

Never thought I'd agree with that working in digital illustration, but hey, I do!!! hahhaha

Seconded

bring back 56k warnings

Hard disagree! We would never have people in armour trying to fight each other like it was 1400 without Internet videos.

Well it's still too young and niche to have a lot of options but there's always Gemini if that's what you want out of your web.

All I had was stories told by grandfather, who was there. I didn’t see video until a couple years ago.

That video was TOTALLY worth it.

I ran home from work at lunch to start downloading a picture of Nessie so it would be done when I got off at 5

Filled under W for whale because no way nothing else was on that disk

Oh, man. The whole area smelled so foul. What a glorious mess.

So basically hard cap dl speed at 1 mbps and call it a day

Damn hindsight is some shit.

@idark-ihammer.bsky.social

Also, you should have to use dial-up. And you should have to pay hundreds of dollars in long distance fees when the number in your town has too many connections.

This is the best post I’ve read all day 🙂

You know what- you are correct.

The use of the internet should be taxed heavily so only the wealthy can rot their brains.

Oh, how I miss those days of dial-up, no local access phone number, desperately trying to get into the AOL thirty-something chatroom...and BANG!! $800 phone bill.

And the same thing about to happen with AI

Lol

That was a whole nuther internet we waited 5 minutes to hook up to, whilst being serenaded by the dulcet screeches of a 300 baud modem.

for one household

I joke all the time that dial up was like a kind of forced meditation if you had ADHD Can't turn away or you won't come back for 2 hrs, can't leave the internet connected like that bc it's the phone Must Watch For Connection Sign To Look At Fishnet Butts And ... Traumatizing Memes Ofc

Yep. $/min charges unless it was late at night.

A concept proven time and again when I can't think of the right wording for a post, and then think better of it and just stop

30 hours of fiber is not the same as 30 hours of 14 kbps

And at 28.8k baudrates

Depends on what you use the internet for. Streaming TV, playing games, reading books, Wikipedia, news articles, etc are all fine worthy of the internet. Socmed and YouTube radicalization into terrorists are not.

Raise your hand if you remember throwing up after getting a bill for hundreds of dollars after exceeding your hourly limits. ✋

OK but... I mean you could generate cards for continuous free AOL... and visit all the BBSs within a few town's non-long-distance range (thanks, Joliet!), and run your own BBS after your parents go to sleep. Life, uh... finds a way. I wonder what the equivalent of that is in today's terms...

That’s it! It ruined everything 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I still love my AOL.. So much better than Gmail

AND they were the largest distributor of coffee mug coasters ever!

oh so that's what 'chronically online' means

Eisenhower had a 91% tax rate on the wealthiest US citizens right, too.

30h/month at 56kbps speed, making Youtube, Facebook and all sort of fake news sources impaticable.

THIS! 💯

Same 🫠

After 9 pm it's just internet sites from 20 years ago.

Just every night at midnight, national anthem and a picture of a waving flag on our screens, back on the next morning at 7am.

Oh God, don’t give the Nazi’s any ideas 😬😳

what is the test pattern for the internet though

when I was at school one of my teachers mentioned staying up for the first night of round the clock broadcasting

Yeah I've never experienced Teletext

Just have it flick through Teletext for a few hours.

Growing up with BBSes and the early internet taught me the importance of discerning truth from fiction. Critical thinking is essential in today’s digital world. Some people definitely need a time limit—five hours might be a good start—to avoid getting lost in misinformation or endless scrolling.

If you aren't willing to wait seven minutes for a picture of Kathy Ireland in a swimsuit to download, are you really even horny?

Kinda miss being called a nerd for being on the internet. If it still had that social stigma, a lot of ill equipped people wouldn't be corrupted by it today.

And 300 baud. I was hoping faster would be better. Seems I was wrong.

Thank you. I’ll be stealing that!

I do that in a day now 😂

🤣 Yeah good call! That would probably be better.

No, the only right amount of internet per month is ZERO hours, as in the internet does not exist. Anything more is cancerous.

The world would be better if the internet was simply a utility, not a source of entertainment.

you got mail

🤣🤣🤣🤣 true

We never should have left the dialup BBSes.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Dude, That ship sailed long, long ago.

👏👏👏

It sure was!

This…..!!!!!!!

Actually, AOL fully integrating with the Internet turned it into a shit hole. I remember, I was there.

Better than the 30 hours a DAY it feels like I'm doing now...

I'll wager my old AOL account still exists like some sort of mummified version of myself. Thankfully, it's old enough by now to know it'll journey to the internet afterlife without bitcoin on its eyes.

We experienced life without internet we can go back.

Now there’s overconsumption and the spewing of nonsense!

Stanley Milgram: [makes notes] and yet they continue to connect. Interesting.

Thirty? Ha. I was one of the people on the original five-hour plan. I old.

Per MONTH???? It takes two months to download Madonna

Before they went to $19.95/unlimited, people bitched about $600 a month and not being able to get online, after they still bitched, but only paid $19.95. Tech support was fun.

👏👏👏

@simonhalstead.bsky.social

In the early days of Prodigy (I am a former employee) and AOL...the average user was on for about 15-20 minutes per day. The power users were on for a few hours per day - and we thought they were weird....spending their time in bulletin boards/discussion groups on their hobbies, sports, etc.

30 hours of internet time wouldn't last me a day 😔

the 90s was the peak of Civilization.

i saw one of those nostalgia collages on IG the other day and they showed the original AOL login and my chest felt heavy yearning for the before times.

Does my daily 12 hours of internet count as 24 hours if I'm dual screening the whole time?

But dial up though😬

That all changed on December 1, 1996 when they offered unlimited internet access for $19.99. That day was the start of the future and beginning of global brain rot.

I guess most people reach a place where they get mentally stuck in a fixed point of their timeline and new is just not good enough.

For me it’s an ancient beast filled with spam, unwanted emails and notices. I delete them every couple of months.

I read that Silicon Valley parents don't allow their kids to use social media

But NOT 2400 baud modems.

Those things used to blip and beep at me when my nearby cell phone got a text.

I love these ancient web articles. www.cnet.com/tech/service... "The company also will offer a light-usage program providing three hours of AOL per month for $4.95"

Man, I'd rip through that for work. I have to be on 40+ to do my job.

I have regerts…

Right! 😂 Some of these mofos need to have the Wi-Fi privileges revoked!

I want to get off

My parents allowed me half an hour a week and lemme tell you that did not hold up 😂 started sneaking downstairs at night to use it more!

Periodddd

Omg I totally forgot about that

Wait, what? I got in 30 hours just today. 😎

Lmao. Underrated.

I still have my AOL address as my primary. First logged on back in 1995.

That's how long it took to connect.

Texts should come through one of those old ticker-tape machines.

a warning for those who would heed it

And for some lap dog presidents and their unelected supreme leader, that's 31 hours too many.

Paying by the hour wasn't. Lol

It’s been thirty years since I heard anyone talk about pine! wtf (Insert titanic 84 years gif)

1 minute per day, sounds like a reality TV challenge. what would you click first! "Oh no, only 10kb of your 100kb Cheryl Tiegs gif downloaded… try again tomorrow!"

social media is where shit went wrong