What Internet Relic From The 90s And Early 2000s Do You Miss The Most?
Ah, Internet 1.0. There was nothing like it. It helped turn us into who we are now. We were talking about it on No Quitters (rate/review/subscribe) earlier this week as we ran through some of the classics, our screen names and how we really need AIM back in our lives.
So yeah, this is a classic Internet blog. I'm talking pre-Facebook. I'm talking things we were so taken away by in our young lives that we still talk about it in our 30s. But the question is what Internet relic do you miss the most?
Limewire/Kazaa/Napster
Gonna put all these in one category but you only get one. Oh and don't get me wrong there was something special about each of them. Napster was the first and then ruined the Internet. Limewire and Kazaa, those two were special. Those were the porn + music. You'd start downloading a video before school and come back and bam, porn plus a whole mixed CD. There was nothing like it.
Speaking of which:
Burned CDs
By the way my go-to burned CD mix back in the day:
1. Notorious Thugs – B.I.G./Bone Thugz
2. The Middle – Jimmy Eat World
3. Big Pimpin – Jay-Z
4. Family Business – Kanye
5. Raise Up – Petey Pablo
6. Breathe – Fabolous
7. Mesmerize – Ja Rule/Ashanti
8. Konstantine – Something Corporate
9. Damnit – Blink 182
10. Get Your Roll On – Big Tymers
11. Hey Ma – Cam’ron
12. B.O.B – Outkast
And yeah I know we have Spotify and Sirius and YouTube today. But this is about Internet relics. There was something awesome about just slapping in the CD instead of hitting play on your phone. There was something special about not knowing what your buddy put on there to drive to the beach. It was a masterpiece in figuring out the perfect 12ish songs to throw on there and making sure it was nothing but fire.
Winamp
Youngsters reading this probably have no idea about Winamp. This was what you played your downloaded music and videos on. Not only that but there were sweet things to put in there. You could have waves, there was a dancing guy.
AIM
Man, this is something we could still use today. Yes, there's Gchat and I love Gchat. But AIM was the original mix of Twitter and Gchat. You had to be creative with your screen name, profile and away messages. You couldn't miss on those or you were a nerd. You had to come up with the profile that made people laugh. But then internally you had the different sounds that you wanted for when people came and left. You had to play the game of sending an IM to your crush at the right time. Couldn't wait too long, couldn't be too quick on the trigger.
AOL Chat Rooms
If you know, you know.
MySpace
Before Facebook, before Twitter, there was MySpace. And let me tell you something, if you didn't have a fight about a top-8, you didn't grow up with a computer. But beyond the top-8 there was so much more that made it perfect. You had the music on your profile. You had the graphics. It was the first time Also that asshole Tom was just always looking at you. He was so famous before he sold to FaceBook.
Oregon Trail
The ultimate computer game. Yeah, you can find ways to play it today, but not like back in the day. Not when you had a disk to put in. I remember being in elementary school (shout out St. Rose) and having a floppy disk where to play with it. Similar to MySpace, if you played this in a computer room in elementary school you better have been in your buddy's group and vice versa.
My favorite video from Internet 1.0
What did I miss? What do you miss the most?