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Growing up before the internet age

AJUMP23

Gold Member
When people say merry go round, I assume they mean the large types at theme parks/carnivals/fairs/zoos, you know with fake horses and such you sit on as it spins in circles.

So yes, due to the vague phrasing, I was having the visual image of you and your friends running around on one of those trying to make OTHER people fall off. Sounded vaguely psychotic, but now that you’ve cleared it up, sounds legit.
Fran Healy Reaction GIF by Travis


One of these.
 
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh erm I hate to be the contrarian in all this but life before the internet just really sucked balls big time, I will be 52 years of age this year so I am well versed in what life used to be like before the internet. Everything was just so much god damn work before the internet, In the days before the internet if you wanted free porn you had to hope that someones wife nearby had found their husbands porn collection and forced him to dump it in the woods. Thanks to the internet there is a whole world of deviancy to feast upon now from the comfort of my own arm chair with tissue holder.

I was just thinking about this the other day. In the old days if I got a job interview somwhere I would have to whip out the old AtoZ map book to try and find the damn place then figure out local transport links I could use to get there. Now I just type the damn address in and google maps will even let me see the entire area in glorious colour as if I was there. If I had a question like "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" I would have to spend hours in a damn cold uncomfortable library searching through dozens of books to get an outdated answer to the question from a book that was printed in the 1970's and had a photo of a guy with a very "1970's porn beard" on the cover. Now thanks to the internet I get the answer instantly which is "stop watching so much Monty python you sad twat".

Entertainment wise life before the internet was hell, especially in the UK. All we had access to was 4 channels usually the shows were BBC1 showing advanced pottery making of bronze age dudes with 70's porn beards. Then there was BBC 2 which was showing advanced pottery making of Iron age dudes with 70's porn beards. Then there was ITV which was nothing but shitty talent shows mainly with men sporting 70's porn beards which left Channel 4 which was basically shows like "what if bronze age dudes got it on with iron age dudes and did talented things with each others anus using pottery whilst wearing 70's style porn beards". With the internet I have access to literally nearly all the worlds entertainment and not a 70's style porn beard in sight .......... well unless i go to pornhub and want to relive the good old days.

Even mundane shit like shopping has been vastly improved. I remember dragging my arse all the way into town to get a new walkman only to leave empty handed because none of the electrical shops (all 1 of them) had any in stock. Now I can just check on amazon and get 40,000 pages of choices for the item I want to buy and if I can summon up the strength to be arsed to find something in those 40,000 pages it will be delivered straight to my front door.

Yup I love the internet and would probably be the first to hurl myself off a bridge if the internet died. The funny thing is when I first started using the internet I was quite the sceptic about it. Now I love it and couldn't live without it. Though I will concede that since big business has wormed it's way in, the internet has lost some of it's "wild whacky persona".
 

nush

Member
Entertainment wise life before the internet was hell, especially in the UK. All we had access to was 4 channels usually the shows were BBC1 showing advanced pottery making of bronze age dudes with 70's porn beards. Then there was BBC 2 which was showing advanced pottery making of Iron age dudes with 70's porn beards. Then there was ITV which was nothing but shitty talent shows mainly with men sporting 70's porn beards which left Channel 4 which was basically shows like "what if bronze age dudes got it on with iron age dudes and did talented things with each others anus using pottery whilst wearing 70's style porn beards". With the internet I have access to literally nearly all the worlds entertainment and not a 70's style porn beard in sight .......... well unless i go to pornhub and want to relive the good old days.

You appear to have lived in an alternate reality of British TV broadcasting. BBC2 comparatively edgy and youth content compared to BBC1. ITV well everything was hung on Corrie but they did have a decent movie selection, ITV cut of Robocop is the stuff of legend and Mr Bean. Game for a Laugh, YO we totally trolled you every week for laughs, sorry about demolishing your house LULZ. No wait, Sunday Night at the Paliadium was solid entertainment. Channel 4, way more edgy that BBC2 home to Eurotrash and foreign films you were almost guaranteed to see at least some boobs in.
 
i miss it. i've been hooked on the internet for ~24 years but the last few years i've felt exhausted by it and find myself withdrawing more and more. i've ditched all social media such as fb/ig/tiktok and while i do have a reddit and twitter i stopped posting on them a few years ago.

i'm trying to go back to a life like i had until the late 90's and i guess to some extent early 00's.

i've considered ditching my smartphone but don't think i can do it completely but sometimes i'll delete shit like news stuff and my reddit/twitter so i'm not constantly scrolling negative shit. i even got a cheap phone so i sometimes stick my sim card in it and all i can use it for is calls and texts.

i try to spend more time outside now. it's not like i never went out but it's good to spend as much time around people and in nature as you can.

i'm just trying to slow my life down and live in the moment instead of being constantly connected and up to date. while i do it because it's something i miss i think everyone should give it a try. leave your phone at home or buy a cheap basic phone. try not read the news every day. meet up with friends and family more instead of messaging/video calling them. go somewhere for the day without anyone knowing where you are. enjoy a meal without posting it online.
 

G-Bus

Banned
Was born in 87 so enjoyed it for my childhood.

Miss them days honestly. Memorized so many phone numbers.

Having specific spots to meet up and sometimes you'd wait for a good hour or two wondering where the hell they were.

Hearing your parents are looking for you was usually never a good thing.

So many summer days biking around looking for shit to do. Being bored was just part of it all.

Tracking on the VHS player. Actually missing tv shows/episodes, that always sucked. Hope for a re run. Remember those tv guides my mom would pick up weekly at the grocery store.
 

Durien

Member
My brothers and I looked forward to going to the mall arcade just to see if anything new came out. We were into wwf back then and playing the wwf games. I could have put myself through college for the amount of coins I put into the wwf games and Cadash. I also love pinball games and would almost rather play a pinball game now than a video game.
 

Madflavor

Member
I'm 34 and I guess it kinda depends.

To me the internet was fucking perfect when it was mainly used to get info, communicate with people, hop on forums, do research, that sort of thing. I remember the days of Newgrounds, StickDeath, and Gamefaqs. Good times. But eventually the technology reached a certain point where things started to become too convenient. Smartphones became a thing, streaming became a thing, and social media started really taking off and fucked up our culture and mental health. Yeah being able to look up a film and stream it whenever you want is convenient, but it's caused us to take the little things for granted. Like when you stream a movie you're more likely to just skip around to the parts you liked. But back in the day if you wanted to watch a movie, you'd go to the video store. The smell of popcorn filled the air, you got to look at all the cool VHS/DVD covers in the different genre sections, then you'd rent it. And when you watched it back home, you were committed to the film until it was over. Was it as fast or convenient as streaming? No, but it felt more special.

Also there's the part about how our society and economy literally relies on the internet to survive, and if we ever lost the internet due to a catastrophic event or attack, we would be looking at total economic and societal collapse. So there's a fun thought.
 
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Happosai

Hold onto your panties
I guess most people are probably too young to understand what im talking about.

But for those of us who grew up in a world without the internet, without Youtube or Amazon or Google, it was a magical place back then. Walking into an arcade to see a new game you never heard of. Finding a new book in a book store. Picking up a new comic book. Reading about video games in magazines and having to imagine how they look and play. Opening a newspaper and finding out theres a cool movie playing in your local theater.

I guess ill end this rant before it gets too long...but i think you old guys like me...u guys get it...the world was full of mystery and excitement back then, waiting for you to explore and discover.
It was nice finding international items on video or game merchandising via mail order only on a postcard. Never knew the tracking or ETA just waited sometimes months and it made receiving that media something unique and not boring and routine. No streaming movies so it was rental, blank VHS to record from TV or buy the video for $30 or $80 + on select titles if we're talking 80's.
 

Lasha

Member
The best period of the internet was early 2000s. Internet adoption reached the point that everybody had it at home but not to the point that the internet permeated every possible living space. One had the benefits of using the internet without the internet completely warping culture. I think that the blame lays on smartphones rather than just the internet. Smartphones are leading the charge towards post literacy and they are engineered to destroy attention spans. I would toss my smartphone in the garbage if I were not contractually obligated to carry it.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The best period of the internet was early 2000s. Internet adoption reached the point that everybody had it at home but not to the point that the internet permeated every possible living space. One had the benefits of using the internet without the internet completely warping culture. I think that the blame lays on smartphones rather than just the internet. Smartphones are leading the charge towards post literacy and they are engineered to destroy attention spans. I would toss my smartphone in the garbage if I were not contractually obligated to carry it.
Ya. My first big foray into online gaming was playing Unreal 20 years ago. I bought the Special Edition or GOTY Edition (the one with the red cover). I was a super average player and those ping times were bad back then, but it was incredible typing in a random player tag, playing online and the game a shit load of maps too many to count. I didnt even do headset gaming back then. I'd just type my comments to troll. Great times.
 
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Lasha

Member
Ya. My first big foray into online gaming was playing Unreal 20 years ago. I bought the Special Edition or GOTY Edition (the one with the red cover). I was a super average player and those ping times were bad back then, but it was incredible typing in a random player tag, playing online and the game a shit load of maps too many to count. I didnt even do headset gaming back then. I'd just type my comments to troll. Great times.

The community aspect of games is something that I sorely miss. Finding a good server or clan and developing rivalries within the group was great. SBMM makes matches fairer but it also shows how shallow most competitive games are.
 
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh erm I hate to be the contrarian in all this but life before the internet just really sucked balls big time, I will be 52 years of age this year so I am well versed in what life used to be like before the internet. Everything was just so much god damn work before the internet, In the days before the internet if you wanted free porn you had to hope that someones wife nearby had found their husbands porn collection and forced him to dump it in the woods. Thanks to the internet there is a whole world of deviancy to feast upon now from the comfort of my own arm chair with tissue holder.

I was just thinking about this the other day. In the old days if I got a job interview somwhere I would have to whip out the old AtoZ map book to try and find the damn place then figure out local transport links I could use to get there. Now I just type the damn address in and google maps will even let me see the entire area in glorious colour as if I was there. If I had a question like "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" I would have to spend hours in a damn cold uncomfortable library searching through dozens of books to get an outdated answer to the question from a book that was printed in the 1970's and had a photo of a guy with a very "1970's porn beard" on the cover. Now thanks to the internet I get the answer instantly which is "stop watching so much Monty python you sad twat".

Entertainment wise life before the internet was hell, especially in the UK. All we had access to was 4 channels usually the shows were BBC1 showing advanced pottery making of bronze age dudes with 70's porn beards. Then there was BBC 2 which was showing advanced pottery making of Iron age dudes with 70's porn beards. Then there was ITV which was nothing but shitty talent shows mainly with men sporting 70's porn beards which left Channel 4 which was basically shows like "what if bronze age dudes got it on with iron age dudes and did talented things with each others anus using pottery whilst wearing 70's style porn beards". With the internet I have access to literally nearly all the worlds entertainment and not a 70's style porn beard in sight .......... well unless i go to pornhub and want to relive the good old days.

Even mundane shit like shopping has been vastly improved. I remember dragging my arse all the way into town to get a new walkman only to leave empty handed because none of the electrical shops (all 1 of them) had any in stock. Now I can just check on amazon and get 40,000 pages of choices for the item I want to buy and if I can summon up the strength to be arsed to find something in those 40,000 pages it will be delivered straight to my front door.

Yup I love the internet and would probably be the first to hurl myself off a bridge if the internet died. The funny thing is when I first started using the internet I was quite the sceptic about it. Now I love it and couldn't live without it. Though I will concede that since big business has wormed it's way in, the internet has lost some of it's "wild whacky persona".

The thread is open in a GAMING section so talking about life before internet GAMING wise. Nobody here said it sucks that you can order a bottle of milk online and get it delivered in 30 minutes to your house thanks to the internet. Who the hell is talking about limited TV programs......Nobody is saying internet sucks, we are discussing how we used to consume games and information about them at that time and how people played more in-person. Read the OP, you went balls out off topic lol.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
The community aspect of games is something that I sorely miss. Finding a good server or clan and developing rivalries within the group was great. SBMM makes matches fairer but it also shows how shallow most competitive games are.
I dont even mind SBMM at its core. For me, the downside is it bogs down the lobby and you play with different players every match. I dont understand why game makers dont tune SBMM algorithms to take in effect maybe once every 50 matches (I made up a number). Or just adjust a player's SBMM matchups once per day or once per week. This keeps lobbies in tact for good gaming sessions. It cant be that hard to do.
 
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhh erm I hate to be the contrarian in all this but life before the internet just really sucked balls big time, I will be 52 years of age this year so I am well versed in what life used to be like before the internet. Everything was just so much god damn work before the internet,
I think it’s because you missed that golden period just before the internet started. No doubt life is easier now but some things really were better before. There is also nostalgia involved but there were magic in the discovery of things and seeing the evolution of media, games, entertainment in general, especially in the early 90s.
 

Lasha

Member
I dont even mind SBMM at its core. For me, the downside is it bogs down the lobby and you play with different players every match. I dont understand why game makers dont tune SBMM algorithms to take in effect maybe once every 50 matches (I made up a number). Or just adjust a player's SBMM matchups once per day or once per week. This keeps lobbies in tact for good gaming sessions. It cant be that hard to do.
SBMM needs you to play with randos for the rating to have any meaning. If you win a game on a team of 5 players then you may have been carried. If you win 100 games in a row on 100 random teams then its probably safe to assume that you hold a certain amount of responsibility for your wins. Systems move you around into bands until you win as close to half of your games as possible. The biggest drawback is that it doesn't really teach you to play the game since you need to adopt strategies based on your current set of teammates. Its partly why I seldom play competitively with randos anymore.
 

supernova8

Banned
I'm 32 and I definitely fit into this pre-internet age. OK sure we technically had internet by the time I was like 8 or 9 but it was that absolutely useless dial-up stuff with which you couldn't do a whole lot.

My favorite things about the pre-internet (or rather widespread, fast internet):

1) Not having the constant feeling of information stimulus overload that we have today, and thus having a much better attention span for any one individual thing
2) Being able to go out to play football in the park with my friends and come home as it started going dark (we obviously didn't have mobile phones)
3) Video game rental shops - I used to love going there. We also never bought games (my parents rightly said that we would get bored of them so what's the point, just rent). Means we got to try so many different games.
4) Regular video game shops being the best/cheapest place to get games and hardware (we had a local independent seller who used to sell as if he was drug dealers "oh yeah got a couple of those in the back... usually 20 quid but for you 16 quid what do you think".
5) Getting most of my information from video game magazines
6) Video game magazine demo discs!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

supernova8

Banned
All porn in the UK was softcore, no boners, penetration or cumshots. If you wanted to see anything real it would usually be a 10th generation VHS copy of German porn "Fick mine". I could not believe that uncensored porn on the internet was allowed back in the day. Click on a low res thumbnail and wait for it to load in line by line and hopefully it would be something you could fap too if not, start all over again. It's incredible that The Hun and Greenguy are still active websites.

Yeah first uncensored vag I saw was in a magazine poorly hidden by one of my older brothers. It was like "oh thaaats what it looks like". The softcore porn always showed a bit of vag fluff but never the main event, as you say.

Also I totally know what you mean in terms of seeing in-motion uncensored porn for the first time. Mine was also German. Plus it had anal. I didn't even know there was such thing as anal at the time (I was like 13 so..).
 
I was more Atari era but around 12+ don’t remember well we had neo geo, Sega , master system, Nintendo. We used to go to a store to play by the hour , not arcade. You have couple of chairs a tv and the console.

Some times when my mom went shopping she used to sit me there to play 😂. Earth 🌍 was also more safe, she used to take a kid from the street give him some food and ask to look for me or play together (yes, we had plenty of kids walking around no school , parents or food)

My older brother used to run to the kitchen make sandwiches for them every time he saw one passing by. It was safe but also, so poor.
 
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TylerD

Member
Who remembers the days of recording shows with a video tape

We had what was known as "cow cable" which was delivered to us via receiver on a 50ft antenna next to our house that allowed us to receive all the local channels and something like 30 cable channels including glorious Cinemax and HBO. My parents had a code lock on those channels that my brother and I got around by one of us hiding behind the recliner in the TV room while the other had our mom enter in a code to unlock something we saw we wanted to watch in TV guide during the day. The one hiding behind the recliner would see the code being entered on the cable box muahahaha!

I ended up with a full VHS of nothing but softcore porn scenes that I made by recording scenes in the middle of the night being super sneaky somehow with a loud ass VCR and rewinding and stopping and queuing the tape up for the next scene. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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GeekyDad

Member
... it was a magical place back then. ...
Not for me...

It was challenging as f***... Probably more so than today. Of course, we (society) seem to be moving back into a similar place as I remember in the 70s. And that scares me.

There were magical moments, but day to day was pretty scary. Too scary to be oblivious to the concerns of the adults around me. My brother and I would hide behind the couch when we were supposed to be in bed, watching our mother and older sister watch the news, seeing stuff about lines of cars wrapped around the block waiting to gas up (and seeing it firsthand on the way to the Food Spot for our weekly candy bar). It became so commonplace that after a while people just ignored it. Going to thrift stores to buy things because prices at regular stores were just out of reach for us. Cutting coupons for my mother as a regular chore.

But yeah, Zaxxon released around that time, as did Donkey Kong. The arcades were pretty freakin' awesome. Model cars and airplanes were big. I was addicted to collecting Micronauts. Close-knit family (my mother and five kids, I was the youngest), always fiercely looking out for one another. There was magic (blessings -- much to be thankful for). But also equal amounts of fear and uncertainty.
 

tommolb

Member
I'm 47, so remember from about 82 onwards. Those were the days. Gaming magazines were fantastic as they were the only source of news, -there were shelves full of them for every format and they had hundreds of pages unlike the thin weedy couple of magazines that still exist today. I'd spent hours in computer game stores looking at games, peripherals, different systems etc. while the stores today seem to not have that much in them. It helped that back in those days the gaming platforms were far more diverse. Games across the formats could play differently and look different, while nowadays the same game looks and plays the same across the 4 key formats.

I'd echo what other folks have said about less exposure to idiots and politics etc. I think the rot started with 24 hour News channels, which became 24 hour doom loops of depression with constant rolling coverage of war, famine and death. Social media has given a platform to idiots. I avoid both now and my mental health is better for it.

I'd hate to be a child growing up today with a mobile phone. Schoolyard bullies able to taunt and bully via social media 24x7, while back in my day once you were out of school, the weekends and school holidays you were free of them (unless you bumped into them in the street).
 

nush

Member
I think the rot started with 24 hour News channels, which became 24 hour doom loops of depression with constant rolling coverage of war, famine and death.

and that's why in the early 2000's I stopped watching 24 hour rolling news even as background noise. My life outlook became noticeably more positive after that.
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Glad most of my hard-core raving and shesh moments, were all pre camera phone, and social media to post said pictures on...........

Also parents not wanting you home before dark, to stay out and play in the woods.

Using phone boxes to ring girls

Smacks and sweets still having all the E numbers and therefore flavour

Going to blockbuster

£10 of weed still being 1.8g

Fuel was below 99p a litre

No game patches, if it released fucked, it stayed that way 🤣
Block buster on a Friday night was something else. If the movie wasn’t in stock. It was either your plan B if you had one or it was either a random choice by a sibling or not f the person behind the counter was cool they would suggest a movie. Top it off with some snacks.

That block buster popcorn and carpet smell is seared into my memory. I did also work there for about a year I want to say.

Wasn’t the best but being able to take movies home to watch for free was a bonus. That and being able to have all the free out of date snacks and drinks you want lol.
 

nush

Member
I did also work there for about a year I want to say.

Wasn’t the best but being able to take movies home to watch for free was a bonus. That and being able to have all the free out of date snacks and drinks you want lol.

I did it for a few months, the best way to find movies was to look through the shelves in the back. Most classic or cult movies had their boxes stolen especially after the movie have been shown on TV. I'd hide tapes of a movie I wanted so it was pristine when it hit sell out time. I worked in one of the small high street stores, the manager she never ever wanted to work a close. I could steal whatever I wanted. There was no chance of loss prevention camping out at 10:30 at night by the door. easy job, shit pay, great benefits for the shifty.
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
I did it for a few months, the best way to find movies was to look through the shelves in the back. Most classic or cult movies had their boxes stolen especially after the movie have been shown on TV. I'd hide tapes of a movie I wanted so it was pristine when it hit sell out time. I worked in one of the small high street stores, the manager she never ever wanted to work a close. I could steal whatever I wanted. There was no chance of loss prevention camping out at 10:30 at night by the door. easy job, shit pay, great benefits for the shifty.
Hahahah no offence you sound like someone that used to work on shift with me. He took a shed load of tapes they threatened to call the police on him and suddenly seven missing tapes appeared. Also my manager never wanted to close so they put me on it. You weren’t working in a south east london store by any chance ?
 

nush

Member
You weren’t working in a south east london store by any chance ?

Just down south. I'm sure I was not alone seeing how open that place was for the taking free tapes don't pay the rent and Ebay didn't exist then. I'd have made fucking bank if it did and would have camped out at that job.
 

Mobilemofo

Member
Fortunately, I lived in Blackpool, so when the latest shit come out, we headed to hmv usually, for some sort of special preview. I'd then head to wh smiths and butly my usual rounds of gaming magazines, before reading them cover to cover, and taking everything in. Teletext (digitiser) use to have some mad gaming pages😄
 

Cyberpunkd

Member
I think the rot started with 24 hour News channels, which became 24 hour doom loops of depression with constant rolling coverage of war, famine and death. Social media has given a platform to idiots. I avoid both now and my mental health is better for it.
This. News companies realized just reporting of things with no input or opinion is much easier and less expensive than producing quality programming. Also doom and gloom makes people engaged much better than happy things.
 

JCK75

Member
My family was poor in the 80's.. I remember on a vacation (which was really a work trip my dad had to take for training so us being in a shitty city was a vacation at the companies expense) the hotel had an arcade and I saw Gauntlet for the first time, I was not able to play but watched some other kid play it for like an hour and I was obsessed with it.

I had a TRS-80 Color Computer 3 I had purchased myself as well as the 512mb memory upgrade kit from doing roofing with my dad on weekends for money, and I saw in Rainbow magazine(the official TRS-80 magazine at the time) that there was a game called Gantlet, which was just Gauntlet made unofficially for the platform.. my birthday was coming up in a month or two and all I wanted was Gantlet, so I told my dad I'd do work to earn it and I ended up shoveling manuer for two weeks..

My birthday came - There was a present shaped exactly like a TRS-80 game box! I opened it..
it was Biosphere - An Educational game

Turns out there was no way to order Gantlet without a credit card and my dad did not have one.. he tried everything he could to get the game for me but it just was not possible.
 

Trunx81

Member
- Video Game magazines, the only thing preventing you to buy a shitty game because you liked the cover
- The smell of the Kiosk which sold the magazines (you know EXACTLY which smell)
- The night before Jurassic Park came out. I was 12 and feared it would be only shown for people over 16 years. I even DREAMED of it. Then opening the newspaper in the morning at the center where the cinema times were printed and seeing a FSK12 info - I was sooo happy!
- Again JP: When my dad got a copy on VHS of that movie from a colleague who’s been to India for holiday. Watching the tape and wondering why it’s a) so dark b) the sound’s so bad until c) some people stand up and walk in front of the screen. First time I’ve seen a cinema rip in my life!
- And, as many stated before: Going outside. “Till the street lights go on”. That was the sign to go home. And god have mercy if you’ve been at a friends house and missed this. Your parents would scold (and sometimes hit) the shit out of you
 

Gp1

Member
The early internet ages/pre social network (late 90's early 2000), when things where not so granted, imho were the best times.

We still had 60-70% of everything that makes internet great, without the huge overload of information.
 

MachRc

Member
1520171552969


Anyone remember uploading junk for that upload/download ratios?
I still remember downloading a bunch of opengl demos and shareware software.

MachRc is my Prodigy username
prodigy.jpg


God prodigy sucked so hard as a 12 year old.
 
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