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[darkangel-212559]

Yeah it's true, the world was a lot more fun and interesting back before everyone was constantly connected to some online device that allows you to look anything up anywhere. Like as a kid growing up in the 90's I remember how amazing it was to go to my local Funcoland, play the demo consoles, and check out all the games they had. When I first started going there all I had was a Sega Genesis, and I still remember how blown away I was the first time I was Virtua Racing playing on their demo Genesis, I actually bought the game right then with my allowance money I had saved up. I never even knew that game existed before walking into that store, and just watching the game doing it's demo look, amazed by how my Genesis could play 3D graphics.

That, and I think people forget how much more normal and grounded everyone was before the internet and social media culture took off. Nobody cares about all the crazy crap they obsess over these days, everyone had their own lives to live and they weren't constantly obsessing over everything/everyone else. I mean I was just a kid, but people hardly ever discussed politics, and social issues had awareness but they weren't obsessed over. That and people just seemed to be a lot easier to talk to, they weren't all locked into some device chatting with people somewhere else in the world.

Man I miss the days when you were at school as a young kid and there was a rumour that this one kid knew how to beat a certain boss or knew a certain cheat code for the SNES or Megadrive game everyone was playing. All while taking part in the great Nintendo VS Sega console wars, which were so far less mean spirited than they are today.

I miss waiting for the next video game mag for previews or being blown away at the arcades too.

 

[-Minsc-]

Who remembers the days of recording shows with a video tape

I remember the year I had the recording of the final episode of season 5 for Star Trek: DS9. The final part was too awesome I watched it way too many times over the summer. When season 6 aired I kept those tapes for quite a few years.

I watched it happen, IRL I'm not the most entertaing outgoing person but those who were got taken in by their smartphones first. 2007, beginning of the end.

While I do have my phone at my hip almost all the time when I'm not sleeping I don't always have it out when in public. Something to do with not always wanting to be plugged in all the time.

which were so far less mean spirited than they are today.

Good old behind the screen passive aggressiveness. I believe not interacting face to face opens us to put our own negative spin on jokes and stuff. Communicating over the internet is a lot closer to communicating with yourself than one may want to admit.

 

[Porcile]

I remember the feeling of encountering some new felt a lot more interesting and memorable, but I think if we just stopped loading our brains with information about upcoming stuff there were still be some sense of novelty.

 

[Hazzard4life]

I'm 50 this year and born in London. Great times....
Porn was looking at women in lingerie.
Video games was on the ZX Spectrum. Then onto the Atari
Playing on the streets.... hanging out on the doorsteps of mates house.
Then of course, as a young black bro, the Brixton riots.
Getting harassed by the police on my way to work.
Then eventually getting my first PCin '95 and going into chat rooms. Explaining to people, mainly from the US that I was a black living in London...the response was like "Are there lots of black people in London?, Wow!"
Great times

 

[TTOOLL]

Born in 85 here, got internet for real around 2003, it was definitely better before. Life was slower and things were more meaningful.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

Born in 87, got the first exposed to the internet in 95, but didn't get it myself until 99.

There wasn't so much information. Like for video games, you weren't so aware of everything so when a game came out, there would be a ton of mystery. Sure there were gaming magazines, but they were either delayed in their information or pretty much just spitting rumors. Things kind of just happened and you didn't find out until after the fact.

Politics were better. Sure you had bipartisan bullshit back then too. But the average voter didn't give a fuck. In fact voter apathy was seen as a big problem. However, I prefer that to what we have now.

I enjoyed the internet most in 1999-2001. Back then things weren't so centralized around a few key sites, so you had a million different bullshit sites. It was charming going to some broken ass geocities website to read about pikablu.

 

[22:22:22]

Popped up in my recs this morning for some reason.

 

[Liamario]

It's down to the lack of restrictions. When you can have whatever you want with little difficulty, it's takes the challenge away. Life is like Netflix, too much choice at your finger tips.
We need a little bit of stress, a little bit of a challenge.

 

[Negotiator]

It's down to the lack of restrictions. When you can have whatever you want with little difficulty, it's takes the challenge away. Life is like Netflix, too much choice at your finger tips.
We need a little bit of stress, a little bit of a challenge.

Just imagine how worse it will become with AI/robots everywhere, doing every single job... zero challenge!

Will people commit suicide out of boredom?

 

[nightmare-slain]

the internet used to be something special and exciting. i mean, it wasn't in control of our whole life. it was something new and not to be used in excess.

when i first had internet i had to ask my parents if i could use it. on week days it had to be after 4-5PM (after school/dinner time) and they had to be sure they weren't expecting any calls because you couldn't make/recieve calls and use internet at the same time. it took about 10-15 minutes to boot the PC up and then you had to wait for the dial up to connect which was another few minutes. if i was lucky i got to spend 3 hours online.

at the weekend there was more freedom. i'd wake up early and quietly try to sneak downstairs to where the PC was and boot it up. i wouldn't say i got to spend all day on it but i could have! as exciting as the internet was i still wanted to go outside and play with friends. also my dad would want some time on the internet too so he'd kick me off it.

here is a photo of me on my PC (yes it was in a cupboard under the stairs lol). i was 11 years old there so this was 2001/2002. i remember because of that awful hair cut.

you can't see the PC but check out my awesome "setting up your computer" poster and my pile of discs.

my mum took that photo of me. i had the door shut and she opened it and took the photo. i know my face is pixelated but you can still tell i was taken by surprise lol.

 

[JimmyRustler]

I enjoyed the internet most in 1999-2001. Back then things weren't so centralized around a few key sites, so you had a million different bullshit sites. It was charming going to some broken ass geocities website to read about pikablu.

IMO the internet only started to go down the drain when it went maknstream with the advent of smartphones. Before that it was basically the Wild West of geeks.

Come to think of it… Still vaguely remember people back in the day saying the online shopping would never take off when I started ordering… Ahhhh… good days… How everyone underestimated the impact.

The internet is a great thing and not the actual problem at the end of the day. Just think about it… Leave everything as it is but take away the smartphone. Would change the game right away.

 

[nightmare-slain]

IMO the internet only started to go down the drain when it went maknstream with the advent of smartphones. Before that it was basically the Wild West of geeks.

Come to think of it… Still vaguely remember people back in the day saying the online shopping would never take off when I started ordering… Ahhhh… good days… How everyone underestimated the impact.

The internet is a great thing and not the actual problem at the end of the day. Just think about it… Leave everything as it is but take away the smartphone. Would change the game right away.

totally agree.

2009-2011 was the turning point. at least from my perception. that was when iPhones and Facebook became really popular and people seemed to start getting addicted.

i joined Amazon in 2007 and at the time internet shopping was so strange to me. it was exciting but still definitely wasn't common.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

totally agree.

2009-2011 was the turning point. at least from my perception. that was when iPhones and Facebook became really popular and people seemed to start getting addicted.

i joined Amazon in 2007 and at the time internet shopping was so strange to me. it was exciting but still definitely wasn't common.

Do you remember when Amazon was a bookstore?

It was such a big deal when they moved into selling everything

 

[nush]

Porn was looking at women in lingerie.

Oiled up, big permed women with massive bush inexplicably aroused by sitting alone on a tropical beach. Pirelli calendars, the easiest porn to source.

 

[John Marston]

For context I grew up in the late 70's and 80's.

I remember tuning into the radio at a specific time to hear a brand new song.

When I was 8 years old Planet of the Apes was showing on TV at 11:15 pm & my mom promised to wake me up to watch it. When she did not wake me up "because I was sleeping too good" I was pissed off thinking I would never get another chance!

Playing Zelda with the landline phone on my ear & shoulder talking to my friend who was also playing in his home. "Dude I just found a secret room!" "Where where?"

Waiting for that issue of EGM or Gamepro to hit the store because I was stuck in Tomb Raider

Waiting in line for 45 minutes to see "The Empire strikes back" where the only "spoilers" were the trailers shown on TV.

I don't dwell too much on the past but those were good times indeed.

 

[AJUMP23]

the internet used to be something special and exciting. i mean, it wasn't in control of our whole life. it was something new and not to be used in excess.

when i first had internet i had to ask my parents if i could use it. on week days it had to be after 4-5PM (after school/dinner time) and they had to be sure they weren't expecting any calls because you couldn't make/recieve calls and use internet at the same time. it took about 10-15 minutes to boot the PC up and then you had to wait for the dial up to connect which was another few minutes. if i was lucky i got to spend 3 hours online.

at the weekend there was more freedom. i'd wake up early and quietly try to sneak downstairs to where the PC was and boot it up. i wouldn't say i got to spend all day on it but i could have! as exciting as the internet was i still wanted to go outside and play with friends. also my dad would want some time on the internet too so he'd kick me off it.

here is a photo of me on my PC (yes it was in a cupboard under the stairs lol). i was 11 years old there so this was 2001/2002. i remember because of that awful hair cut.

you can't see the PC but check out my awesome "setting up your computer" poster and my pile of discs.

my mum took that photo of me. i had the door shut and she opened it and took the photo. i know my face is pixelated but you can still tell i was taken by surprise lol.

Harry Potter with a vacuum.

 

[Paperclip Killa]

But for those of us who grew up in a world without the internet,

Compuserve and Fidonet?

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Compuserve and Fidonet?

I didnt use the net until maybe around 1998. I forget. I was just late at it. I even had a university email address we all got which was given to us which was my name and a weird bunch of letters and numbers. I just never bothered using it. I was old school just doing library work and none of my classes required internet stuff. No profs even brought it up. I have no idea how good the content was, but it was probably lousy anyway compared to books.

My first email address was a Hotmail address and the net was still so new I was able to get a hotmail email that was my name with a 1 at the end of it! And my name has got to be common enough there's enough people to try it, but I was in early.

We used Netscape through some no name ISP which was the cheapest place we found doing 56k service. lol

However, the first internet kind of stuff (if you can call it that) was actually in the 80s when my bro would log into bulletin boards at midnight and download games for his Apple computer. They took while and he'd just download one and hoped it worked in the morning. lol

 

[Kurotri]

Whenever I think about this sort of stuff or read posts like these, I'm never quite sure if it's just us "being old" or if things really were better. I wonder how younger people truly feel like today. Do they feel the same as we did?

 

[nush]

Whenever I think about this sort of stuff or read posts like these, I'm never quite sure if it's just us "being old" or if things really were better. I wonder how younger people truly feel like today. Do they feel the same as we did?

They were better. I worked with a guy who's mum just sat him in front of a PC to keep him quiet. Every story he had about his youth was basically related to World of Warcraft or some other online game. Online, Apps, smartphone is what the kids have now. sadly.

 

[ForAcademicPurposes]

I had 5,000 hours on Counter-Strike before I knew how to operate a computer.

 

[killatopak]

Best years of my life.

 

[darrylgorn]

No thanks.

The internet has brought so much happiness in my life, either by information about health or just sheer entertainment, that I could never go back.

I'm grateful that my kids have much greater certainty about the world and how it works.

 

[nightmare-slain]

Do you remember when Amazon was a bookstore?

It was such a big deal when they moved into selling everything

i didn't use amazon when it was just a bookstore but yeah i remember when that's all they were. i remember when google was just a search engine and still in beta.

 

[Scotty W]

My Grandparents had a neighbor named Mitchell. He told me had got a Super Nintendo for Christmas and he has a game called Super Mario World. I told him that was impossible. The Super Nintendo did not exist- it was called a Nintendo, and Super Mario World was Mitchell’s idiot mistake.

When I went to his house and started playing, I was annoyed by the fact that the A button did a twirl jump. It took me about 10 minutes to accept that jump had been changed to B. It was not until later that I accepted that it was NOT Super Mario 3.

 

[nush]

t was not until later that I accepted that it was NOT Super Mario 3.

It is the superior Mario game.

 

[dr_octagon]

Game of Thrones was a reminder of how people can enjoy and share a cultural event, with weekly episodes and a big audience.

Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Paramount, Disney, YouTube, HBO and other are paralysis of choice. The convenience is there but so is the amount of trash to wade through.

 

[WhatDidHeSay?]

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'm with you.

Touching mid forties and this cuckoo who posted his entire life story led a shit life.

Christ. Sounds to me you were just a dickhead that wasn't invited to the fun stuff. Sorry for you missing out on the golden generation... 8 and 16 bit playtime, Nintendo Vs SEGA. You missed all this?!

Wow.

 

[nush]

I'm with you.

Touching mid forties and this cuckoo who posted his entire life story led a shit life.

Christ. Sounds to me you were just a dickhead that wasn't invited to the fun stuff. Sorry for you missing out on the golden generation... 8 and 16 bit playtime, Nintendo Vs SEGA. You missed all this?!

Wow.

He's french, so.. yeah.

 

[PumpkinPie]

Life as a gamer was much more fun. I lived for my game magazines, and shopping for games was so much more fun because you'd always find something you'd never heard of.

 

[Ionian]

Had a friend that started working at Google when they set up their HQ here, she's minted now. Bought her house off the stocks gifted her. Her husband is a psyhics professor and barely makes half her wages.

Cafeteria (free food) even served lobster. Was crazy shit, she couldn't even operate a computer. She was in sales. She's on astromical money. Just ad sales.

Her degree was in Japanese, didn't know how to work a PC but Google hired like crazy. Now she's extremely wealthy. Bought a lovely house off it. Google HQ in Dublin is verrrry generous. Was the start of their HQ, small office, HUGE building now.

Had another friend that worked there. Sold all her stocks and blew the lot on holidays. Silly bitch. She also fucked a guy in a skip on a public street. Google don't only hire the smart.

 

[dr_octagon]

Ionian I hope you are writing a book. You're like the dollar store Joey Diaz of NeoGaf.

 

[Ionian]

Ionian I hope you are writing a book. You're like the dollar store Joey Diaz of NeoGaf.

I've no idea who that is but will take it as a compliment.

 

[dr_octagon]

 

[Ionian]

Love it. I'm not far off. Not as fat though. I'm kinda skinny.

 

[Catphish]

Born in the 70s, grew up in the 80s… it really was the last great time to be a kid.

The differences between my and my daughter’s childhood are staggering.

 

[dr_octagon]

Love it. I'm not far off. Not as fat though. I'm kinda skinny.

Start a podcast, invite Maiden Voyage who can talk about flat earth.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

Sometimes I miss that sometimes oddly comfy boredom you'd feel when you'd just be lying around the house, channel surfing, reading a magazine or finding some other random thing to do.

And the odd sense of community you'd feel from certain TV networks and magazines like Tech TV, G4, Adult Swim, EGM and OPM that felt like one sided internet communities without the internet.

I still wonder what some of the editors of the gaming magazines I'd read are up to these days, it was almost like a proto-version of the parasocial relationships people get with streamers these days, "gaming buddies" who have no idea you exist, it's odd that video games seem to naturally lead to that sort of thing.

 

[Negotiator]

I still wonder what some of the editors of the gaming magazines I'd read are up to these days, it was almost like a proto-version of the parasocial relationships people get with streamers these days, "gaming buddies" who have no idea you exist, it's odd that video games seem to naturally lead to that sort of thing.

There you go:

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

Some of the Ziff Davis (EGM and OPM) dudes I have tracked down on Twitter and follow but none of them work in gaming journalism anymore and none of them Tweet much either.

I'm surprised none of those dudes thought to give streaming a try, especially when three of them did a web series called Broken Pixels that was like an early form of Let's Plays, too much into the careers they moved on to after Ziff Davis went kaput I guess.

At the very least a podcast would be cool.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Start a podcast, invite Maiden Voyage who can talk about flat earth.

Trees are an illusion.

 

[Ionian]

Trees are an illusion.

Dunno why he mentioned you. We've never spoken once.

Never even replied to a post of yours. Very odd but I mean no offense to either of you.

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Dunno why he mentioned you. We've never spoken once.

Never even replied to a post of yours. Very odd but I mean no offense to either of you.

Stranger still, I’ve never even been to this website before.

 

[Ionian]

Stranger still, I’ve never even been to this website before.

Dude, i'm being nice. Quote a single post I sent you.

You can't. I'm on your side dude. Dude needs his head checked. We never posted at each other.

 

[Darchaos]

So before the internet, or atleast before the big boom of it. Around 92-96, me and my friends(4 other guys) lived in the country. We used to make hockeyrinks on the lake in the winter, tracks for the cars on the ice to race on, go inside and play mario kart on the snes, and then in the middle of the night, a fishing poole and som bait, throw a line into the lake, secure the poole between some rocks, go to sleep and then wake up a couple of hours later and see if we got something. Fuck, i miss thoose times, soooo much.

From Sweden btw, not that it matters, but so you knows.

 

[nush]

I still wonder what some of the editors of the gaming magazines I'd read are up to these days,

Freelance IE living off past glories or unemployed. You'll find them on Linkedin.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Ionian I hope you are writing a book. You're like the dollar store Joey Diaz of NeoGaf.

I'd read it. Ionian has a good way of writing shit that's both to the point and interesting to read.

 

[nush]

Cafeteria (free food) even served lobster.

Keep your Lobster Salad, I used to be able to expense hookers and lap dancers.

 

[MrA]

Greater times, long before the age of console warriors.

Console warriors go back to day one, the mouthpieces were just more refined

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Keep your Lobster Salad, I used to be able to expense hookers and lap dancers.

I worked in the wrong industries at the wrong time.

I missed all the crazy shit the old timers at my companies told me happened in the 80s and 90s. Crazy sales parties where everyone flies to the Carribean or New Orleans. People hooking up banging each other. Hell, some people hooked up so much they fucking got married!

Things were loosey goosey with fax sheets and print outs (not computer tracked) so sales people were pocketing incentives meant for accounts. And the corporations didn't care either because it was a free for all offering buyers fancy dinners, sports tickets, giving store managers TVs and fishing rods just for ordering a skid of product. The wild west of money thrown everywhere. The account managers would help load the store managers van and they'd see inside it with other prizes and perks other reps gave him.

I missed all of it by the time I started working at a decent role FT! Everything was got buttoned down when I started my career and the type of companies I work for arent the ones to be showering employees with free food or $1000 office chairs.