Ask Lemmy

You should look into soulseeked then.

Websites with frames.

A buddy of mine owned a video game store that I worked at for a bit. The pay was crappy and the hours were unstable and random, but I do miss working there.

Let's make it 100%. Dial up noise, window XP startup and shutdown tune

I miss my first two cars. The first was a 1989 Dodge Daytona which was probably the worst car ever made and it only lasted 6 months before the head gasket blew. The second was a 1995 Ford Escort LX sedan. This was the car that I taught myself how to drive manual transmission on. It was more reliable than the Daytona, but it still had a ton of quirks like shorts in the wiring harness in the steering column --so much so that I learned which pins to short out to hot wire it lol. I miss both of those cars because of the sense of freedom they provided to get away from an emotionally abusive home life.

Life before cellphones and internet.

Did you know in 1990 only .25% of the world’s population (12.5 million) had cellphones and only .05% (2.8 million) had internet?

It feels like we sacrificed local community and connection for global information overload and disconnection sometimes.

Check out Soulseek. I recommend the client nicotine+

My first vehicles as an adult in the mid to late 90s. Objectively cheap used jalopies that I bought for a few hundred dollars but were loved because they were mine.

My first car was a 1981 Dodge Aries K-Car. The front bumper got ripped off by a guy running with no headlights while I was delivering pizzas and I literally just threw the bumper on the back seat and continued on with my deliveries, then went to my local pick-a-part and took a replacement off a different one and bolted it on myself. You just couldn't kill it.

I eventually replaced it with an 1984 Sentra that I bought at auction. I called it the "relationship killer" because the passenger door didn't open from the outside so there was no way to "open the door for your date to get in first", and half the time it didn't go into reverse, so since my dates didn't know how to drive standard transmissions, they were the one that had to push us out of parking spaces. It honked when turning left for some reason.

My point being, when things were wrong with them, they were cheap enough that you could just go to the local pick-a-part and get replacement parts. If it wasn't starting for some reason, you could stick a screw driver in the carburetor valve to give it more air. You could "own" and "tinker" on those things in ways that doing so in a new car would terrify us.

Undertale fandom — I'm no longer part of it, I'm not interested in becoming part of it again, and it was awful, but I kinda miss it.

Highlander III

Going out with friends between 1991 and 1997. It was a great time looking back, but most night probably were just a lot of (underage) drinking and not much else.

Candy cigarettes.

Bad tasting sugar. Trains you for holding a real one.

But they were at the gas station a mile from home and near a park. Freedom from family and responsibilities. Just spending time with friends, eating candy, enjoying the sun shine. Dreaming of smoking.

Trusting the government

Old school 4chan

The wait before things worked.

Yes, it's better to get what you want no delay. But the pace of life, the rhythm, has changed. I'm old, it's true, but I'm still gonna throw it out there.

Yes, it's 90% better now. But I miss waiting.

Dude limewire was great. Nice logo, good color scheme, had pretty much everything. Other things have just gotten better in some ways, and worse in others. (Torrents are often way better quality, but it was nice being able to search limewire vs. searching the web and wading through sketchy torrent sites).

Like many others have said, the old, lost internet was really something special. Every website was crude and janky, poorly formatted for some specific resolution that you weren't using, and both animated clipart and midis were exciting to collect. There were websites dedicated to them. My brother and I used to fill folders on our desktop with sparkling or flaming banners, signs that read "Under Construction" and more. Same with midis. I'll never forget the first time I discovered Sublime's Santaria in midi form. It may have been my first favorite song.

I wish I could properly articulate what that all felt like. It was a similar feeling to collecting Pokémon cards as a kid. Everything was just a neat spectacle on the mid-90s internet. Then over time, as everything modernized and monetized, it lost that weird magic and became what it is today. I can't remember the last time I gave a shit about exploring a website. I no longer come across spooky animated images of a skeleton peering out of murky water and excitedly tuck it away for future viewing pleasure. The entire thing sucks now, but it probably sucked then, too.

Windows 98

Windows XP

Dialup

The Old Internet aka when 90% of it was html and shockwave flash

Weird childhood obsessions; some were good, some were bad, some became things that defined me as an adult.

A lot of the edutainment games I played as a child. I actually went back and installed them to see what they were like through the eyes of an adult. There were a few that were still fun, but as you might be able to guess, most were pretty shitty.

That said, there have been a few things that ended up being 100% worth revisiting. CRT monitors, for an example, are unironically still kinda awesome. I just wouldn't replace my main monitors with one.