Limewire.
My Uncle.
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.
the internet before advertising, before it became a utility, before it became ubiquitous and essential… When it was just that weird thing that nerds toyed around with…
Gods those were the days.
No search engines, Had to find websites on the internet yellow pages, via a web ring, or because someone gave you a slip of paper with an address, that was always written out to include the http://… and visitor counters and guest books… people always filled out the guest book, and it wasnt spam, viruses, or bullshit. actual, legitimate comments from the majority of visitors.
all at the blazing speed of 28.8k
and now I am unbearably depressed and sad.
🎁🫶
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.
Do I miss physical gaming magazines? Yes, yes I do
Were they awful? Content wise, no, I actually believe transitioning to web magazines turned the whole industry into a shit show
I loved the game posters that came folded into the magazines.
So what was bad about them?
Well they pushed you too collect them.
That amount of paper cannot possibly be good for the environment
The amount of times I tried to download a tv show on limewire and it was just bestiality…
Original recipe shamrock shakes. They must be awful to my palate now, but I wanna know what the original tasted like
1990s internet. Yeah it had to start somewhere and a lot of them were butt-ugly for design. Now 2000s internet up until roughly 2009, that’s the shit.
I always thought whatever generation comes next will have it so good, because the i ternet is fast and well developed and shit. But no, the internet actually peaked in 2000. With all the ads now, it’s barely usable anymore. Does anyone remember when you would go to a website and not immediately click it away because it’s just a clickbait ad filled minefield?
There’s this seach engine called Wiby that only displays old websites. I’ve used a virtual version of Windows XP to browse random pages through Wiby just to re live the feeling of the web feeling more like a library and less like a night market.
I remember websites having links to other websites that weren’t really affiliated and that being as effective as an searches. You clicked through the internet like it was a file folder system managed by thousands of html authors playing the telephone game.
All my homies were part of a webring.
Ooh! Remember what was the original premise of Google’s PageRank? A site was classified as more valuable if other sites linked to it. …I have no idea exactly what they do nowadays, because clearly search engines have every reason to be suspicious of people linking to other sites.
Haha ahhh pre-enshitified internet was so good. Anonymity through obscurity ig.
Not sure i’m particularly concerned what most search provides consider “suspicious” these days.
There’s a split opinion on when exactly the internet peaked at. You’ll have some people say 2007, others will say 2009 and then there’s those who’ll even say mid-2000s like 2005. My personal opinion is that I think it peaked at 2007. Social Media was fairly at its infancy with Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace all a few years old each by that point. Cell phone technology was still primarily 3G. The Messenger Era was at its peak but was also starting to steadily go downhill.
2009 was actually when the internet started to corrode and it began with Facebook acquiring FriendFeed and that cracked open the idea that corporations could take control of the open web, which they eventually try and do as the years followed.
2005 runescape
try out lost city 2004scape!
Yeah I did and that’s what showed me it ain’t exactly as I remember haha. Without the quality of life updates it’s just brutal
My alcohol addiction
Especially in our current timeline. My alcoholic tendencies are at an all time high. Sigh.
But damn it feels better than being sober and seeing the idiotic timeline come to pass.
I felt this one in my bones.
well with my tendencies, i’ve found that alcohol doesn’t help anymore with the current timeline….
there’s just too much awful shit and being drunk is just frustrating because then i’m dumb and still in this stupid timeline….
i used to be able to make problems disappear (for a minute), but now they’re still right there, alcohol just makes me feel more stuckIt makes your personal timeline worse, unfortunately. I know it’s hard to believe, but sobriety can make life significantly more tolerable. The problems are still very much there, but most of the underlying anxiety is caused by the alcohol, not treated by it.
It’s like cigarettes - it only feels so good because first it made you feel worse. It’s not even just withdrawal, it’s craving. When you believe you have a “make everything better” button, it is really hard not to push it.
If you’re drinking you’re spending time and money that could be used for better purposes.
DM me if you want help.
This stupid timeline doesn’t deserve the benefit of sobriety.
No, you deserve the benefits of sobriety.
Sorry bub, but I do not exist in isolation from reality.
So, you’re saying that the money you could be sending to refugee kids is better spent buying you booze?
don’t listen to this guy, dm me your drinking money, that’ll take care of it.
promise to uh steward that resource ahem responsibly hic
The smell of leaded gasoline.
The smell of a fine cigar: I quit smoking 14 years ago but I miss that.And I’m 200% sure they were awful.
Are you sure you’re not just thinking of the smell of carburetor engines? I think I know the smell you’re thinking of and its the exhaust of a vintage carburetor engine.
Was there really a different smell for leaded gasoline?
No, it’s the smell at the pump. Nothing to do with how the engine feeds itself. Yeah, leaded gasoline smelled different. “Sweeter” or something. Maybe it wasn’t the lead, and maybe whatever replaced the lead inside modern gasoline is what smells different, but it definitely isn’t the same.
It’s not like gasoline smelled better, it’s just that I remember smelling that smell when the entire family went on summer holidays and we kids were allowed to stretch our legs while our dad gassed up the car. Good times and good memories!
That 5 minutes of smoking where you don’t do anything but think and enjoy a pieceful smoke… I miss that as well. I quit smoking 4 years ago.
You’re making me feel like I miss it but I haven’t even started yet 💀
Don’t.
Because what he left out is that for those 5 minutes of peaceful enjoyable smoking, you have to endure the rest of the day craving, smelling like dog shit, getting an earful from your supervisor at work because you’re constantly out for a smoke, spending your life’s savings at the tobacconist, and driving 20 miles in the middle of the night to find a pack of smokes in a convenience store in the middle of the night when all the other stores are closed. Not to mention long term health issues of course.
That’s an expensive 5 minutes of enjoyment, trust me on that one.
Also, you get the exact same effect of 5 minutes relaxation, just by stepping outside, concentrating on your breathing and being in the moment.
Ohhhhhh…
No.
You don’t.
Not even a little bit close
You don’t. If it was as simple, no one would smoke. If tobacco didn’t give you something extra, your body wouldn’t crave it.
The only thing it’s giving you is a craving until the next smoke. That’s it. Those five minutes of “peace” are just a few moments of relief from withdrawal, and 20 minutes later the cycle starts all over again.
My body hated it when I started, but peer pressure was too strong. Then the addiction took over.
Cigarettes is like forcing yourself not going to the toilet, so that when you do, it’s “so nice”. All the rest of the time you just crave shitting/smoking.
Or browsing lemmy on your phone.
Totally. You’re stressed out if you can smoke at your destination, so you smoke more at home, then one before you get going, one when you arrive, and one before you know if you can smoke there, one again after you realize that there’s a smoking area.
And while it is scientifically proven, that smoking lowers anxiety and stress, the anxiety and stress the abundance of being able to smoke, or even not smoking for some time, causes, is waaaay worse than not smoking in the first place.
Sitting on the porch with my morning coffee and first smoke of the day during the summer was always a wonderful experience. Doing the same in 30F in the winter, not so much.
leaded gasoline
Few memories trigger a nostalgic response in me than this. Ahhh, I’m in heaven
smell is the sense most strongly linked to memory
this might shock you, but I have never smelled leaded gasoline. I’m too young, it got banned before I was born.
what did it smell like?
Being absolutely sure about everything.
Kids can be so annoying with that.
Not just kids…
Hey OP, limewire lives on in Soulseek
It’s still running to this day, i use it alll the time
How safe is it compared to limewire? Like how do they ensure everything is what they say it is and not something malicious is misleading?
Soulseek itself is FOSS, it’s fine. If you’re worried about the other person’s downloads, just practice safety. It doesn’t hide extensions, so no worries about
elmos-got-a-gun-weird-al.mp3.exemaking your system run cryptominers.No it’s p2p foss
If you scan your downloads it should be fine
I’ll check it out!
I’ve dabbled with slsk.
Is there any option to run it in docker on something like a NAS?
My ex-wife it’s been six years since she left. She cheated on me, got knocked up and took off with the boyfriend.
She was super religious. She treated me like garbage but she prayed all the time.
All this time and sometimes I think of her coming back. I know better but my heart doesn’t.
E-cards. I got at least some cards for my birthday…
Come to think of it, I miss school and I miss the military. They were both godawful, but I was young.
You miss consistent structure
Nah. I just miss my youth.
That’s a midlife crisis
You can miss something without being in a crisis lol
I’m way past that point.
Missing your youth first hits you when you start having small health issues you didn’t have before. And then it gradually gets worse. There’s no crisis about it.
