Unlike Gen Z kids, we Millennials never had Snapchat, our own smartphones, and 5G. We grew up with chat rooms, one PC per family, and dial-up internet. The early days of the Internet are starting to feel like something ancient, but the World Wide Web actually began in 1989. AOL and IRC were all the rage in the '90s, which makes them more than 30 years old.

The years of the early Internet had a lot of interesting phenomena. That’s why one Redditor decided to ask fellow Internet veterans: “What’s something ancient that only an Internet veteran would remember?” Mine is probably the old-school message boards, specifically the Dragon Ball Z-related ones. If there are any Internet veterans out here, let us know your picks!

Bored Panda reached out to the dean of technology at the triOS College and a self-proclaimed technogeek, Jason Eckert. He was kind enough to tell us more about what the Internet looked like at its inception and whether the concerns we have about it now were similar to the concerns then.

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#1

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories How about: the sound of dialup??

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#2

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories The hit counter on the bottom of webpages that told you how many people visited the page.

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#3

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories An internet that didn't have any advertising.

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#4

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories I remember when Amazon was just an online book store.

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#5

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories AskJeeves.

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#6

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Getting booted off the Internet when someone in the other room picked up the phone.

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#7

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Winamp.

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#8

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories ICanHasCheezburger Its still around, but not the same at all. I can remember my mom and I howling and laughing together. She died twelve years ago and I still think about how much we fun we had with that website.

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#9

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Getting internet in the mail.

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#10

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Hampsterdance

The ICQ "uh-oh!" noise

Guest books on websites. Sign my guest book!

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#11

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Dancing baby.

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#12

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Having a "computer room".

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#13

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Peanut butter jelly time!

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#14

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Limewire.

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#15

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Discussion boards for specific topics. (And not aggregated under the same website like reddit)

I have fond memories of these. I met a lot of cool people, some of which I'm still in contact with a good decade and a half later.

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#16

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Netscape.

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#17

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Badger badger badger badger.

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#18

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Charlie wake upp, you silly sleep head, wake up. We found a map, a map to candy mountain.

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#19

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Instant messenger door opening noise.

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#20

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories MSN messenger shaking and ringing a bell when your friends wanted your attention.

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#21

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Learning basic HTML to pimp out your MySpace profile

Bumper stickers on facebook

Uploading a digital camera album of your night out

Leaving moody asf away messages on AIM.

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#22

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Flash games.

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#23

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories "All your base are belong to us".

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#24

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories The Napster and Lars Ulrich drama.

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#25

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Rotten.com. I remember checking out this site in internet cafes and hoping no-one else was looking in. Gross, but informative.

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#26

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Home Made Angelfire Websites with Under Construction signs and Flaming Torches.

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#27

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Treating chat rooms like real, physical places. Like, with an established setting and stuff. People would narrate what they’re doing in that space as they talked. Usually with a font or marker to designate the action: goes to the table and sips coffee.

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#28

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Ebaumsworld.

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#29

29 Internet Veterans Share The Things That No Longer Exist That May Trigger Repressed Memories Google not existing

Netscape Navigator

Excite, HotBot, Lycos, Altavista, Webcrawler

Amazon is just an online bookstore

IRC

ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Trillian

Yahoo Chatrooms

Yahoo Games

Usenet

AOL

CompuServe

Prodigy

NetZero

Edit: More below:

As u/TheOCDGeek reminded me, Juno (free email and later free internet). There were a ton of free internet services (dial-up) for a while. Most were backed by one company that I can't remember the name of.

About.com

Ask Jeeves

Metacrawler (get results from many search engines on one page)

Digg (Reddit before Reddit)

StumbleUpon

Webrings

Guestbooks to sign

Geocities (before it became Yahoo Geocities)

Tripod

Angelfire.

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