What was the Internet like before smartphones and social media sites existed?

What was the Internet like before smartphones and social media sites existed?

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it was funner. everyone was just an alias and no one posted personal information. it was mostly filled with outcasts and losers, normies didn't use it much. then social media came around and everyone and their mother started documenting everything about their lives and ruined everything.

Simple and adventurous, especially if you were a youngin

The first version was text only and it was slow as shit. It still had a certain magic about it though. The version most people remember that used the dial-up modems was probably the best. It really was like a new frontier being explored for creativity, business, information, pornography etc. The net wasn't nearly as flooded with redundant bullshit as it is today and the only people that were using it were outcasts. We had the ENTIRE INTERNET to ourselves. If you even mentioned the internet to a norman, they would go cross-eyed and look at you like you're insane.

Honestly, even though it was slower and primitive, the community was immeasurably better.

I miss the days of AOL.
it was so easy to fuck random girls from my city.

I'm sure smartphones would have never became a thing without social media.

do you have that backwards, user?

Sites like Newgrounds and Ebaum's World were pretty fun in the early 00's

It was much better. We have reached peak eternal september a year or two back and now are just oscilating from ignorable to straight up r*ddit.

People would not be putting large sums of money on phones if they couldnt take pictures and post them online.

You didn't have websites dumb-down their interfaces to cater to ADD-women stuck with their smartphones with the infinite-scrolling garbage. Now even google search is in process of getting rid of paged results.

The shitposting was more coherent. This is all.

Normiefags have completely taken over the internet. Nothing matters anymore.

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This, I'd give anything for a chance to go back in time and kill the guys behind myspace/facebook. Everytime I got on the internet back then I felt as if I was in a world designed for me, a society for outcasts.

People use to give directions to places A LOT. Knowing your way around was just a lot different.
People were way less acting as if they're know it alls since you couldn't just google shit people would argue over everything a lot differently.
it was violent, like extremely violent. groups of people would usually be looking around for someone they don't like to jump, or go somewhere to square off out of sight somewhere. News was a lot slower like if you purposely stop using the internet for months at a time you'll hear weeks or months later about something that happened unless it was something big otherwise it was just local gossip.
most guys sounded like a /b/tard with cursing, some of them probably sounded more like Jow Forumstards. lots of racist and dead baby jokes people really tried hard to be edgy. Meeting girls was easier in person and talking to them wasn't considered weird and creepy, lots of guys would probably just flash chics their dicks instead of sending them photos of their junk.

DAE go on random forums that have been around since the 90's or early 2000's and go back all the way to postings from then? Nostalgic af

Personal websites were a big thing.. Geocities chatrooms were my real first introduction to other people on the internet. Then there was deviantART, Gaia, Livejournal.. You felt like you made closer friends back then, because the user pools were so much smaller.. And it never mattered if you were an user. I miss it so much.

Ah, and AIM, of course... Integral.

Nothing was serious business
Everyone on the internet was a white male with libertarian leanings
You would visit a number of webs instead of the same three sites every day

People were not so serious like today and it was a lot easier to make friends and talk to strangers on the internet before people began associating their real identity with their internet identity. MMO's had much better communities than the try hard shit of today.

A better question: what was the Internet like before smartphones and social media went mainstream?

Weeks upon weeks of web games to be played.

Runescape, the glory days of flash, and waiting an hour to download an mp3 off limewire

It was like Jow Forums is nowadays.
A kindergarten for losers of all ages to make finger paintings, fling crap at each other and share juice boxes.
The only difference is there were not women allowed.

The Internet was smaller then. I made a lot of internet friends back then and talked to them regularly. Then social media took off and I slowly lost contact with them leaving me largely alone online.

Shit sucks because I really miss those chatroom/AIM/MSN/Yahoo days. Even shit like webrings, and shrines.

>discovering Google for the first time back in 1999 or some shit
life changing.

the thing back then was, "roflmao, where the fuck did you find that?". there aren't insane search engines and Youtube, all you can really do is hyperlink and surf, hence why they called it surfing.

now'a days the internet is extremely aware of its self. you're warned of the nature of something before you load the page up. you're not really surfing because search engines are based on websites that got visited frequently already.

op is probably a larper, but
The internet was more like taking a break from your day to play a video game, except it was just a different type of game/thing.
Throughout your normal life you would go to people or books to gather info or make decisions, and the internet was just this fascinating thing. Over time you would discover new websites, and new uses. For a child this was cheat codes, comic strips...porn.
It wasn't this compulsive "we need to check the internet before we take our next breath" thing.
You know how everyone bought a wii? It was kinda like that. Except facebook didn't start on the wii