this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
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Funny: Home of the Haha

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[–] GreyShuck@feddit.uk 79 points 3 months ago (9 children)

I think my equivalent at that age would have been going to a friend's house to watch their newly acquired colour TV instead of our B/W one.

[–] plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works 25 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Before that, listening to the radio.

[–] crimson_iris@piefed.social 28 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Color radio was a big deal, to be fair.

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[–] Velypso@sh.itjust.works 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)
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[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 months ago

There’s a motel near where my mom lives that only recently updated their sign from “colour TV” to “High Def TV”

[–] BillyClark@piefed.social 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I remember the good old days when my friend would come over and we'd turn on my black and white TV, and change it to channel 3 so that we could play a "doubles tennis" version of pong on the little pong console we owned.

Now, this may cause you to exclaim, "How fucking old is this guy?" But what you may not know is that my parents rarely threw old electronics away. That could have happened maybe as late as the mid 90s.

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[–] Klear@quokk.au 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

Normal amount.

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[–] Corngood@lemmy.ml 78 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Now we're all reading Lemmy and trying to save open computing because we're the only generation who knows what it is.

[–] Protoknuckles@lemmy.world 31 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I teach computer science, and when we talk about networking and the internet, I apologize to the students. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

I'm wondering if you have any reference resources on-hand for this. Like if we can identify where exactly it went wrong and how it was supposed to be, to point to in a somewhat scholarly sense.

As a 90's kid self-taught dabbler in comp-sci / FOSS advocate, my first thoughts for ultimately disasterous elements usually go to corporate disruption, like the iPhone. Maybe if we go further back, Internet Explorer?

I feel like this stuff is intentionally buried to be as if it had never been. General computer knowledge used to be more commonplace, now gen-pops are ignorant slaves to stupid black-box appliances and monolithic rent-seeking cloud services. It sucks.

We are the resistance though. The indie web is growing by the day. Gen-Z has been ditching social media. Open source stuff like Linux or Blender are exploding within niche circles like gaming and indie creator spaces. There's hope. :)

[–] teslekova@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Reagan. It's always Reagan. However, in this case I do not know the specific steps that deregulation took between his disaster of a presidency and the present day.

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[–] mcavoya@lemmy.world 38 points 3 months ago (1 children)

One day a coworker announced he had bought a PC with the new 80286 processor running at 10 MHz (an unheard of blistering speed).

That afternoon the entire Engineering Department went to his house to look at it.

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That was my first real computer. We had two games: where in the world is carmen Sandiego and kings quest 4 rosella's peril. There was not enough disk space to have both games (size 2 5.25 floppies each IIRC) installed at the same time. Then we got quest for glory. That was special.

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[–] Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 34 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The millennial amount of old haha

Back when 1984 was just a story, not Government policy

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

They were still just laying the ground work for it instead of enacting it.

[–] Simon_Shitewood@lemmy.ml 33 points 3 months ago (4 children)

The Youths (20-somethings) at work have a new 3d printer, and were explaining how they were using the printer to print additional parts for the printer, so I said "oh, like downloading Limewire pro" and the blank looks made me feel so old.

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[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 30 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (9 children)

Diablo 2 required OVER 1GB of hard drive space to install and 3 CDs. Computer game install sizes are getting out of control.

N64 with 4 controllers and Forsaken while getting a sweet sweet 15 frames per second of motion sickness-inducing awesomeness.

LAN party just to play the Unreal Tournament demo.

Discovering you could use 3333333333333333333 as the CD key for Starcraft.

Heroes of Might and Magic hotseat multiplayer games taking all weekend.

xvid movies that would fit on a CD-R

"Have you guys heard of this broadband thing?"

Monthly nerd conclave to install Linux from the latest Linux Magazine CD. Mandrake has this new KDE 1.0 thing, looks neat.

Magic: The Gathering - Coat of Arms is dumb why does he have 2 of them AND Slivers??!

WAAAY before that: MUDs via BBS (and later Telnet/zMUD 5.55)

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

We ran a 2-node bbs out of our house.

For those too young to know what that means:

We had 2 computers networked to each other running the bulletin board - each with a separate dedicated phone line. Each line had call forwarding set up to the other, so users could dial either number, and if one of the nodes was available they could log in. And the real magic was that 2 users could actually live chat instead of just leaving messages. You haven't lived until you've played multiplayer TradeWars or LORD.

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[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago (23 children)

Old enough to know what RealPlayer was. And to use Netscape communicator.

[–] GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (12 children)

I'm the right age to be in that venn diagram of having had an ICQ account in 1996 and a Snapchat account in 2014.

Where one of my favorite things about the iPhone was that it finally put the nail in the coffin of ~~Macromedia~~ Adobe Flash.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

Nice. I loved ICQ. A friend of mine had this really cool online friend he made in Sweden (we're in the US) and it was such a feeling of connection then. I miss those days. Nowadays it's like a 50% chance of a snarky/negative interaction with random internet people. The internet used to feel friendlier.

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[–] Rolder@reddthat.com 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I remember getting in trouble for showing my friend questionable things I found on Newgrounds

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[–] LaoiseFu@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago (2 children)

We used go to Internet cafes and log onto anonymous chat rooms as a tween group of three. Thought it was HILARIOUS. then eventually got computers in our houses... Dial up.. Rotten.com...etc etc... Funniest time of my life hands down. Big up maddox.xmission articles.👐 Would love to find all the random hilarious videos that made me crack up so much.

[–] LaoiseFu@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Biggest regret : not convincing my parents to let me but bitcoin at 50c... They thought it was bullshit and I didn't know how to. Time machine message.

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[–] chunes@lemmy.world 17 points 3 months ago (2 children)

You think my buddy had internet? We would go over to his house to play DOS games.

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[–] cheat700000007@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago

AlbinoBlackSheep Ytmnd Newgrounds Fark Stumbleupon

Good shit

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I was doing this with friends as late as 2012, because all of us were poor and couldn't afford those fancy new iphones

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[–] BurnedDonutHole@ani.social 14 points 3 months ago

Ahhh the good old 90s for me... Get together, play games, share information and combos about games. I remember playing Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, and trying to see who can do all the combos or fatalities while playing on the same computer. I recently find a photo from those times. Feeling a bit nostalgic.

[–] doingthestuff@lemy.lol 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We got our first computer around 1980, there was no information superhighway then. I also remember before that, when pinball tables were pretty cool.

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[–] its_prolly_fine@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Waiting for the image/video to load because dial-up

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

Or LAN parties so we could all play each other in Warcraft, or party up for a D&D multiplayer adventure together. Good times.

[–] Widdershins@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Typing in the original Goatse URL at somebody's house on their computer

[–] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Changing their browser homepage.

[–] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Making it their desktop wallpaper, screenshotting the desktop, setting the desktop to that screenshot, then "hide icons."

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[–] Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 11 points 3 months ago (10 children)

Gathering around the very pre-internet (actually I think pre-windows) computer to play scorched earth.

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[–] OldChicoAle@lemmy.world 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

That's crazy. I had no idea everyone said "look at the computer". Also, I miss being a kid. Growing up in the 90s and 00s was magical time.

[–] angband@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Trading floppies at the library

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[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

We went to each other's houses because we each had a different computer - I had Commodore, one had Apple II, one had a TI-99/4A, etc. We'd work together to type in free games from program listings in magazines, and help find the inevitable typos - learned a LOT from that. Great times, indeed.

[–] YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 8 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Playing Elite in the BBC Micro at my friend’s house because the internet didn’t exist.

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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

"Normal amount" is a bit over 40, no?

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[–] super_user_do@feddit.it 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Im 20 and I did this as well because cheap broadband internet didn't arrive everywhere at the same time

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[–] mech@feddit.org 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Some classmates made their own website, and they uploaded embarrassing photos of me, and audio recordings of them prank calling me, and then they shared the URL with the entire class, and gave a presentation of their website in class for extra credit, and the teacher didn't get that I wasn't in on it, and said it's a really cool website, and then everyone laughed, so yeah there was that also.

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[–] hayvan@piefed.world 7 points 3 months ago

I was about 15 but the rest tracks.

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