You’re shockingly close to the plot of The Matrix.

OK, but we demand IRC instead of AOL-IM.

Can we keep the "no smoking inside commercial establishments" policy at least? Otherwise I'm down.

This is how you accidentally start a Gen-X commune.

Take me back to the time when I would finish before the bottom half of jenna jameson even manages to load

Honestly, the 90s was a shit time for many LGBTQ people and often PoCs as well. Can we have (at least) todays levels of wokeness? Oh and today levels of healthcare... and today levels of assistive technology for people needing assistance, oh and...

I hope it doesn’t include 90’s racism, homophobia and transphobia. It was way worse than it is today.

Really, you have the opportunity to recreate the past and I’m stuck with AIM? I’ll stick to XMPP and IRC thanks.

Reminds of this bit from Freefall: http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3200/fc03150.htm

If someone is going to run with this idea, I very sincerely ask that you please do it in one of the locations marked on this map. Then my company will be able to operate a 1990s-technology cellular phone network in the proposed neo-Amish town, a network that will enable 1990s GSM cellphones to actually work! And I do mean it with full seriousness - the linked website is my actual company, with all attendant legal and contact info.

Out of the set of locations marked on the linked map, I strongly prefer the ones in Oregon. I and the rest of my founding team are based in California, and I am a trans woman - hence certain places are, quite sadly, simply unsafe for to me travel to, let alone the intricate tasks of building towers, installing equipment and then operating and maintaining it. There are no PCS spectrum vacancies in our home state of CA, but OR is close, has good spectrum available, and it is a lovely state with strong LGBTQ+ rights.

But will it have LGBT Rights?

So um is this just millennial retirement? Boomers are getting their senior communities we need our own communities

It's really fucking sad that Pizza hut is seen and remembered in any positive way in the US, it really shows how fucking bad you have it.
A pizze hut opened in my city here in Sweden about two decades ago and it immediately became "ooh, this american thing everyone has heard of through movies is so bad that everyone has to go to it just to experience the unimaginable shit quality and taste."
Even the cheapest street corner pizzerias we have are in a whole other universe comparably.

That's basically the premise of The Matrix.

I think we can do better than Pizza Hut and block buster.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug, but the 90s was not so great. But sure, let’s take the good parts and leave behind the CRT screens and 20 mins to load a jpg.

IRC and newsgroups, too. Self hosted websites and forums.

I hate to be the regressive, but yeah…this was better.

This guy is doing it https://openpath.quest/2026/i-am-retiring-from-tech-to-live-offline

AI was the last straw. Have you heard of that island off India where the indiginous population kills any outsiders fool-hardy enough to land? They are doing the rest of us a favor by preserving a way of life we may need again someday, or at the very least should not want to see completely extinguished. A reminder. Never forget your roots. Here in Pennsylvania we have the Amish performing a similar function. Significantly less hostile, though still set apart, they bear witness to what was normal for all of us a couple short centuries ago: horse and buggy, wood stoves and lanterns. My intent is to be AI Amish, which means Internet Amish. Not 1780, but 1980. Neo-Amish. I'm fine driving a car and flipping a lightswitch, by which I mean that they don't make me into something I hate, which AI and doomscrolling do.

Instead of AIM, MeshCore. Cheap, off-net, encrypted, solar-powered, simple.

AIM? I think you meant to say "we use ICQ and everyone have a 5digit number"

Ooh can we have a IRC server too? We need a place to coordinate super soaker fights. Where did the humongous super soakers with backpacks go?

Black Mirror's San Junipero.

It's interesting how so many virtual realities tend to offer the 80s-90s as the best world to be in.

Lost me at allowing AOL. I was there as a teenager for the first AOL and looking back it was not a good thing.

And the Pizza Hut still serves legitimately good pizza, and they don’t fucking count cheese as a topping.

Me watching the original Matrix "That filthy guy willing to betray humanity just to be a little happy" Me living in the post covid/trump ruins the world/Jewish people doing a genocide... "Hook me up, you don't even have to make me rich, but that Joey Pants was on to something"

I'm not. There were some awful parts of the 90s.

It'll never be the same anyway. Something that a lot of legacy gaming servers has taught me is that you can't replicate nostalgic memories.

If we still have IRC, I'm in. AOL was just a little too lame, sometimes you want to have a conversation that doesn't start with "A/S/L???"

I am not down for this. There are modern non Ai audio tools I use. I like the media rich chat services we have too.. But, I understand.

We mustn't hide. We mustn't run. we must get into the damn robot. And eleminnate the rich religious nut heads who are disappointed God hasn't come to vist and constructed a false God.

If you're pining for the 90's, i'm estimating you weren't there

plastic in the water, PFAS in our blood, a hole in the ozone layer, war in the middle east, israel doing genocide and occupying lebanon, the soviet union disintegrates and throws millions into poverty, genocide in Rwanda, Bosnian genocide, the president of the usa involved in what amounts to sex abuse, heroin epidemic, racism, racism racism this list n+1

I liked the music but there's some survivorship bias there, I just miss guitar bands, I miss having space for a drum kit, I don't miss the 90s