[QUOTE=fishyfish777;40153670]By the time I was born the dragon megathread was already in full swing so
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/VD2jOXz.jpg[/IMG]
(you'd probably have to find someone born in the 70's for them not to have been exposed to the internet-world for any sort of memorable time because BBSs and Usenet were fairly prevalant during the 80's)[/QUOTE]
They made that post 11 days before I was born.
[QUOTE=JakeAM;40155132]Without the internet, I had to buy gaming magazines just for the demos.[/QUOTE]
I can relate to that. I remember this one time before DirectX 10 was even out, this magazine had fake DirectX 10 virus on it. It said that this copy of DX10 looks like legit leak but no one could get it to work or something along those lines. Yes, I installed it. I had GeForce 4 or something.
oh and everyone had AOL...that dial up sound was so soothing in a weird way
We used to go to the magical land of outside, ride bikes, play with legos and 8-bit consoles/PlayStation, draw, record our own "radio shows" on c-cassettes and watch tv/VHS tapes etc.....internet was really only available at libraries, and even then it was just some boring index pages, news, whatever. We did have computers though, 386/486 Windows 9x PCs, and we'd swap games with each other on floppies. Good times.
My younger sister is <10 years old, has basically been on the internet since 5, never goes outside, plays angry birds etc. all day and uses only messenger to talk to friends outside school. Modern kids have boring childhoods.....then again, she is just turning 10 and can already post comments on YouTube in English which I find kind of extraordinary (I'm from Finland).
I remember my first time with the internet, circa 2004. My mom had an internet connection hooked to her computer for online schooling, and I never did. I was running an old copy of Windows 98 at the time; I must've been nine years old.
Anyway, one day she has to leave for the airport to go do some things, and she trusts me enough to let me stay at home while she's out overnight. She allowed me to use my computer in her room, and doodle around on the internet.
Now, for the past two years, I'd been playing Deus Ex, and I'd probably beaten it eighty times. But this time, I noticed that big shiny multiplayer button.
For the next sixteen hours, my mind was completely blown. At first I couldn't possibly concieve the I was playing a game with humans that weren't in my house, and even asked in chat "are you real persons" like six times.
A similar experience occurred when I heard my first microphone on Half-Life 2 DM circa 2004.
"HOW U TALKING??"
I unfortunately do not remember life without the internet. I can't pinpoint when exactly I started going on the internet, but I remember being in first and second grade and playing Flash games (or perhaps not Flash.....Shockwave, I think) online. One of the first PC games I ever played, surprisingly enough, was Unreal Tournament. My dad used to bring me along to work sometimes and he'd let me play on his computer while he was out of the room.
I'm 20 and I can remember fragments of my life all the way back to about 4 years old.
I remember Netscape, Windows 95, 98, etc.
I also remember playing 90s games with my dad at like 4.5 or 5 years old. Games like Wolfenstein, and this other shooter that had this like blue armor dude that vaguely reminds me of Megaman or something.
Since I was still fairly young, the internet wasn't a necessary social medium for me. A simple phonecall helped me stay in touch with most of my friends through the years.
Main thing I did with my time was play with toys though. I didn't really start using a computer regularly until probably close to 8 or 9 years old. I had used it before, but pretty much just to screw around.
Thinking about when I started like communicating with people, finding out news and stuff, basically all the typical stuff we do with the internet; it's all kind of a blur. There isn't a whole lot of sites and stuff that I can pinpoint to being my first for XYZ blah blah blah.
I guess the big main things for me were first seeing porn in like 2nd or 3rd grade, posting on a forum in like either 3rd 4th or 5th grade, and using Facebook in 10th.
If I were to ever raise a kid (unlikely), I think I'd not even introduce them to the internet till at least the age of 4 or 5. And even then, they wouldn't get a full cell phone till older (maybe 10-12?).
I don't want to shelter my kid from technology or anything like that, but I don't want them to have technology rule their life, but rather they learn to appreciate life itself for what it is and then use the technology as a tool and something that improves their quality of life.
Born in '89, my family could never afford a computer back when I was a kid. However, when I was around 8-9, my elementary school was offering families free computers as part of an education program. We were able to apply for one, but I remember it was a shitty old Macintosh (though it was semi-new at the time). I remember the first thing we did was to try to get on the internet, but it was through that shitty dial-up AOL service and it took fucking ages to load up one web page.
[QUOTE=KorJax;40162750]If I were to ever raise a kid (unlikely), I think I'd not even introduce them to the internet till at least the age of 4 or 5. And even then, they wouldn't get a full cell phone till older (maybe 10-12?).
I don't want to shelter my kid from technology or anything like that, but I don't want them to have technology rule their life, but rather they learn to appreciate life itself for what it is and then use the technology as a tool and something that improves their quality of life.[/QUOTE]
I'd want my kid to have a cell phone as soon as they're old enough to start walking to school on their own, even if it's just a basic phone without data that can be used for emergency purposes. Having them own a possession they have to keep track of and use properly is a good responsibility builder too
I remember before we had it, I remember before we even had a computer. I remember when we finally got internet and it was dial-up so I couldn't play runescape and never used it. Most of my school year used to go down to the local internet cafe after school every day to play it.
Windows 98 was the bomb
[editline]5th April 2013[/editline]
Speaking of cell phones I was allowed one first when I was 10, but I wasn't allowed a sim card. It was one of the [url=http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/008/134/nokia-3310-troubleshooting.jpg]classic Nokia bricks[/url] and all I used it for was playing snake.
[editline]5th April 2013[/editline]
Kids these days are so different, my ex-girlfriends 3 year old brother has an iPhone, for example.
I remember having to bike to the local library for research notes, than forgetting to look up something and having to bike back. Damn, I wish the internet was a thing back then, school would of been a thousand times easier.
[QUOTE=thisispain;40153885]without the internet my music listening was very different
i was just obsessed with these cassette tapes that id find and dub, and i would constantly bother my mum about finding random cassette tapes
i have a weird nostalgic connection to cassette tapes, on one hand im glad i can find such incredible music around the globe, on the other hand im a bit sad because obtaining a piece of music on a cassette tape felt like a journey and an accomplishment when i was 12 or 13[/QUOTE]
I got a similar feeling to this. I didn't have internet until I was 12 (I'm 19 now), but before I did get internet, I had already started buying records (CD's cuz ~digital generation~). I always liked to save for months and then beg for a little more money to my parents so that I could get an album. And when I finally got it, it was a really amazing experience listening through it (something I had waited for quite a while). Then I got internet and I could download all the music I wanted but I decided that this took out the whole magic of listening music to me and so I bowed to never download music again off the internet. I uninstalled Ares and limeware and I still stick to getting physical copies of albums every once in a while (now more often since I work and can afford it). It takes longer, say, to get through a discography but I just find it really especial.
this was all i had when i was little
[IMG]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b9/Atari-2600-Wood-4Sw-Set.jpg/300px-Atari-2600-Wood-4Sw-Set.jpg[/IMG]
Life before the internet? Eh, mine didn't change all that much, still a loser. But:
- Actually had to go to library to look up shit. Thank fuck for online databases.
- Needed to go outside to meet people. People fucking suck and the only good friends you make disappear or forget you 6 months later.
- Had to rely on console gaming for the most part. Computer gaming existed, yeah, but nothing I was interested in.
- Chatting required physical contact or one of those ~*super c00l*~ flip phones everyone wanted. With the animated sunset beach/miami backdrop.
- You could get away with asking people for answers when a book wasn't nearby. Now everyone just tells you to google it. Fuck that, I'll read a goddamn book.
- Bathroom stalls were not smelly forum boards with stupid jokes. Just a phone number and 'sucks dick' or whatever. Actually, this probably hasn't gone anywhere.
- Television required a big fucking box (or tiny if you liked tiny boxes).
- No youtube/itunes/whatever meant you actually had to buy the damn music records. Physical records. That needed a stereo system or a computer that didn't have shit speakers.
- Game demos actually existed en masse, holy fucknuts.
I've purged all knowledge of the old world from my memory. I have no use for it now.
It was a time where if you wanted to know something, you either looked it up in a book, and if it wasn't there it remained a mystery. Then the internet came along and you could download things at a whopping 2kb/s, or maybe 4(!) if you were lucky. "Oh 2mb? better just let it go. 20mb? Better leave it overnight" Download managers were popular.
But yeah, before internet was popular people did more "outside" things, like go places, and *gasp* talk to one another when out to eat! You got your news from the newspaper, radio, and TV.
If you wanted to play an online game, you had to go to Internet Cafe/LAN Club.
It was so fun, with other people being near, shouting, arguing etc. :D
Through there were some weirdos who would pay 10 bux and be closed in it for a night by owner. I never understood that.
Well, I'm nineteen in two days. So, I'm in a similar boat.
I don't remember life without the internet, and that's pretty much it. The internet has been around since before I was born in 1994, and before I was five years old I was using it.
I didn't use the internet a whole lot when I was young, we usually just used it to find crappy little games for me to play when I was over at my Dad's house. When I was at my mom's though, we had no computer, so time was either spent playing Golden Eye on the N64, or I would go outside with some neighbourhood kids.
Honestly, spending time at my Dad's was the best, because he had a computer, and the internet. It is one thing I have really grown to appreciate in the world, and it's always been there for me. It's become something so incredible, and the more I think about it, the more it kind of blows my mind. Back in the day, when I looked at the internet, I never would have imagined it would become something as amazing as it is now. I just thought there were five websites in the world, besides news websites, and those websites had nothing but children's games, and news on games.
It's weird looking back, but man, the internet is awesome.
i don't remember a time without the internet, but i do remember a time when it was still kind of "mysterious." i used to go to dinky websites like cheatplanet and such and it amazed me that there could be that much information about legend of zelda in one place! now, despite its obvious vastness, the internet feels kind of "under control" in a way. stumbling in to new forums doesn't feel as new as it did back when cheatplanet was my homepage and gamefaqs was a far off land and registering for a forum was taboo.
I was born in 1987. When I lived in California for about seven years (until 2000/1), that was probably my most disconnected time from the internet. I watched a lot of cartoons in the morning before school. I played baseball for about seven straight years. I was really into biking and skateboarding, although the skateboarding was more because everyone else did it and they didn't allow bikes into the skate park that eventually went up near my neighborhood. I got into golf too because of some club privileges from my dads work and participated in a few tournaments locally. I also swam at least twice a week. Because it was California, as long as it wasn't winter the weather was amazing so I didn't need an excuse to go out to a park somewhere and just do [I]something[/I], be it some mock baseball or just playing on swings. I biked damn near everywhere and I used to have a ritual of biking to a blockbuster that was a few miles out from my house every Friday after school to pick up some videos. I also got really into Magic: The Gathering and played a lot at school.
As far as activity, living in California was one of the best times of my life. Schools were awful though. Then I moved to Ohio and that's about when I got into video games as much as I am now. School was better though and I have more friends from my time in Ohio now than I do from my time in Cali (none).
Basically, I went outside when I didn't play video games.
For me, it was a whole lot of Pokemon (or any other video game), a new play through would always make me happy. I have no idea how I never got bored of it though.
Played on the gamecube, went outside, did some schoolwork which did involve real research with literature in the libraries.
Born in '93, got internet about 8 or 9. We had a computer with internet, but I really had no idea what to do with it. I moved next door to a kid whose father was a computer tech, so as a result he learned a little about computers. He showed me some sites, I learned I could download SNES ROMs, learned about Mario Fan Game Galaxy, the Dailyclick and shockwave game sites.
I think we got a computer when I was 7, no internet though, so I mostly played video games.
We didn't have a computer or internet for a chunk of my childhood. Sad to say but times were better in some ways. Kids went out and had fun rather than being douches.
Born in 89, My father worked from home but it was some extremely poncy dial up connection which I couldn't give two fucks about. We weren't taught shit about the internet and barely anything about computers other than they were expensive as shit. Due to this we didn't really know/care what the internet was. We were too busy riding bikes, climbing trees and throwing myself and friends in to conifers as well as trying to catch tiny ass fish from a pond in the woods.
When PC's came in to my life more I'd just play to death one of the thousands of demos which would come packed on these CD's my fathers PC magazines came with.
The first things I remember about fully using the internet was using napster to be honest and a game called [url=http://www.getcontinuum.com/]continuum[/url]. It was all downhill from there.
And as someone else said. Most of you will never know the bitch about traveling to your friends house to find out they're not there.
Anyone else remember eMule
20 here, more playing games with friends.
But I've been a PC gamer since I was about 4. So playing games with friends at your house sucks ass because you have to take turns.
Cue retarded 'I'm the guest so I play forever' shit etc.
Also I played with lego a lot (still do)
The only real difference is I spend time on forums instead of playing games a bit more. I remember really early on in life I used to play outside a lot, loads of exercise etc but I developed asthma symptoms which meant I couldn't run more than 5 meters. I've recovered from that (I didn't know you can get better from asthma but apparently I did) but the damage was done, I was unfit as hell and because running left me in intense physical pain it got pretty bad mental association so I just can't be fucked with any form of exercise (the fact that I was unfit, had difficulty running and didn't enjoy exercise was compounded by the fact that I was constantly bullied in school because of those weaknesses, a nice little feedback loop)
Anyway what I'm getting at is I've pretty much spent my entire life in front of a computer screen doing something or other, before I was allowed to use the internet I played games, after I was allowed internet, I still played games, and I made amazing friends, met people the world over and found my intended career.
Honestly my life would be a lot shittier without the internet, I'd still be playing singleplayer games with no friends. In a way the internet taught me the social skills I needed in the real world and has made me a more social person (yeah I know right what the fuck) mainly through personas, I act differently when I play games with different groups of online friends, I learned this applies in the real world too and it made it a lot easier to fit in.
Computers really weren't a thing in Mississippi until the early 2000's. I remember when internet was first available here in like 04, and then in 07 or 08 or so broadband became widely available.
Cell Phones really weren't a thing until 2000, and they weren't virtually universal until about 07 or so. I remember plenty of time when these things weren't around.
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