Y’all remember the computer room? Like that guest bedroom or whatever that wasn’t really used for anything other than housing The Computer?
Plus all the accoutrements that invariably went along with The Computer.
A printer and a scanner
A filing cabinet for all the things you liked to print and scan
A rack full of CD-ROM disks like Encarta 95 and Ecco The Dolphin and CorelDRAW 4
A beige container with clear plastic lid for storing floppy disks, that for some reason had a lock on it as if floppy disks were the Crown Jewels
I still have all this stuff and the room. probably because I am not good at cleaning. also the office chair straight out of 90s. Maybe if enough time passes of not throwing things out I will be able to open a museum and make some extra
We definitely upped our chair game since then. That’s for sure
I don’t know, I feel like office chairs are made for some aliens. Never found one that is comfortable so I always sit like some fucking crab in a jar, feet on the table, hands desperately trying to maintain stable connection to peripherals.
Truth to be said I gave up on sitting. I do all my work reclined, slightly stoned, half nude with an air fan on max setting in a 25 wet bulb celsius
…i miss having no responsibilites.
So many accoutrements! This was also the original home of the box of random cables that lived under the bed. Some day I’ll be buried with those cables.
We put internet on mobile and things went to shit.
Being constantly connected is bad for us because we haven’t figured out the right coping mechanisms. I bet the generation Gen Z raises will do a lot better since Gen Z will be familiar with exactly how hooked on simulated connectedness you can get
I doubt that. My mother was addicted to CompuServe back in the day and I was a neglected child because of it. I give my kid all the attention I can, but he wants more than I can possibly muster.
Well. Then maybe the next gen after that will be the cohort that for the most part raises their kids like you are. We all try to protect our kids from the trauma we went through, and raise them to interact with the world in better and healthier ways than we do. Right now the fight is to make sure the next generations get the chance to do better
I agree and hope that continues to get better for more children. I just feel bad for the kids that don’t have as empathetic parents.
I doubt that since most of gen z is injecting the feed directly into their arteries. They suffer fucking withdrawals if disconnected for more than a few minutes without something else to occupy them.
Those withdrawal symptoms are what they’re gonna want their kids to avoid. They’re so addicted because their parents didn’t worry as much as they should have about if all that connectivity would be okay.
They’re addicts, they won’t look past their own needs long enough to think of others. Social media addiction isn’t as physically destructive as meth but is out it right up there mentally
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After my dad had locked me out of the computer room, I learned how to pick locks. And I’m not even kidding.
I can still hear the white noise ringing of the hard drives that hit you as soon as you walked in. So good
Me and my brother established ourselves as like The computer kids so my extended family just dumped off all there broken and old computers
Now we have a room, not for using them but to store all the random tech we have accumulated
The dads of two guys I knew remodelled their entire basements to accommodate “the computer.” Now writing this down, it sounds like they bought VAXes or something, but it was just plain old Pentiums, plus printers and stuff.
Remember? I still have one.
We call them “home offices” now but ultimately they’re still the same thing lol
id use it to play backyard baseball all day
I could never find the computer room.
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That was pretty normal when I was 10. I was born in the 80s. It was novel like TV in the 1950s or radio in the 1920s.
Yep same. AOL chatrooms and shock sites like rotten(dot)com were a staple of middle school sleepovers.
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I’m in my 20s and it wasn’t any different for me
In the mid-90s my dad bought a Compaq Presario and the LucasArts games multi-pack. X-Wing, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, and Indiana Jones. Amazing. I was like a God.
I also remember playing a game called The Neverhood, which was a claymation liminal space game. Gave me nightmares of being trapped there, but it was still one of my favorites.
LucasArts was goated at that time
I had the exact same Lucas arts box set. Each of those games was amazing! And I think I actually finished them all. I ran them on my Packard Bell Pentium 75 with 8mb of ram. So much fun then!
Damn this thread is making me feel ancient.
This was my first computer.
I still kick ass at Snake Byte.
(Also, The Neverhood has one of the best game soundtracks of all time. I still listen to it.)
This was my computer lab at school. Vividly remember the double stacked apple floppy drives and the wood box of floppy discs that you could check out at the school library to use the on the computers.
Didn’t have a home PC until the Commodore 64. Still have that one in a box somewhere with way too many accessories.
Everybody wayyyohhhh
Mmmm-zibadaba zibadaba zadap-eee!
My gravy love, potaties love…
https://youtu.be/pEjBlL64SuU for the uninitiated
Zork
I had every Zork. Even the crappy CD-Rom one with bad video starring the older brother from The Wonder Years.
Zork Zero was my favorite. I still have the Zorkmid coin that came with it.
Neverhood and Sam & Max were great games.
Neverhood was my fucking childhood, man. The day I beat the game my grandfather and I celebrated. Add to that Myst, RCT1, Zoo Tycoon, and eGames Pack Volume 1 (which had DEMONSTAR on it) and you’ve encapsulated basically 100% of my gaming experience until I discovered Minecraft in 09-10.
Did you check out the Neverhood sequel from a few years ago? Was via Kickstarter, I think.
I was whatever was exactly one generation later. Also a Compaq but my games were a demo pack of X-Wing, Tie Fighter, Dark Forces, and Yoda Stories.
Tie Fighter and Dark forces were great games, but I always liked Xwing, because I was more accurate when the aiming reticle was locked center screen.
FUCK YES NEVERHOOD
“Get off the computer, I have to make a phone call!” -My childhood
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That’s why I waited until 2 am to dial in to the local BBSes. On a Tuesday. During the school year.
*Taps temple*
Neighbor: gets nice computer
Me: is this for me 🥺👉👈
I’m guessing the OOP was born early to mid 80s.
Could even be late 90s or early 2000s in some places
Born in 2000, my parents had a computer (running Windows XP) but it was only for work. Went over to my friends’ houses to experience the information superhighway.
I did it being born in 94. It wasn’t about who has access to the internet, it’s that I wanted to hang out with my friend in person like a normal 10 year old but the Internet was the coolest thing to do at the time.
Hell, friends and I were doing it 2008 in college. 6 or 7 of us all gathered around a single 24" monitor watching the latest episode from Nostalgia Critic or something similar.
One of things I miss most about my college years was when I lived off campus in a rambling old house with a bunch of friends, and we had an entire room for our PCs - so we weren’t crammed around one monitor, but we were physically hanging out together while each using their own rig. Permanent LAN party, for three years!
83 baby here. Perfect timing. Grew up during the early internet, before Facebook and phone cameras. No such thing as online bullying and nobody could film you getting beaten up.
I used to phone the internet and sometimes it’d be busy and I’d have to phone it back later.
I remember sharing porn on floppy disks in highschool. I didn’t have Internet yet so a few of my friends were gods among men.
Click here if you’re over 18?
Not much has changed there. Unless you live in a nanny state of “small government” and “save the children”. Bitch you turned out fine! Let em rub one out in peace.
I remember printing out pictures that, in hindsight, were Photoshopped, but it was before I knew what Photoshop was. I learned a lot between 2000 and 2005.
Her head wasn’t glued on quite right.
If AI figures out fingers, we will really be in trouble.Or that fire doesn’t belong in a tent I guess .
I think a few months ago I was hearing “GPT 4.0 has finally figured out fingers” and seeing examples of correctly generated fingers.
Still seeing AI images with fucked fingers, though. Guess GPT still isn’t that good at it, or maybe they’re using some budget AI.
So this guy I knew was trading porn. Mostly pics, a few low-res clips. Some warez here and there, too. Most people did not have fast internet yet, let alone a CD burner. He’d lug around these large wooden crates filled to the brim with home-made porn collection CDs. It was totally out there.
Cardboard box of playboys in the woods, but for the digital age
set to the tune of Treat the Kids Right by The Interrupters
Let the kids wank
Or you’re gonna get a spank
My friend used to print out pics on plain paper and distribute to us. what a champ
Son: Mom! We need more ink!
Mom: What!? I just bought ink last week!
Mom: What have you been printing!?
Son: IDK!? School Stuff!?
Mom: Okay sweetie. I’ll get you some more from the Office Max!
I remember when digital audio first became available and downloading a supercut (which we didn’t have a word for then) of Homer Simpson saying “d’oh”. We probably had to wait at least half an hour, and then we didn’t have a program on the computer that could play audio files (or at least not one we could find) so we had to search around and wait even longer to download some shareware program (Goldwave)
Having like 3+ audio players until Winamp came along and rocked that world.
It really whipped the llamas ass
Assuming Windows, I think Sound Recorder should have worked. I remember wasting many hours just playing with it by reversing, speeding up, or slowing down my voice that I recorded on the old, beige Bob Barker-like standing microphone.
It would not have been able to play mp3s or anything but a .wav file.
You kids and your fancy MP3s. In my day we used Real Audio, uphill both ways.
Yuck… Real player. What about vivo player? Somehow was even worse!
TBF RealAudio typically used a 200:1 compression ratio, which nothing can survive. Tiny files, at least.
Well, yeah, but it was the player software itself that sucked so bad. It could’ve easily been less bloated but for years they added more and more bloat. Even an old slow computer shouldn’t be struggling hard just to open a damned audio player.
My first sound file was a supercut of Keiko O’Brien giving birth on Star Trek: The Next Generation, edited to make it sound like an orgasm 😆
Not much editing was needed lmao!
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There was a time when Windows didn’t have a TCP/IP stack so it couldn’t connect to the Internet at all and you had to use a third party program like Trumpet Winsock.
I still use Goldwave to this day, so about 20 years. Been using the free version the entire time. I just edit some file every so often to reset my clicks. I need to just buy it, but for some reason I remember intentionally not buying it, maybe was subscription or something.
I was surprised to look it up and see it still kicking. I actually paid for it but haven’t used it in probably 15 years
I miss Audiogalaxy. I got so many BBC radio dramas from there and I love radio drama. I’ve gotten a lot of them I’ve lost over the years back, and a lot of new ones, thanks to the Internet Archive, but it’s a fraction of what I used to have.
But backing up data back then was way too expensive except on CD-Rs and I have no idea where those CD-Rs went. They’re long gone now.
No I can’t relate to that memory because nobody had internet when I was 10 🥲
Oh, me too… When i was 10, i was visiting friends to play Pac-Man together on their brand new Atari.
Or pong
User name checks out :']
Now we’re talking! #TeamAtari
Nobody had personal computers when I was ten.
Not even a RadioShack TRS-80?
Not even an Altair 8800, at least in my country.
We got internet when I was around 7, Prodigy, 1994 or 1995. I never used it because there wasn’t shit for a kid to do. We had Prodigy until like 2002. My old man signed a long contract with them, it was a good deal, but wouldn’t you know, right after he signed it, cable internet became available. And you can bet 14 year old me wore him down, it was not a want, but a need.
Prodigy
I’m a firestatah
Twisted firestatahI would love to have experienced that generation of electronic industrial music, but I’m not sure it was anyplace for a 10 year old.
Living in a university town with a much older, tech-savvy brother meant I first used the internet in 1990 at the age of 13. I used the internet before pretty much anyone I know other than my brother, but I was on MU*s and Usenet like it was home and then I discovered IRC…
I’m not saying I was smart, just lucky. In fact, I was pretty stupid about the internet. I remember seeing an early website in 1993 maybe and saying something like, “it’s cool, but it will never replace Gopher.”
That’s an impressive level of early adopting :-)
Gopher was brought back to life later
My mother would tell us that she especially loved visiting her grandparent’s house because they had color tv
Well now you’re making me feel old because I was talking to my daughter today about how my mother occasionally went to a friend’s house to watch his brand new television back in the early 1950s.
Fuck, squids now watch TV too?
I’m as surprised as you are. I mean, I shouldn’t be, because he didn’t even know coupons existed on the internet until a week or two ago.
One of my buddies had a AOL birthday party where we got the internet for “30 days free” and we just spent the time taking turns chatting with people in chatrooms.
I spent so much time in AIM chat rooms in my teens right around the turn of the millennium. Incredibly naive, almost certainly had to have been talking to some creepers at some point. But hey, I had a good time.
A/S/L?
Offensive/offensive/New Jersey
When I was a teen my answer was always 69/Ya Mom/Everywhere.
Man, back then I always thought I was so witty with that bs.
We were all sooo wittttyyy
Old enough to remember a world without the internet.
I would go to my friends house to play RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 she bought for 60$, i would spent the day playing with her on a single computer taking turns and discovering the game and then walk 45 minutes back home. 🥰
Same! Except it was a bootleg version because this was Argentina 🤣
My friend gave me a burnt copy of rt1. I still play it. But I bought it legally on steam
You still have the copy for when we lose Gaben, and his succession plan fails to secure the kingdom from vultures?
Of course. Not sure if that copy is starting to delaminate considering it’s like 20 years old CD.
Very good memories! 😊
Some did this because it was a long time ago and the internet was new and only a few people had it.
Some people did this because the internet wasn’t new, and the parents knew what kind of trouble giving a 10 year old unmonitored access to the internet could lead to - which meant that they would have to travel to that one friend’s house whose parents didn’t give a damn.
Then there are those that grew up after the age of smart phones and can’t understand how two people could read from the same phone screen at the same time.
I’m in that first group and can still hear the squeal of the dial-up modem then, “You’ve got mail!”
Some people did this because the internet wasn’t new, and the parents knew what kind of trouble giving a 10 year old unmonitored access to the internet could lead to…
Happy Tree Friends and helicopter dick jumpscares, among other things.
