Remember when Bill Gates said it years ago and now everyone thinks he’s a fucking moron for doing so?

I think he was on to something. Now that v2 has gone completely meta… for god knows whatever reason… I decided to do some of my own reflection on sites and Internet programs that have come and gone since the mid 90s. Then I realized that this reflection will take the work of both v2 and myself to give it true justice.

These are some of the things v2 and Zor loved most online that they can never get back.

Chat Rooms

[Zor] The birthplace of the Internet stalker. How joyous it was to come into a chatroom… ANY chatroom and see floods of “a/s/l?” everywhere. And of course, everybody lied. Not only was it permissible to do so, it was almost required. Of course I’m a 19 year old hot female cheerleader from San Antonio. I mean, shit, my name for this chat session is ToxicAngel! Now on to the lesbian cyber with you, “Ms. hot 22 year old female from California.” The person on the other end was ALWAYS the real deal… always. That picture of themselves, which looked identical to the latest YM model, always made you proud. Ignorance is bliss and you would ride that bliss train all the way.

I can’t believe how much fun I had with this thing. Damn!

IRC is still around, but it just doesn’t have that luster and excitement as finding a yahoo chat entitled “Bored and horny” moderated by someone who calls themselves “homiethefuckingclown.”

[v2] Wait, are you suggesting the girls I talked to weren’t real?

[Zor] I’m pretty sure at one point we were just talking to each other.

Newsgroups

I know newsgroups are used for something different now, but were were doing it before you knew where qwerty was

[Zor] To be honest, I don’t miss newsgroups all that much. We have forums now. But there was something special about sifting through millions of newsgroups before finally finding alt.binaries.entertainment.showbiz.stage.illusionists – I mean, shit, it’s where I got my start in magic. Who wouldn’t want to share all the secrets of magic with a hot 19 year old model from Texas?

[v2] alt-binaries.erotica.hentai. That is all, thanks.

[Zor] alt.binaries.erotica.v2.nudesisterpics. I rule!

[v2] That was uncalled for and unprofessional.

ICQ 98b

[v2] If hating Iraq taught us anything, it’s that everyone can do something useful once. Enter Mirabilis, the Iraqi company that invented ICQ – aka, the best Internet program of all time. Well, used to be.

Here’s the idea – and keep in mind that in the late 1990s, this idea was incredible. You had a program that told you when your friends were online using the computer. You could chat to them, send them viruses files, whatever. Until this moment, the Internet was a black hole. First person to mention AOL instant messenger gets a smack in the face. That was tied to AOL – ICQ was usable on any Internet connection and the interface and options were hardcore. It was the first time many of us ever heard of “proxy server” or “port number” or “donkey show – click here!” It even checked your POP3 mail, not that any of us knew what that was. Amazing. It had sophisticated controls, too, like “invisible mode” something that other messengers got 8 years later. Oh yeah, and offline messages, like email but better? Some programs got that 9 years later. Ahem. Offline messages ruled – all 11 times you got the same stuck message because the Iraqis hated you.

Look at that amazing interface, so many options! (I never did find the weapons of mass destruction feature, though)

[Zor] Let’s see… best usage of message history of any IM program ever. I think my favourite feature, however, would be selecting which friends could see you even when you were still on invisible mode. After a while you begin to realize all the friends who can always see you online are the only ones who should be on your list anyway. And no, v2, I actually sent you offline messages that said “I hate your fucking guts” 11 times a night.

Yes, I understand ICQ is still around now. But we specifically chose 98b because that was the BEST version before it went straight to hell. No bullshit, just awesomeness. I don’t believe this shit – spellcheck didn’t underline awesomeness. That’s actually a fucking word now? Seriously?

DailyRadar

[v2] Nowadays there’s such a glut of video game websites out, but back then there were only 3 worth reading. IGN, GameSpot, and Daily Radar. Daily Radar was the best of them all, because it was the more mature, business-minded site. Attached to this business sense, there was a hint of fun, a slight aura of entertainment that made it an irresistible choice. They even gave up on the “9.2″ bullshit rating system from other sites. I mean, really, what’s a 9.2 and a 9.3? Semantics. All you really wanted to know was, “Is this fucking game any good? $60 good?” Daily Radar just said it’s a Direct Hit, a Hit, or something else. Finally someone had the balls to say something was pretty good, but not 8.1 good. It felt like a friend was telling me about a game – and they were never wrong. What did you expect, really, from the website of print magazine Next Generation? That magazine was 230 pages of masturbating about next-gen hardware, but then it clearly said, “Yoshi’s Island is fucking amazing. Go buy it,” which mean they knew what they were talking about. In fact, now that I think about it, Daily Radar might have INVENTED the blog format for websites. It was DAILY Radar, which suggested that you visit every day, just like a modern gadget/gaming site. Genuis.

Sadly, as Next Generation magazine died, shortly after so did Daily Radar. Life was never the same since then. Now was all have to deal with “I give this game…an 8.25.” *Sigh*

This is not to be confused with the UK site of today, DailyRadar. That has a section for sports, for chrissake.

So much entertainment on one page – in 1999!

[Zor] This site was the reason we showed up at our last year of high school. You see, where we lived in Canada at the time, there was such a thing as grade 13. It was a “university preparation” year and the courses you took that year were the ones that counted towards your admission. For v2 and I, it was take the “take a few tech courses for the year and do fuck all the rest of the time” year. We had more spares than class – and even our classes felt like spares (spare periods… aka no classes for those who are confused).

We literally showed up, read DailyRadar until the end of class and walked out with 100% in our courses. Fuck that was a good year. I showed up to class to read about shit I should be doing/playing after school. I really don’t think high school could have reached a greater pinnacle. We tried a plethora of other sites to kill time in our class, but this was the true victor at the end of the day. No other site was quite as entertaining and pushed us to buy games, wait, GEMS that we still go apeshit about today.

AllAdvantage

[v2] You tell a young man in the year 2000, that he can make money by surfing the Internet at home. “Bullshit!” he cried. Well, imagine this – this program, AllAdvantage, is a little applet you install on your computer. It’s basically a toolbar that serves ads to you. It detects you using the computer (ie: moving the mouse) and pays you for how long you spend on it. So – exactly how long did it take us to install another program that moves the mouse for you? Instantly. Cha-ching. Needless to say I abused the shit out of it and got paid exactly zero dollars. My friends made a few bucks. I guess AllAdvantage’s algorithm couldn’t possible imagine someone using a computer 27.3 hours in one day. Damn.

Looks likes someone had more than one computer…asshole.

[Zor] Dude, I made $40 a month to keep my Internet on. It only lasted a month before they shut me down… but I did get paid. Those were the days – I got paid and you got laid. With my exes no less. “I hate your fucking guts” [Send][Send][Send]

Scour Exchange / CuteMX / Napster / Random FTP sites looking for MP3s

[Zor] Random FTP sites? I certainly do NOT miss that shit. That pissed me off to no end. Having to find ftp servers with mp3s on them, then finding out they are ratio servers. Meaning, for every kb that I download, I have to upload 2 or 3. On top of which, it has to be shit that the server doesn’t already have. Are you kidding me? How the hell am I supposed to GIVE you stuff if I don’t HAVE anything?

Eck. Those were the days. I shouldn’t gripe too much, it really was worth it. Back when downloading music illegally was a novelty and made you badass. Especially when you were scouring ftp sites for German rave music. It was excruciatingly difficult to find popular North American music unless you were a 1337 h4x0r… or IRC master.

Enter Napster – after all the bullshit of the ftp ratio sites and spending DAYS trying to find music, Napster was the second coming. Napster taught us that file sharing was not only the best way to use the internet, but it could be EASY too. The only real thing about Napster that became a fad was record companies trying to shut file sharing servers down. One went down, another came up, then we got torrents.

Would suck to be on that 56K modem now…

[v2] Dude, I was way ahead of you. While everyone was doing the MP3 music thing, I was thinking ahead. I had a video capture card in 1997, and I was feverishly converting my VHS porns to Internet files. Of course, that was before video compression invented, of if you wanted to download any of my collection it would only take you…3 years or so. It’s just as well, I got a guy in Russia right now almost done his first video now. I hope the 11 years wait was worth it, when he finds out that I just taped the porn off a scrambled pay-per-view channel and he’s doing to have to overdose on NyQuil to make any sense of it…

So there you have it – some of our favourite Internet things that turned out to be fads. Next time, we shall list more and dive head-first into some terrible nostalgia that makes us realize that our best days are behind us.

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