“…the AOL days…”
That funny feeling when AOL users consider themselves the experienced, wisened ones.
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
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Microblog Memes
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I met my spouse on AOL 25 years ago.
That's amazing. It doesn't seem crazy these days to meet your spouse online, but I know y'all must have gotten some funny reactions telling people back then.
If you aren't horrified by what's happening to Iran right now then you're an empathy deficient and that comes with a separate set of problems.
I'm 40, and absolutely remember the old internet. But the news traumatizes me so consistently lately I find myself crying every day.
I don't know the context for this microblog, but I don't think whats happening in Iran is what he was thinking of when he said "digital horrors".
I remember seeing footage of bombings from the Bosnian war in the 90's. Well before digital video on the internet was popular, it was just on cable TV.
I don't know Lauderdale personally, but he has a funny YouTube channel and seems cool enough that I'm gonna hold off on judging this without context.
The early Internet had a few simple rules:
- Never feed a troll
- Never trust anything written online
- Never tell anyone your real name or address
- There are no girls online (i.e. people are not who they claim to be)
- Online is not IRL
And most people knew these rules. The proliferation of the Internet has brought a lot of people who don't understand these rules in to the fold and it has made the Internet a worse place. "Normies" seemingly think the Internet world works like your normal social interactions - it does not. The anonymity of the Internet brings out the worst in people. We really need to bring back the rules of the early Internet for the safety of everyone.
Feel free to comment more rules if you remember any.
As much as I miss the early Internet though, I genuinely do wish I'd had more protection from the seedier sites. I am not better off for having seen the gore and shock sites.
"Pics or it didn't happen" doesn't really work anymore.
Oh absolutely, I also believe that growing up with dialup was great, it meant that being online cost money, giving parents incentive to monitor the time spent online by children, and gradually getting used to being online.
I remember asking and being allowed 30 min online, every few weeks.
It worked well as we hadn't transitioned to an online first society.
Then later in school there were a few shock sites being sent around, goatse was never huge at my time in school, for me the most prolific shock site around school was lemonparty.
Even later in school, I started realizing how much gore and weird crap you could find, and a morbid curiosity took over forna few days, I remember finding a picture of a guy who got beheaded after falling on a spiked fence, you could see the head on one of the spikes, and another time when I saw the aftermath of a guy being sucked into a jet engine, that one was quite mild as the result was too abstract and you only saw a red paste, so it never bothered me.
As it stands now, I think there is a value of mild supervision of kids and teens when online.
I mean mild in a way that full access is allowed but only on a desktop in a shared space.
And at 16 they can move their computer into their own room, and at 18 any admin account on their computer that the parents have should be removed.
I had dialup, but we had 2 phone lines and our phone company was the ISP so a local number with unlimited access. I've been terminally online for way too long.
NGL, I saw the gore and shock as well - stileproject, rotten, marsonline, ogrish, bestgore... and even WPD on Reddit in the early days and it really did give me an appreciation for safety first! in almost everything I have done since.
The biggest rule was proof/cites linking to legitimate sources, (not conspiracy sites or your friend "Sally" on facebook) or it didn't happen.
Never tell anyone your real name or address
more importantly, if you do know the real identity of another participant, don't reveal it
The eternal September brought new people without end who never acclimated.
That's what Eternal September means.
Translator note: keikaku means plan
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You also never clicked an advert or used your real name.
I don't even see the ads anymore, just the close button. My eyes just slide off the edges.
Please tell me that people aren't clicking ads...
I've clicked a few. Mostly by accident, the rest by deception.
Enough are doing it that it's still profitable. Last estimates I saw were 10% who saw an ad clicked one, and 10% of those who clicked bought what they saw
That's just hard to fathom for me. Wow.
It's actually been dropping over time. It used to be more like 10%, now I see some people celebrating 0.4% conversation rate. What's also been happening in conjunction is the cost has dropped. On like Facebook and stuff now you can serve like 1000 impressions for like $5 or something. I don't know exact numbers on cost there but stupid low like 0.10¢ per clicked ad.
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1% of ad views result in a sale? That seems implausible
The terms you want to search of you're curious "Click through Rate" and "Conversion Rate". It's actually been falling over time as people get more and more used to ignoring ads or using ad blockers. They vary some for type of product and location of ad (fantasy novels on a book blog are likely to be higher, drop ship Amazon stuff on Facebook are likely to be lower), but yeah, not super high.
The thing is, I do not honestly object to ads - the internet has got to be paid for somehow..
My objection is the way that ads are served. It's the creepy stalking users far and wide across the web that irks me.
This targeted bullshit. No, no and NO!
I'm more likely when I am on any given site - to check out an ad that is discrete, static and embedded and shows up regardless of the ad blocker I use.
That is different.
At that point, I'm seeing something that another person or business that runs the site has made a decision to advertise, it may be a product or service they like and use.
The rest of it though.. can rot.
Back in the day you could catch malware from online ads. And the pop-ups, the damn pop-ups, so annoying. For me, the final straw was when ads got sound. That got real old real fast, kind of like web pages with embedded MIDIs. I installed an ad blocker and haven't looked back. Any time I browse Internet without a blocker it's a horror show that kills me inside. If ads were reasonably sized static images I could manage it, but advertisers shot themselves in the foot by making their ads so obnoxious and went all-in on tracking. The trust is gone forever. Ads and advertisers can burn in hell.
From an actual conversation I had once:
"What's your problem with adds, I love them. They always recommend things I could actually use. It's genuinely a great way for me to learn about new products or services."
do you live within c-suite boardroom powerpoint presentation
Sure. Fundamentally, this is what ads should do. The problem comes from how intrusive they are in pushing their propaganda. And now they’re literally everywhere.
I remember back in the day before browser tabs when sites would open new windows for ads. And sometimes those ads would open more windows for ads. And some of those windows had sound, or porn, or both. Worse yet, some would open off screen so you couldn’t easily close them. That’s where the term “pop-up” came from in pop-up blockers.
~Talk about whack-a-mole.~
Even Youtube is filled with scam ads, trusting ads to deliver you worthwhile results is like trusting Facebook not to sell your data to the highest bidder.
Wait.. you're watching youtube w/o an ad-blocker?
I haven't seen a YT ad in more than a decade, I did happen to watch this Coffeezilla video yesterday on AI deepfake ads.
I sometimes do it if it's a company I really dislike. Then I immediately click back, happy in the knowledge that my brief action probably cost that company a tiny bit of money.
(Side note: I'm an early Internet user.)
Are you one of those people that returned empty prepaid junk mail flyers? ;)
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The only thing that continually surprises me about the internet is how young y'all are.
I'm 61 and feel like an absolute fossil out here most days.
The kids are just babes..
I was watching my own foot surgery the other day (local anesthetic) and even the surgeon's assistant had to cringe a bit at a certain spot while I was happily watching. She said most patients have to look away during these procedures but after growing up with unrestricted access to the internet and an at times unhealthy amount of curiosity I've seen it all. Should I have watched those isis beheading videos? Probably not. The production value was insane though.
i watched the video of them cutting that guy's head off too, and i'm the opposite now. in fact i'm trying to figure out how to not faint and piss myself when i get a blood draw. i fucking hate it, it's so stupid, i get tattoos and i'm fine, but if i even think about anything going past a certain depth to my insides (blood lab, surgery, injection), it triggers vasovagal syncope
Back before TLC was trash they had a show called The Procedure where they showed a full surgical procedure, uncut and uncensored. Just a camera pointing down at the table or video from inside.
I was the only one in my family who could stomach it thanks to the internet.
i remember going to ogrish.com and rotten.com and thinking "wow the internet is fucking great," and trolling people on AIM chat before anyone called it "trolling." then i grew up
Being 12 and visiting rotten.com with your friends after class was our passage to adulthood ritual
Rotten was my go to site for checking whether my connection was working. No idea why.
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You can also tell who's been online for a long time, when they're just tired of some snarky troll's shit to block them when their shitty responses are read to your posts and replies. We see things these idiots think nobody else sees.
What digital horrors?
instatwittoksnapbookcord
when us old people were younger, preteens weren't dying from social media "challenges" and/or cyber bullying
kids were dying for stupid reasons, as they always have, but none of those reasons were digital horrors
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