9 Internet Trends And Woes That Every 90s Kid Can Probably Relate To
Niharika has a passion for all things art, music, and travel and has over 4 years of experience in writing for social media. During her spare time, she likes experimenting in the kitchen, playing vide... read full bio
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At present, the internet is one of the most powerful tools present in the world. Apparently, there were about 3.4 billion internet users in the world by the year 2016. As of now, China, India and the United States of America have the most internet users and India and Bangladesh are two of the top countries with the most users joining. However, the internet boom has only happened recently. There was a time when the internet was not in the palm of our hands and would be accessible to only the most elite. During the 90s and early 2000s, the internet grew more and more accessible to people and with it spawned tonnes of memes and pop culture issues that we can all relate to (1):
1. The Landline Compromise
There was nothing more annoying than being in the middle of an important flash game and having your mom pick up the landline to exchange recipes with her friends. This might seem like a non-issues to the younger generation because they cannot understand what the early days of the internet were like, but it was a major source of teenage angst for a lot of us.
2. Super Embarrassing Email Addresses
Admitting that your email id was something cringy like “princesspoppyqueen13@gmail.com” during a class presentation would mean being teased for the rest of your high school life. Almost every 90s kid can relate to having a supremely embarrassing email id when they were teenagers or younger. There should probably be a support group on Facebook for kids who got bullied for their lame email ids.
3. Going Down To The Cyber Cafe
Ah, the days when no matter how rich you were, you’d pool up at a cyber cafe to play games or scour the corners of the new discovered (for you) internet. While cyber cafes still do exist, they are not as popular anymore as more and more households now have at least one computer or mobile phone device with which they can access the internet. As the internet grows more and more accessible, new dangers and threats are posed.
4. Internet Explorer Pop-Ups
Wasn’t it super duper annoying when you’d peacefully browse the internet and suddenly be cornered by annoying pop-ups and cookies? While we still do have to deal with annoying pop-ups every now and then, they are nowhere close to the intense number of pop-ups that we used to receive back in the day. So many times our computers would accidentally land up with viruses and we’d have to face the nuisance of hanging and lagging computers.
5. Orkut
Before the days of Facebook and Twitter, people used to use Orkut to connect with their close friends and loved ones. The interface was quite basic and a little helter-skelter in terms of functionality compared to Facebook and more modern internet social media applications.
6. Myscene And Club Penguin
MyScene, Barbie.com, and Club Penguin were places for internet friends to connect and chat. The websites had super fun games related to skincare, beauty, and many other websites that were super useful and a great way to bond with friends. If you had strict parents who monitored your internet usage and didn’t want you to use chat applications or “social media” websites like Orkut, you could always ask your friends to meet you “at Club Penguin”. Talk about a simpler time!
7. Dial-Up Internet
Before we could access dial-up internet, many of us would simply dream of the powers of the internet and wait to hit cyber cafes whenever we had the chance to access them. Dial-up internet brought the power into our own homes and gave us the ability to access it from the private space of our comfort zones. We would no longer had to look over our shoulders when we would search for simple and stupid questions on internet search engines.
8. Downloads Taking Forever
Remember the time when music files would take 5 hours to download? Even the smallest of files would take ages to download and god forbid if your father shut off your internet connection midway through. It’s funny to think back now and wonder what life would have been like if computers had continued to run at this speed.
9. Telling Your Friends To “Come Online” After School
Ah, the days when you could just pass chits in the classroom asking your friends to come online at a certain time after class. Now that the internet is in the palm of our hands and we have constant access to it, even remembering a time when you would ask your friend to come online seems crazy.
We’ve come a long way from the days of dial up modems and online chat forums. The one thing that has remained the same is that people still feel the constant need to stay connected and try and interact with one another. Do tell us which of these 90s things were you the most fond of, in the comment section below.
