934
Is this what the internet felt like?
(lemmy.world)
I've been exploring the fediverse and subbing and posting all over the damn place. Realizing lemmy can federate with kbin blew my mind. Not to mention the possibility of turning my old laptop into a personal server to host my own instance. Is this what it felt like to discover how the internet worked in the 90s?
I mean yeah, kind of. You would dial up to your ISP or local BBS, browse whatever you wanted, and surf to the next location. In a way it was very similar to lemmy. Nothing was centralized. There was a feeling of discovery with every place you visited and corporate greed hadn't fully taken over yet.
You remember when people were putting up their own static "front page" to the web? I mean, because the web was still small enough that individuals could still reasonably curate their own little corner of it? It was like if Reddit was just a little cottage tucked away in the English countryside, instead of some massive metropolitan bus station.
Netscape had a "webpage builder" and it felt so legit and we had no idea how to get it to the internet...
Did you remember to include a gif of a hardhat worker with a sign saying "caution: this site is under construction"?
Haha of course! And a visitor counter.
Then you slowly realized the visitors were all you, refreshing the webpage to see how many visitors you had.
Don't forget your personal guestbook!
Those BBS days! Finding an "elite" BBS and downloading One Must Fall 2097 or Doom!
We played Legend of the Red Dragon and you could be killed while offline so you had to hire a guard or go hide... I woke up at 4a to beat my friends online to kill them first some days...
LORD is still around apparently !
https://legendreddragon.net/