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Old enough to remember a world that smelled like an ashtray. Old enough to have played sonic 1 on a Japanese cart on release. Old enough to remember the wild west days of the web, before it became a corporate wasteland.

This was a time before youtube.

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I remember typing in code from a gaming magazine because there was no storage. You turn off your computer and it’s gone.

Worst part was when your triple checked everything and it still wouldn’t run only to get the corrections in the magazine next month.

I spend the first 8 years of my life in China, we just had TV (it’s like cable with a box thingy I think) that we had to pay for, and like we didn’t have any other entertainment other than like childrens books or boardgames/cardgames that I’d only have my older brother to play with. Didn’t even have friends I don’t remember having any friends.

Then once we immigrated to the US. We didn’t get internet at first, but we got library cards in the NYC Brooklyn public library, and like I got access to the library computers with internet and that’s the first time I’ve really had access to the internet (around 2010), ans I had zero clue how to use it lol. I just want to play games at that time, not clue how to go on those websites…

And omg my cousins who went to the library with us (so I think my aunt, aka: those cousin’s mother, was trying to show us around of “how stuff works” in the country) just refused to help me. They see me and like: “eww this peasant kid fresh off the boat doesn’t even know how to use a computer”, I felt so sad… I mean you had to wait in line using your library card to register at the kiosk thing, and you only get 30 minutes once its your turn, so I kinda just spend like… 15 minutes not know how to find games to play… then finally my aunt sort of forced my cousin to help me…

Fucking Tiffiany, what a bitch…

I feel like American-born kids just have this weird arrogance, and doesn’t even treat people of their own ethnicity nicely, not even a relative.

But anyways… I basically jumped from zero internet to 2010s internet, no clue wtf is “golden age of internet” y’all talk about.

Then we got like a very cheap laptop that’s shared between my older brother and me, but he took the admin account and only gave me a standard account, so I couldn’t even install anything… :(

I remember we used to go to a nearby McDonalds for free wifi lmfao

Then we finally got internet… it was a company called “Optimum” and its like $50 a month, but we got the promotional first 2 years at $30 a month or something, and idk what the speed even was, probably very slow.

But my patents really only let me use the computer for like… 30 minutes a day… 😭

Its like DRUGS, why did you do that to me mama?

Okay she didn’t want me to get addicted to this “drug” known as the internet. Didn’t want us to “走火入魔” or whatever that means.

Sometimes she just take the modem when its the weekends and she left home for something so we can’t play all day… :(

Sometimes take the laptop charging cable too :(

I was so sad… :(

And like then as we got older, mom would unplug the modem when we go to sleep so we can’t use the internet at night… I mean yea I get it from a parentinv PoV lol, but like when i was that kid, I felt so sad :(

Edit: Also didn’t get a smartphone (or any phone at all) till like 2015/2016…

I was watching an old episode of Columbo and realized how old it was when a lady used a teletype to retrieve information on a employee. I was born in the 80ies and always had old computers in the 90ies so I learned to use BASIC and DOS, but anything that doesn’t have a screen seems like it’s from centuries ago to me.

Remember when nobody had any computers and we would just go over to each others houses and get kicked out by their parents because there was nothing to so we’d ride our bikes around on roads that were too busy and go places we shouldn’t be?

I took for granted that the internet only existed in libraries and wealthy friends’ houses

I threw house parties every other week for years when I was just post college. There ended up being three rooms almost every time: People watching weird movies in the living room, people cooking and drinking in the kitchen, and people group surfing the internet in the computer room. It was amazing.

I remember installing programs with several consecutive floppy disks on my dad’s computer

I remember being 10 and we’d head over to the one kid who had a computer’s house, ask their mom if it was okay to use the internet (her phone would be unavailable during this time), and somehow we’d manage to find Newgrounds. We’d spend hours watching videos of stickfigures killing each other to the LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR song.

Or videos where Pokemon violently killed one another.

I miss the old internet so much.

Internet was good when it was shackled to computers and wasn’t spread everywhere via smartphones.

Commenting this from smartphone.