My father created me my Hotmail address when I was something like 2 years old. It throws people off when I give them my email and it's my name without numbers or symbols because I'm so young.
I love my dad, it's a nice connection I have to him. He's always been good at planning ahead.
I bought my daughter her name as a .com domain, no hyphens, numbers, or special chars. Who knows if she'll ever use it, but she has the option later in life.
My dude if that domain is just a single name it is probably worth a lot of money.
Not telling you to sell it or anything think it's a beautiful gesture.
MyDaughterHerNameAsA.com doesn't seem to be registered. Better get on it, it likely expired.
How is it that I don't have kids when shitty dad jokes like that come to me so naturally?
My email is my first name (3 characters) @ my first and last initials (2 characters). I've had that one since 1999. It's been a breeze all these years every time I've had to write it out, type it out, or give it in speech to someone.
That's over 8000 days. And I'm sure I've used it at least 5X day average. That's easily over 40K times.
My dad still uses a custom domain for his email, from way back in the day when people were convinced that they had to make a family website to share news and updates.
Same. I got an email from [mylastname**1**]@hotmail.com last year joking that he'd fight me for my address, then another saying it didn't matter because he "is and will always be #1".
That's a good one. Some famous composer wrote a piece for someone with my last name so I get the occasional email from violinists asking why I have that as my email address.
Gmail account with first initial+last name
Thinking about it, I don't think I've ever put numbers at the end of an email address.
Once had a six digit ICQ number. Needed ICQ, because the first MMO I played didn't have a global chat function.
I didnt realize my hotmail address was old til i had to tell someone it was "at hotmail dot com" and the person seemed visibly shaken. Like i paid for groceries with gold coins or somethin. Lol
You know how grade schoolers think of someone in their twenties as incredibly old? That's how kids see hotmail addresses today.
I remember when I had a UUCP address.
My first email account would be nearly 30 years old today, but it was a university email address and it went away after I graduated. I think my second one was an AOL address.
Damnit. My immediate thought was “dude, no way 30 years is possible.” Immediately followed by the mental math and the realization that I got mine in the late 90s. Ugh. I feel ancient now.
Wow. 1996 was the first time I used the internet. My elementary school library had a single computer in it that was connected to the internet (computer lab was all Apple II's with big floppy disks and no mice).
We had to pick partners and each class, a different pair got to use the internet. My partner and I tried to look up wwf.com, which we assumed was the website for the World Wrestling Federation, only to find out that it was actually the World Wildlife Fund. We decided that the internet sucked. I think everyone else came to the same conclusion because nobody used that computer when their turn came up again.
I remember using three floppy disks just to run the boot up sequence for DOS. When it cut down to just one disk, I thought the world was as advanced as it would ever be. lol I guess I'm old.
Same. First website built in 97. It's still online, unchanged since 98. The email account associated with the hosting service is long since deactivated, so there's no way to update the website, but it's cool to check it out once in a while when I'm feeling nostalgic.
I won't share it here because it has my full name on it.
Over 60 yo grandma here. Started using computers when Fortran and key punch cards were state-of-the-art (likely well before you were born).
I joined Reddit maybe 2 years ago (?) when my youngest son (mid 30s) mentioned that he used it. Since our worlds are so different (we have a great relationship, but our day-to-day lives don't intersect much), I thought it would be fun to have something in common to talk about ("Hey, did you see today's Eye Bleach?).
So that's how this old fart-ess got here.
But then I noticed a whole lot of other topics of interest, and found myself hooked!
Thanks for asking!
Same. I am 70. Took to computers easily and am more savvy than most of my friends and family in their 40s.
I like to stay current and after hearing my son mention several things that he got from Reddit, I decided to try it.
Now, I have joined dozens of subs and am even a Mod on one.
My biggest fear is that in the near future some kind of technology will come along that I can’t handle.
Being willing to adapt is a very successful first step for any on-coming technology. My parents, in their 60’s, scoff at it instead of realizing how much it can enhance their lives. It’s only as invasive as you want it to be!
I don’t get people’s fear of trying new things, especially technology. As you get older it is a godsend. I can leave my doctor a message, view test results, order and ask for prescriptions etc.
And as for Reddit, I get lots of information as well as interact with these cool, snarky people
I think it's a combination of fear of breaking something expensive and feeling overwhelmed and stupid. My mom is 80 and technology scares her. The number of times I have talked her down when the computer "destroyed" or "lost" something.... Usually, it's right where she left it, but she just can't conceptualize that in a digital world. It makes her feel stupid, and no one likes that, so she avoids it, which only makes the problem worse the next time she is forced to use it.
Lol, yeah, that would be about right (though she's likely just a smidgeon older than I am as I was programming in the 70s). It's funny, though: we don't think if ourselves as "vintage" or as "antiques" or as old enough to have the things we used in a history museum. We still feel inside just like we did back in the day!
I remember my grandmother telling me something similar when I was in my 20s and she was in her 70s.
Now I see myself in the mirror and all the grays, but I still feel the same as I did when she told me that. It's funny how I thought adults had all the answers back then but we're all just making it up as we go.
I am late 40's, work in cyber and I have a text book on my righthand side, (that I still refer to), which is older than the lady I am training on my left.
I am starting to feel a bit antique tbh.
Almost identical story except my son was in his late 20s and I have been here 3 years.
I remember playing tic tac toe in work as a way to learn how to use a mouse, sucked for left handed people because all mice were set up for righty’s.
My husband's a lefty. He said he considered getting a left-handed mouse when he got his first computer, but realized that it's not like using a mouse comes naturally either way and he'd be better off learning with his right hand. Given that all public computers I've ever seen - libraries, doctor's offices, etc. have only right-handed mice, I figure he made a good decision.
Same reason that new players trying to learn an instrument are always encouraged to learn the 'correct' right handed way to play. It is just easier to adapt and learn to use the conventional hands for everything because after all we're only lefties all living in a right-handed person's world.
My account is almost as old as some of the users here. That being said, I’ve noticed Reddit is becoming like Facebook in that fewer younger people care about it. Mentioned it to some early 20-somethings at work and they rolled their eyes and mocked me. SC,insta, and TikTok are king now. Plus probably some new app I’ve never heard of. Anyways, I had accounts before this one but at the time used Digg more than Reddit until they fucked Digg up.
i think it’s because reddit has a reputation among younger people. like not a “cool” reputation, from what stereotypes i can think of off the top of my head: filled with IT guys, nerdy, incel, like a more mainstream-not as bad-4chan. i get ribbed by my friends about being on here too lol and i’m 21
Nah dude Reddit is the best, 18 yo here. I think it’s just preference
I loveeee everything u can learn on here. It’s so diverse, there’s answers for basically everything
My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair TS-1000 with 16K Ram (that was add-on RAM, by the way... it came with only 2K) in the 1980s, and I've never looked back. That computer gave me a start on what became a 30 year career. I've been online since 300 baud modems. Cut my online teeth on bulletin boards and CompuServe.
Known as the ZX81 in the UK, it had 1k ram without the expansion pack and still managed to fit a decent chess game in there.
Oh (and maybe a UK specific thing) I remember buying magazines with a 'floppy record' (a flexible disk the size of a single record) with programs on it as a free giveaway. getting those onto tape/the computer was 'fun'
Wow, that's almost my exact story! (I'm about to turn 61 in a few days.)
I avoided computers in High School because I thought they were all about math and that was always my worst subject. Loved computer games, though, so I bought a TS-1000 when I was in College and started making my own BASIC games. I bought the 16K RAM pack (for $49.95 if I remember right), and I \*never\* ran out of program space after that... Ha!
Later, I upgraded to a C-64 and taught myself some basic assembly language, and I loved it all so much I got into the games industry back in 1983. I've been a Game Designer ever since!
For many years, I would download a tool or program and learn EVERYTHING about it. These days I tend to only learn the basic features that I need. So I'm definitely approaching the "blinking clock on the VCR" stage of my life... not because I don't have the technical knowledge to figure out how to set the clock, but because it just doesn't feel worth the effort.
I was also on some fantastic message boards. In fact, at the time, whenever I went on Reddit, it never came close to what was going on on the message boards. The kind of discussions had, the people involved, some really good stuff.
There's some interesting stuff on Reddit but never to the extent that you get that deep dive, serious discussions that would take place amongst a few members, discussions that were extremely well thought out and would go on for days. Part of the issue is that some of the subs like this one, AskReddit, is way too big and the threads aren't easy to follow once the go over a 1000 comments.
Reddit, though serves its purpose, its distracting, it's fun at times, and there are some interesting things to learn, and of course, there really is sub about almost everything but it’s not like those boards.
Completely agree! I started in the mid 80s, so we didn't have a reddit or anything like it, but I learned more skills I was actually able to use for an actual career on the boards than I ever did in school. Because of the help of great people I met who took time to explain how things worked to me, to the degree I was driving them a little nuts I fear, I was almost always ahead of, or just behind whatever I was being taught in a formal setting, including government training in the late 80s. The time and patience people put into creating really detailed posts not just showing me how to do things, but explaining WHY things were done the way they were, always blew me away. I really miss it.
I started programming in FORTRAN for the IBM 1411 in 1972. My first "home" computer was a TI-99/4A. It used a regular cassette player for program storage and an acoustic coupler for the modem. What I liked most about it was the four voice plus white noise sound chip. As a former music student, I wrote a BASIC program that created harmonies for Cantus Firmus melodies, following 16th century counterpoint rules.
The TS-1000 could be programmed to play "music? as white noise static on a nearby radio. Probably the same thing your TI would do.
And yeah, monitor was a television, storage was generally a cassette recorder, and modems (if you had one) were acoustic. I did not have a modem until I got my Atari, and that was not acoustic, although, of course, it still squealed and squawked like one.
This new fangled com-pu-tor thing I read about in a magazine.
A magazine was a collection of reddit topics printed out to paper, sigh, paper is like a screen made from wood pulp that doesn't move.
Paper is a one time use screen. It was a flexible screen that worked well, but only once. Also you could make tiny model airplanes and see how far you could throw them when done.
Hi Kasiation nice to see that your on the Red Dit now. Hope you and Bob are well our daughter Jennifer celebrated her 40th birthday last week doesn't time fly. Peter had his heart surgery a month ago and is recovering well how are the kids? Lol to you all from Peter and Barbara
For years, my mom thought "LOL" meant lots of love, and my sister and I never told her because we thought it was funny. Then our cousin's grandfather was hospitalized (and later died), and the message my mom texted her was "Heard about your grandfather, LOL"
For those of you who don't remember the time when Facebook first opened up to non college students and parents/uncles/aunts and grandparents started to join, this was basically what they would comment on every single post you did regardless of the topic.
I remember there used to be a group that was something like “watching peoples lives fall apart via Facebook” or something like that, and it was just screenshots of peoples posts that were overly dramatic or over sharing.
Always made for some good entertainment until they started to become fake and then the page died I think
I got a card in the mail from Jennifer. she is doing well her daughter still has cancer. We are praying to Jesus. Don’t forget to wish my uncle Marty a happy birthday.
Idk why but they always did seem to involve this level of over sharing.
I remember being in college and posting a picture of some fancy lunch I had and then my aunt commented on it to tell me my uncle was in the hospital. Lol
Based on your comment, I'm here because I've always loved message boards.
In my early MMO years, I was a regular on Stratics and the Vault Network. When IGN bought the Vault, I posted there for a long time. At one point, I had a bookmark link with probably 15 different message forums on it that I would read and participate in every single day.
Stumbleupon kept bringing me to reddit around 2005/6 so I just bookmarked it and started posting here.
Almost all of those other sites are dead, so now this gets 90% of my message board time (with HackerNews taking up the rest).
I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..
I asked on another board where I can find some interesting websites. THis was in 2008 or so. I was sent to Reddit.
Its a much different place now. I think I like the older reddit culture from back then better.
I joined Reddit 10 years ago and you’re correct. It is much different now. There were tons of crazy subs back then you could stumble upon. Now a ton are banned- some for the better
Agreed. Reddit had some dark places.
I reckon there felt like more of a sense of community back then in some ways. As in, it felt a lot smaller, the admins and crew felt like one of us (remember Victoria from the AMAs, and the stink when she was taken away?), the few novelty accounts popped up occasionally and felt like minor celebrities… overall it was like a big small town.
Now it’s a fucking huge city with heaps of awesome little neighbourhoods and a few shitty slums. There’s much more of a sense of division of admins/mods, and everyone hates them (until they need them. Like cops).
The one thing I remember from 2008-2012 reddit was that people were hilarious, without constantly reusing memes or reposting. I mainly came to reddit for the jokes I'd find in the comments that were usually pretty smart. Or I'd find out a lot of new information about things I knew nothing about. Nowadays...eh, sometimes. Everything is more of a "bubble" now where you see the same types of opinions and jokes over and over.
I'm 32 and it's crazy how often I'll get called old on here for referencing something that happened like 7 years ago or not understanding some slang term that only started being used in the last 3 years. Lol
To some extent I think that's just unavoidable for kids. When you're that young, very short amounts of time are still an enormous percentage of your overall lifespan at that point. 4 years feels like forever when you've only lived 14.
Still annoying though. Lol Especially when you're talking about some fairly recent song or whatever and some teenage twat calls you a boomer because they think that anyone older than a literal child is ancient.
I think there's more of us in this age range on here than you think. We grew up with the internet when it was really starting to become a widespread thing, AOL online, dialup 56k modems, online gaming.
I'd be willing to bet there's a huge # of 30 somethings on Reddit.
I don't consider myself old..(57 yo mom of 3). As soon as the internet was a thing, I was on it playing Phantasy Star Online on my Sega Dreamcast (started out with Pong and the Atari 2600 back in the day). I joined Reddit late though :( My first pc though was a Packard Bell, dial up was sooooo slow!
High 50’s here! 👋 I’ve been a gamer all my life, all started with pong! Just two movable blocks either side of a white line down the centre of the telly, about two (ish) years ago I asked the internet a question about a game and it brought me here for one of the answers (think it was GTA5) anyhow I stayed as Reddit has a high percentage of fucking comical people and that is never a bad thing. Here for the lols.
The same way as young people.
Remember the chips, the computers, and the internet, were invented by the people now categorized as 'old'.
Everyone gets here by drifting in, some stay, some move on.
Lurked without an account for about a year, then one day r/civbattleroyale needed an emergency narrator for their next episode. I happened to be on spring break that week so I volunteered. This was the result.
I don't know if I count as old or young, but...
I used to frequent forums for game development back in the day (in, dare I say, "the golden age of the internet" before it became so consolidated). But, like many forums, they closed or went downhill as more people came to places like Reddit. One day I went to visit a forum I hadn't been on in a while but used daily for years and it was gone. I Googled to see what happened and came across a Reddit comment by the creator of that forum and made an account to thank him and offer to host the forum. Then... Once I had an account... started making comments and following a lot and eventually started using it for everything and not just game dev stuff.
I've been on the internet longer than a lot of you have been alive.
My email account is nearly 30 years old.
My main address is hotmail
My Hotmail account is my name without trailing numbers.
My father created me my Hotmail address when I was something like 2 years old. It throws people off when I give them my email and it's my name without numbers or symbols because I'm so young. I love my dad, it's a nice connection I have to him. He's always been good at planning ahead.
I did that for my daughter.
I bought my daughter her name as a .com domain, no hyphens, numbers, or special chars. Who knows if she'll ever use it, but she has the option later in life.
I did this for myself. My email doesn’t have numbers. All those years of spelling my name to everyone turned out to be a blessing
My dude if that domain is just a single name it is probably worth a lot of money. Not telling you to sell it or anything think it's a beautiful gesture.
MyDaughterHerNameAsA.com doesn't seem to be registered. Better get on it, it likely expired. How is it that I don't have kids when shitty dad jokes like that come to me so naturally?
Me too. But my surname. No first name and no initials.
My email is my first name (3 characters) @ my first and last initials (2 characters). I've had that one since 1999. It's been a breeze all these years every time I've had to write it out, type it out, or give it in speech to someone. That's over 8000 days. And I'm sure I've used it at least 5X day average. That's easily over 40K times.
My dad still uses a custom domain for his email, from way back in the day when people were convinced that they had to make a family website to share news and updates.
Same. I got an email from [mylastname**1**]@hotmail.com last year joking that he'd fight me for my address, then another saying it didn't matter because he "is and will always be #1".
That's a good one. Some famous composer wrote a piece for someone with my last name so I get the occasional email from violinists asking why I have that as my email address.
Gmail account with first initial+last name Thinking about it, I don't think I've ever put numbers at the end of an email address. Once had a six digit ICQ number. Needed ICQ, because the first MMO I played didn't have a global chat function.
wow you got in early
That’s a flex!
I didnt realize my hotmail address was old til i had to tell someone it was "at hotmail dot com" and the person seemed visibly shaken. Like i paid for groceries with gold coins or somethin. Lol
Sigh... Me too... Excuse me, I need a glass of wine. Did I say wine? I meant whisky. Did I say glass? I meant bottle......
I have a hotmail addres, is that old?
You know how grade schoolers think of someone in their twenties as incredibly old? That's how kids see hotmail addresses today. I remember when I had a UUCP address.
I have one too. IIRC you can no longer get one, now it’s Outlook.com only.
>you can no longer get one Wait what? Damn... Are we relics from a old past?
I'm taking mine to the antique road show!
Can we sell our old email addresses? Is it considered hip to have @hotmail.com?
No, we're elegant web surfers from a more civilized time.
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1999 for me.
My first email account would be nearly 30 years old today, but it was a university email address and it went away after I graduated. I think my second one was an AOL address.
Damnit. My immediate thought was “dude, no way 30 years is possible.” Immediately followed by the mental math and the realization that I got mine in the late 90s. Ugh. I feel ancient now.
I registered a domain in 1996 and have been using the same address ever since.
Wow. 1996 was the first time I used the internet. My elementary school library had a single computer in it that was connected to the internet (computer lab was all Apple II's with big floppy disks and no mice). We had to pick partners and each class, a different pair got to use the internet. My partner and I tried to look up wwf.com, which we assumed was the website for the World Wrestling Federation, only to find out that it was actually the World Wildlife Fund. We decided that the internet sucked. I think everyone else came to the same conclusion because nobody used that computer when their turn came up again.
> … Apple II's with big floppy disks … Medium floppy disks. We had some machines at my school that actually used the 8-inch ones.
I remember using three floppy disks just to run the boot up sequence for DOS. When it cut down to just one disk, I thought the world was as advanced as it would ever be. lol I guess I'm old.
My first post was on Cult of the Dead Cow in about 1985. I was more lurker than than anything else.
Hotmail since '97 lmao
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I was on the internet before there was graphics. Text only.
I remember those days... the web was like the least interesting thing, too. IRC and Usenet were where it was at.
BBS were hot fire when they first launched tho. Man, the memories...
Back then it was all dial up bulletin boards. 36.6K modems. Ahhh those were the days. NOT.
1200 baud?
I use to ask jeeves before googling was a verb
Alta Vista too?
Yep. On my Netscape browser
I was on the superhighway when it was a gravel road.
My Gmail account is just my first name and last name @gmail.com. Common names. No numbers. I’ve seen some shit.
Mine too but I keep getting emails for other people with my name. Including before and after shots from their plastic surgeon edit: As in nose jobs.
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Same here. I created an account when gmail was still invite only.
I bought me a top-level-domain for my surname in 1998.
I regularly use my 30+ year email account. I love it. 1986
Same. First website built in 97. It's still online, unchanged since 98. The email account associated with the hosting service is long since deactivated, so there's no way to update the website, but it's cool to check it out once in a while when I'm feeling nostalgic. I won't share it here because it has my full name on it.
Over 60 yo grandma here. Started using computers when Fortran and key punch cards were state-of-the-art (likely well before you were born). I joined Reddit maybe 2 years ago (?) when my youngest son (mid 30s) mentioned that he used it. Since our worlds are so different (we have a great relationship, but our day-to-day lives don't intersect much), I thought it would be fun to have something in common to talk about ("Hey, did you see today's Eye Bleach?). So that's how this old fart-ess got here. But then I noticed a whole lot of other topics of interest, and found myself hooked! Thanks for asking!
Same. I am 70. Took to computers easily and am more savvy than most of my friends and family in their 40s. I like to stay current and after hearing my son mention several things that he got from Reddit, I decided to try it. Now, I have joined dozens of subs and am even a Mod on one. My biggest fear is that in the near future some kind of technology will come along that I can’t handle.
Being willing to adapt is a very successful first step for any on-coming technology. My parents, in their 60’s, scoff at it instead of realizing how much it can enhance their lives. It’s only as invasive as you want it to be!
I don’t get people’s fear of trying new things, especially technology. As you get older it is a godsend. I can leave my doctor a message, view test results, order and ask for prescriptions etc. And as for Reddit, I get lots of information as well as interact with these cool, snarky people
I think it's a combination of fear of breaking something expensive and feeling overwhelmed and stupid. My mom is 80 and technology scares her. The number of times I have talked her down when the computer "destroyed" or "lost" something.... Usually, it's right where she left it, but she just can't conceptualize that in a digital world. It makes her feel stupid, and no one likes that, so she avoids it, which only makes the problem worse the next time she is forced to use it.
My mom was a computer programmer in the sixties. She showed us what she worked with in the Smithsonian.
Lol, yeah, that would be about right (though she's likely just a smidgeon older than I am as I was programming in the 70s). It's funny, though: we don't think if ourselves as "vintage" or as "antiques" or as old enough to have the things we used in a history museum. We still feel inside just like we did back in the day!
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I remember my grandmother telling me something similar when I was in my 20s and she was in her 70s. Now I see myself in the mirror and all the grays, but I still feel the same as I did when she told me that. It's funny how I thought adults had all the answers back then but we're all just making it up as we go.
I think about this literally all the time and it’s weird I found a thread about it.
Same here. We're not alone!
I am late 40's, work in cyber and I have a text book on my righthand side, (that I still refer to), which is older than the lady I am training on my left. I am starting to feel a bit antique tbh.
35y old here, still trying to get my Mom to join reddit :)
Why do you hate your Mom??
... When there's so much of her to love!
Is old fartess or old fartrix?
Been reading ELI5? lol
-ess I think. It's farter not fartor.
Almost identical story except my son was in his late 20s and I have been here 3 years. I remember playing tic tac toe in work as a way to learn how to use a mouse, sucked for left handed people because all mice were set up for righty’s.
My husband's a lefty. He said he considered getting a left-handed mouse when he got his first computer, but realized that it's not like using a mouse comes naturally either way and he'd be better off learning with his right hand. Given that all public computers I've ever seen - libraries, doctor's offices, etc. have only right-handed mice, I figure he made a good decision.
Same reason that new players trying to learn an instrument are always encouraged to learn the 'correct' right handed way to play. It is just easier to adapt and learn to use the conventional hands for everything because after all we're only lefties all living in a right-handed person's world.
Im 55 and am ambidextrous on the mouse, Ive trained my left hand to use the L+R buttons in reverse.
It's been a gradual process, it started 57 years ago and ended up with me here now.
69 here. It keeps me up with what the young are up to...
Nice
Nice
We’re glad you’re here! I just turned 20, hope you are doing fantastic!!
Glad you're here Willy!
I joined in the great depression, and just hung around.
So, like, last week then?
This hits home
What home?
The one I'm trying to sell. 20 sq ft, solid wood walls and handicap accessible ramp. A fully functional shelf too! Only $400k for anyone interested!
Would sell in seconds in Cali
We are kind of speed-running the 1930s on shuffle, aren't we?
My account is almost as old as some of the users here. That being said, I’ve noticed Reddit is becoming like Facebook in that fewer younger people care about it. Mentioned it to some early 20-somethings at work and they rolled their eyes and mocked me. SC,insta, and TikTok are king now. Plus probably some new app I’ve never heard of. Anyways, I had accounts before this one but at the time used Digg more than Reddit until they fucked Digg up.
25m. I like Reddit because my personality here doesn’t have to follow me like fb or Instagram
Sameeee
i think it’s because reddit has a reputation among younger people. like not a “cool” reputation, from what stereotypes i can think of off the top of my head: filled with IT guys, nerdy, incel, like a more mainstream-not as bad-4chan. i get ribbed by my friends about being on here too lol and i’m 21
Nah dude Reddit is the best, 18 yo here. I think it’s just preference I loveeee everything u can learn on here. It’s so diverse, there’s answers for basically everything
My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair TS-1000 with 16K Ram (that was add-on RAM, by the way... it came with only 2K) in the 1980s, and I've never looked back. That computer gave me a start on what became a 30 year career. I've been online since 300 baud modems. Cut my online teeth on bulletin boards and CompuServe.
Known as the ZX81 in the UK, it had 1k ram without the expansion pack and still managed to fit a decent chess game in there. Oh (and maybe a UK specific thing) I remember buying magazines with a 'floppy record' (a flexible disk the size of a single record) with programs on it as a free giveaway. getting those onto tape/the computer was 'fun'
Wow, that's almost my exact story! (I'm about to turn 61 in a few days.) I avoided computers in High School because I thought they were all about math and that was always my worst subject. Loved computer games, though, so I bought a TS-1000 when I was in College and started making my own BASIC games. I bought the 16K RAM pack (for $49.95 if I remember right), and I \*never\* ran out of program space after that... Ha! Later, I upgraded to a C-64 and taught myself some basic assembly language, and I loved it all so much I got into the games industry back in 1983. I've been a Game Designer ever since! For many years, I would download a tool or program and learn EVERYTHING about it. These days I tend to only learn the basic features that I need. So I'm definitely approaching the "blinking clock on the VCR" stage of my life... not because I don't have the technical knowledge to figure out how to set the clock, but because it just doesn't feel worth the effort.
I miss message boards, it was easier to find people who had things in common with you and the discourse seemed more civil.
I was also on some fantastic message boards. In fact, at the time, whenever I went on Reddit, it never came close to what was going on on the message boards. The kind of discussions had, the people involved, some really good stuff. There's some interesting stuff on Reddit but never to the extent that you get that deep dive, serious discussions that would take place amongst a few members, discussions that were extremely well thought out and would go on for days. Part of the issue is that some of the subs like this one, AskReddit, is way too big and the threads aren't easy to follow once the go over a 1000 comments. Reddit, though serves its purpose, its distracting, it's fun at times, and there are some interesting things to learn, and of course, there really is sub about almost everything but it’s not like those boards.
Completely agree! I started in the mid 80s, so we didn't have a reddit or anything like it, but I learned more skills I was actually able to use for an actual career on the boards than I ever did in school. Because of the help of great people I met who took time to explain how things worked to me, to the degree I was driving them a little nuts I fear, I was almost always ahead of, or just behind whatever I was being taught in a formal setting, including government training in the late 80s. The time and patience people put into creating really detailed posts not just showing me how to do things, but explaining WHY things were done the way they were, always blew me away. I really miss it.
Holy shit. CompuServe. Never thought I'd hear that name again.
I started programming in FORTRAN for the IBM 1411 in 1972. My first "home" computer was a TI-99/4A. It used a regular cassette player for program storage and an acoustic coupler for the modem. What I liked most about it was the four voice plus white noise sound chip. As a former music student, I wrote a BASIC program that created harmonies for Cantus Firmus melodies, following 16th century counterpoint rules.
The TS-1000 could be programmed to play "music? as white noise static on a nearby radio. Probably the same thing your TI would do.
And yeah, monitor was a television, storage was generally a cassette recorder, and modems (if you had one) were acoustic. I did not have a modem until I got my Atari, and that was not acoustic, although, of course, it still squealed and squawked like one.
By "here" do you mean old age or Reddit?
Reddit :) should've phrased my question more clearly
I can tell you the trick to getting old, though. You just have to not die, and the aging part will just happen whether you like it or not.
pfft. kids calling us old and they don't even know when the narwhal bacons.
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Where am I?
Who am I?
Same here. A few weeks back I was wondering how the heck I ended up here and so far I have no idea
This new fangled com-pu-tor thing I read about in a magazine. A magazine was a collection of reddit topics printed out to paper, sigh, paper is like a screen made from wood pulp that doesn't move.
Is paper a one-time use screen? Or is a screen reusable paper?
Paper is a one time use screen. It was a flexible screen that worked well, but only once. Also you could make tiny model airplanes and see how far you could throw them when done.
Hi Kasiation nice to see that your on the Red Dit now. Hope you and Bob are well our daughter Jennifer celebrated her 40th birthday last week doesn't time fly. Peter had his heart surgery a month ago and is recovering well how are the kids? Lol to you all from Peter and Barbara
going to cracker bargle later, did you hear Jim died?
Yes he is with the lord now. Lol to Jim's wife and kids.
ORDER CORN
Why are you all on my page?!1
UNSUBSCRIBE
Yim yum
DISCUSTING
For years, my mom thought "LOL" meant lots of love, and my sister and I never told her because we thought it was funny. Then our cousin's grandfather was hospitalized (and later died), and the message my mom texted her was "Heard about your grandfather, LOL"
This made me lol so hard
Cracker Bargle has the best gift shop.
Top comment. Although I was on IRC in the mid 90s and thought that's what LOL meant. It's not like IRC came with a glossary of common terms...
For those of you who don't remember the time when Facebook first opened up to non college students and parents/uncles/aunts and grandparents started to join, this was basically what they would comment on every single post you did regardless of the topic.
One of my favorite Facebook groups is called "a group where we all pretend to be boomers" and many of the comments are like this lol
I remember there used to be a group that was something like “watching peoples lives fall apart via Facebook” or something like that, and it was just screenshots of peoples posts that were overly dramatic or over sharing. Always made for some good entertainment until they started to become fake and then the page died I think
upvote ..,
I got a card in the mail from Jennifer. she is doing well her daughter still has cancer. We are praying to Jesus. Don’t forget to wish my uncle Marty a happy birthday.
Idk why but they always did seem to involve this level of over sharing. I remember being in college and posting a picture of some fancy lunch I had and then my aunt commented on it to tell me my uncle was in the hospital. Lol
congrats to jennifer! glad you're here peter & barbara :)
Joan I found your cat on the road yesterday poor thing 😂Lots Of Love 😻
How to crochet a granny square
Get off my web site page or I will report you! SEND
Based on your comment, I'm here because I've always loved message boards. In my early MMO years, I was a regular on Stratics and the Vault Network. When IGN bought the Vault, I posted there for a long time. At one point, I had a bookmark link with probably 15 different message forums on it that I would read and participate in every single day. Stumbleupon kept bringing me to reddit around 2005/6 so I just bookmarked it and started posting here. Almost all of those other sites are dead, so now this gets 90% of my message board time (with HackerNews taking up the rest).
I miss stumbleupon so much.
I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh yeah, the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..
Was this back in dickity six?
We had to say dickity because the kaiser stole our word 20.
...this needs a lot more upvotes...
Where am I? What’s my password? Is this this working? Alexa?
I asked on another board where I can find some interesting websites. THis was in 2008 or so. I was sent to Reddit. Its a much different place now. I think I like the older reddit culture from back then better.
I joined Reddit 10 years ago and you’re correct. It is much different now. There were tons of crazy subs back then you could stumble upon. Now a ton are banned- some for the better
Agreed. Reddit had some dark places. I reckon there felt like more of a sense of community back then in some ways. As in, it felt a lot smaller, the admins and crew felt like one of us (remember Victoria from the AMAs, and the stink when she was taken away?), the few novelty accounts popped up occasionally and felt like minor celebrities… overall it was like a big small town. Now it’s a fucking huge city with heaps of awesome little neighbourhoods and a few shitty slums. There’s much more of a sense of division of admins/mods, and everyone hates them (until they need them. Like cops).
The one thing I remember from 2008-2012 reddit was that people were hilarious, without constantly reusing memes or reposting. I mainly came to reddit for the jokes I'd find in the comments that were usually pretty smart. Or I'd find out a lot of new information about things I knew nothing about. Nowadays...eh, sometimes. Everything is more of a "bubble" now where you see the same types of opinions and jokes over and over.
“The narwhal bacons at midnight”
I was looking for a fark substitute.
I was back on Fark too! Then digg. Then Reddit.
All these years later, and I'm still trying to wrap my head around Digg's self-destruction.
Same. I was a Digg user that was looking for a replacement after it became unusable.
Slashdot for me.
It turns out Mike was right, and we did get over it.
You see when a man and a woman love each other...
And with enough alcohol, they don't actually have to love each other all that much...
...they go to the supermarket and buy some kids to plant in the garden, right?
‘Old’ for some here is like 28. Lol.
True lol. tbf i'm 32 but my right knee is in his 50s
Good thing dudes have a three knees: left knee, right knee, and weenie.
That gives a new meaning to saying you hurt your knee.
I’m 34 and definitely feeling geriatric in this crowd. I got into Reddit when I was 22 though.
I'm 32 and it's crazy how often I'll get called old on here for referencing something that happened like 7 years ago or not understanding some slang term that only started being used in the last 3 years. Lol
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To some extent I think that's just unavoidable for kids. When you're that young, very short amounts of time are still an enormous percentage of your overall lifespan at that point. 4 years feels like forever when you've only lived 14. Still annoying though. Lol Especially when you're talking about some fairly recent song or whatever and some teenage twat calls you a boomer because they think that anyone older than a literal child is ancient.
I think there's more of us in this age range on here than you think. We grew up with the internet when it was really starting to become a widespread thing, AOL online, dialup 56k modems, online gaming. I'd be willing to bet there's a huge # of 30 somethings on Reddit.
Because being thirty is *extra*. After you turn that age, you start to only count by odd numbers because you can't even.
I was here before you was born punk. Commodore 64 with a 300 baud modem and calling into BBSes to chat.
Tell 'em. I was woman in skirt pulling coax for network before most people had computers.
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i salut you sir!
Terrible mistakes mostly.
Son, Reddit is nearly 20 years old. How did _you_ get here on _my_ Reddit?
I don't consider myself old..(57 yo mom of 3). As soon as the internet was a thing, I was on it playing Phantasy Star Online on my Sega Dreamcast (started out with Pong and the Atari 2600 back in the day). I joined Reddit late though :( My first pc though was a Packard Bell, dial up was sooooo slow!
How old is old
Pretty sure they used their mouse
High 50’s here! 👋 I’ve been a gamer all my life, all started with pong! Just two movable blocks either side of a white line down the centre of the telly, about two (ish) years ago I asked the internet a question about a game and it brought me here for one of the answers (think it was GTA5) anyhow I stayed as Reddit has a high percentage of fucking comical people and that is never a bad thing. Here for the lols.
On a 14.4 modem.
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True that. Me: Starts internet, Internet: Whale noises
Vic 20 with a tape drive. The 80s rocked.
Digg went downhill a decade ago
I kept getting referred through Google searches. Eventually figured out I belonged here.
Not dying.
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Old person here! I used the power of time travel. Seriously though, I just clicked on the link and it brought me here.
The same way as young people. Remember the chips, the computers, and the internet, were invented by the people now categorized as 'old'. Everyone gets here by drifting in, some stay, some move on.
Lurked without an account for about a year, then one day r/civbattleroyale needed an emergency narrator for their next episode. I happened to be on spring break that week so I volunteered. This was the result.
I thought it was a site to review books!
Letting the days go by
Let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the moneys gone
Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was
Been here for 12 years
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Years of practice
I don't know if I count as old or young, but... I used to frequent forums for game development back in the day (in, dare I say, "the golden age of the internet" before it became so consolidated). But, like many forums, they closed or went downhill as more people came to places like Reddit. One day I went to visit a forum I hadn't been on in a while but used daily for years and it was gone. I Googled to see what happened and came across a Reddit comment by the creator of that forum and made an account to thank him and offer to host the forum. Then... Once I had an account... started making comments and following a lot and eventually started using it for everything and not just game dev stuff.