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31 Things That Are So Ancient, Only True Internet Veterans Will Remember Them

Let's see if you're a true Internet Veteran™.

Recently, u/Marambal17 posted in r/AskReddit posing the question, "What is so ancient only an internet veteran can remember?" Here's what so-called ✨internet veterans✨ had to say.

1. "Signing up for a new email address and the username not already being taken."

2. "Having to clean the gunk out of your trackball mouse with your fingernail."

an old mouse with an arrow pointing to the trackball

3. "Having to print off directions from MapQuest if you were going on a long car trip."

4. "The construction worker excavating GIFs and the 'under construction' banner!"

5. "Floppy disks and CDs that came in the mail containing 500 free hours from AOL."

6. "Going into AOL chatrooms and saying, 'Hey! They put a fireworks show into the chat! Hold Alt and hit F4 and you'll see it!' Then watching as, one-by-one, chatroom participants disappeared."

7. "Having to make sure no one is on the phone so you can use the internet."

8. "A/S/L."

9. "Having to actually type out 'http://www.' before entering the website."

10. "When we used to risk getting viruses just to get cool cursors."

11. "Dial-up."

12. "When Amazon just sold books."

13. "Counters on webpages."

14. "Making AOL away messages in the funky fonts and colors."

15. "Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM! MUSHROOM!"

16. "Dialing into the bulletin board."

17. "RealPlayer. Also: uninstalling RealPlayer."

18. "Playing pool in Yahoo! chatrooms."

19. "Netscape."

20. "Putting a music CD into the computer to check out the 'extras' only for it to load way too slow to do anything with."

21. "Not being able to play Flash games until the Flash Player had been updated."

22. "Having to be invited to Gmail."

23. "Neopets!"

24. "LimeWire."

25. "Having to physically carry your computer around to a friend's house if you wanted to play multiplayer."

26. "Encarta."

27. "Hamster dance."

28. "Ask Jeeves."

29. "When all links were underlined."

30. "GeoCities."

31. And lastly: "Actually having to 'switch on' the internet. Opening the shortcut, typing the password, clicking connect, and then waiting for the dubstep music to finish."

H/T r/AskReddit