Gorodenkoff - stock.adobe.com The internet is constantly changing, evolving faster than any one individual can possibly track. But that's where hindsight comes in: When you zoom far out, the difference between a scroll 20 years ago and a scroll now is surprisingly stark. In a nostalgic thread on r/AskReddit, the "internet elders" of the world, as the original poster refers to them, open up about the specifics of the digital age of decades past you could hardly believe as a young person now. Whether it's the screech of a dial-up modem or the art of raw-dogging ("surfing," as it was once known) the web without algorithms, redditors share what earlier iterations of the web were really like to use. 1. Leaving the internet for the day Long before smart devices kept people connected around the clock, logging on was a conscious choice. A fully considered decision. Once you stepped away from the family desktop, the internet effectively ceased to exist until your next session. Comment in r/AskReddit That you were just done with the internet for the day. You would log out, shut off your computer or it was someone elses turn and yours would be done and you wouldn't think about it or get back online sometimes for days. Also, that you would scroll the internet with friends. We would all just pull up a chair and type in random websites(before google) and see what hit or what we could find. Comment in r/AskReddit I miss that. The internet was a place you'd go, spend a bit of time, and then leave. I need it to be that again 2. Hitting the end of the page The concept of the endless scroll did not always exist. The early web was compartmentalized, requiring people to manually click through individual, stationary pages to keep absorbing content. Comment in r/AskReddit There used to be an end to the pages. Like at the bottom of each page there was a footer and the scroll bar would get to the bottom and then you had to go to a new page to consume more content. Barbaric, I know, but we got by Comment in r/AskReddit Sometimes you’d run out of new pages, and then you would go to a completely different site to look at that one. 3. Dropping connection for a phone call Sharing a single landline connection for both the phone and a 56k modem (yes, that was the speed then) meant that any incoming or outgoing telephone call could instantly sever a digital session. Because of the bandwidth constraints, logging on meant tying up the house phone. Comment in r/AskReddit You finally get on and then your sister picks up the phone and knocks you off. 4. Developing comprehensive guides for free Before major wikis and video tutorials, passionate folks of the internet manually typed out lengthy instructional documents to help others. These text-heavy files required serious dedication and were shared purely for the love of the hobby. Comment in r/AskReddit People used to write video game walkthroughs in plain text in their free time for no monetary gain and then post them publicly. Many were better quality than the official guides you could buy, albeit without pictures. And there were no ads when reading them. Comment in r/AskReddit God, I miss peak GameFAQS. So straightforward, in-depth, and accessable. Hell, most guides even had a table of contents. Scraping YouTube guides doesn't even come close. 5. Prioritizing anonymity Giving away personal information used to be viewed as a major safety hazard. Early adopters were heavily warned to never use their actual names, faces, or real-world locations in digital spaces. Chat rooms were rife with people inventing their "ASL" (age, sex, and location) as a joke, and sensitive data was not widely dumped out for anyone to consume. Comment in r/AskReddit Constant warnings to never use your real name, never give your real location, where you work/go to school, etc. Comment in r/AskReddit And years later you signed up for Uber so you could give a random company all your personal information including your current location so they could send a complete stranger to pick you up in his unmarked car. 6. Skipping mandatory account sign-ups Visiting a new website rarely required a tedious registration process. Browsing was mostly open, allowing immediate access to information and media without continuously handing over an email address and creating yet another password. Comment in r/AskReddit Not needing an email address to create accounts on various websites Comment in r/AskReddit Not needing to create accounts to use, visit, or download things from 99% of websites. With few exceptions, the internet was free and open. 7. Avoiding algorithms The modern tech landscape relies on tracking behavior to serve hyper-specific content to individuals. Decades ago, every visitor to a homepage experienced the exact same layout, news, and navigation links. Comment in r/AskReddit There was no algorithm feeding you anything specifically for you. It was generic feeds and we all saw the same news articles or links if we visited the same site. It was actually better that way. We learned things and read views that were not identical to ours regularly. Comment in r/AskReddit ugh yes I miss this so much. Sometimes I deliberately sign out of everything or open a private browser just to see what's popular with everyone and not curated to match what the internet thinks I want to see. 8. Facing an onslaught of chaotic ads Back in a world without ad blockers and seamless influencer-served sponsorships, digital advertising was incredibly intrusive. Early adopters remember raucous banners, flashing colors, and relentless windows popping up. Comment in r/AskReddit You must have been on the internet even before me then, because all I remember is embedded ads, banners and ads in literal pop-up windows that you'd had to close manually. I remember one time one website just bombarded me with these windows, like 1 per second! They were endlessly filling my task bar faster than I could close them and I had to restart the computer. Comment in r/AskReddit I still remember how wrong it felt when I first started seeing ads popping up. Usually it was the less desirable pages and ads were a sign to steer clear. Eventually those little ads became more common and it was downhill from there. Now even sponserships are normal on YouTube. It's just weird. 9. Enduring wild and colorful web design Standardized templates were either not available or kooky to their core. Amateur webmasters took it upon themselves to design their digital homes precisely how they wanted. The visual choices were often unconventional and aggressively colorful, sometimes verging on hallucinogenic. Comment in r/AskReddit How many websites were an ungodly combination of yellow text on a fuchsia background ... usually with a horribly insane amount of animated gifs. Comment in r/AskReddit How “frames” dominated website design for a hot second before everyone realized it’s horrible. It’s been scrubbed so hard from public memory I’m sure few folks don’t even know what I’m talking about. 10. Navigating the fear of viruses Browsing early sites sometimes felt like wandering through a minefield of malicious software. Without sophisticated firewalls, people were highly susceptible to downloading insidious programs by mistake. Comment in r/AskReddit The fear of viruses. They used to be much more prevalent I think Comment in r/AskReddit I think another big change with viruses was going from pranksters/chaotic mass destruction to targeted ransomware to extort money. While it's fair to say the internet has moved through many eras, pros, and cons, the consensus seems to be that the convenience of the modern web outweighs the nostalgic charm of its wilder early format. Still, there's no denying the long-gone amusement of landing on a particularly goofy GeoCities page. What do you remember most about the early days of browsing? Share your own memories, read the full thread on r/AskReddit, and find more conversations like this in r/Answers, r/Nostalgia, and r/technology. This story highlights the perspectives of Reddit users, not Reddit, Inc. Some posts or comments may be lightly edited for clarity. Questions or concerns? Contact us at upvoted@reddit.com.