Discovering computer as an adult makes you go crazy. Discovering computer as a baby makes you go crazy. In all of human history, there will only ever be one generation to discover computer at the correct age: 13
Discovering computer as an adult makes you go crazy. Discovering computer as a baby makes you go crazy. In all of human history, there will only ever be one generation to discover computer at the correct age: 13
While we're at it, here is the best book ever written about AOL Instant Messenger Teenagers
ohh this looks great, added to my backlog. Will be back in 3-18 months with comments lol
📌
It’s was a simpler, if not kinder, time.
Part of why I recommend this book to everyone is that there has never been a more accurate depiction of AIM anywhere ever. It’s note perfect there (and in many other places).
🫡
This book fucking rules.
To address three FAQs: - "Actually I discovered computer at age 10 or age 16" yeah that's 13 👍 - "What about gen x" oh here we go again 👍 - "Actually I discovered computer at age 13 and am still crazy" everyone is crazy for various reasons 👍
We got our first non-WebTV home computer in February 2000, when I was…13. Hmm, checks out.
WebTV
Hell yeah, was browsing only the coolest Nintendo 64 websites for codes, cheats, and forums on that bad boy
You brought me back to a time where I was using Ask Jeeves on the livingroom telly to get cheats for my playstation games, damn <3
What if you discover computer at age 6 but don't have Internet connection until age 16
Sounds like you’re right in the pocket then
Success win!
This is me and honestly, it was great
I dominated my classmates in LOGO, then I did everything I could to avoid taking computer programming courses for the rest of my life
Yeah, first used a computer in kindergarten, but never used the internet till highschool. Up til then a computer was just a thing I played silly little games on or *maybe* typed up a school project if I was feeling fancy.
I think I was 8 & 18... Or 20 for internet at home.
How did you achieve this utterly unachievable ideal situation?
mom got us a TI 99/4a in 1982 and we didn't get dial-up until I was in high school
Young millennial, discovered computer as little kid but it was first How to Read CD-ROMs, then dinosaur websites (safer things to do on computer before 10)
You're still crazy but it's a kind of crazy that can function in a human world rather than a kind of crazy that eats holes in drywall while crying
Hello Jason, my name is Zhuge Liang courtesy name Kongming You are completely correct I discovered computer at 13
🫡
"Everyone is crazy for various reasons" is right
"What about gen x" Wait. We WERE talking about gen X, right? Who else could have discovered computer at 13?
You didn’t Address my FAQ.
Actually you’re perfectly correct
I hope there’s ASCII art at the beginning of this FAQ
Gotta jam that site counter and spinning ”Under construction” gif in there as well. Oh, and don’t forget that all cool sites use html frames. … Maybe some sick midi track playing as well, as you delve deeper into the Links page of -=PwNm4s7eR=- and sign his Guestbook.
Thanks xXxSephirothWrath94xXx, very helpful
In case you didn't see, new game site @roguesite.bsky.social is doing ASCII art for their game guides
😭🥰
A good use for AI would be to train one to convert movies to ASCII art.
After the Metal Gear Solid 1 walkthru
Jason I watched a playthrough of one of the Metal Gears last night. I thought I was prepared after hearing you guys talk about Hideo Kojima? I was not remotely prepared.
Thank you Pastor Kirk 🙏
"he was both of their fathers, and he has an eyepatch" ah shit we're about to go into the Arian heresy again, aren't we
cops are not allowed to read the FAQ under the Internet privacy act signed by bill clinton
Oh no. I fear I'm exactly the right age for this discourse, because it was definitely on geocities.
We made geocities pages in high school computer class
electronic typewriters n 286s at 'bout age 5/7 here "millennial" is a US term! it were "generation y" when I were a lad! (n, yeah, crazy) I was on Minitel at 5 for like 5 minutes several years before the web (13 in 96), still got the RBS branded device, a blue computer in keyboard shaped thing
jason could you make sure your next skeet exactly describes me and only me, mkay thx
I thought you were talking about Gen X! I was born in 1967 and started using computers in 1980. Who else fits that?
I’m Gen X too but about 12 years younger than you, which is probably in the range he calls millennial.
(Yes of course I didn’t use the internet until I was in my 20s, but that’s another thing)
Older millienials and cuspers
GenX had BBS's, that really didn't count.
Printing out pictures of Carmen Electra, that took 3 minutes to fully load, then ripping off the perforated hole edges so you could bring them up to your bedroom was the natural way to go through puberty.
Modem dial up sounds create a protective barrier btwn the internet and your mind, need to bring it back
Also, sometimes your mom picks up the other extension and you get disconnected and realize how bad you have to pee.
Gen X here. I discovered computer at age 10. So yeah, I'm definitely crazy.
i discovered computer at 5, is that 13 or baby
(that was in the year 2000 though)
Same but in 1992
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Gen X may have discovered computer early (I did) but almost no-one had any internet And even if we did, the internet wasn't the same
Me: "Oh, it me even though I was like 14 or 15" so I get you, king.
I did at age 9 but it was a Commodore 64
Yeah the early non-networked kind doesn't really make the crazy go brrrr the same way
but what about gen... ah wait, never mind. i see it now.
They have a point about gen x tho :P
Theory holds up
being crazy FROM the computer, rather than being crazy RELATED to the computer, are different concepts. Crazy from the computer is when u think tweets ar ereal life and u cant tell a fake image at all and believe everything u are told and will kill over it i agree, 13 computer prevents this
be like if there was an age where u are exposed to video games and u know its not real and can engage in reasonable skepticism and not totally become it and if u play videogames from infancy or in middle age, u literally think mortal kombat is real and try to make it real
Is this because people are sending these replies in earnest not realizing you’re shitposting
Napster
I first touched a computer age 12. It was an Apple IIe. I had to pirate my music over dial up. I think I’m ok.
My grandpa (even before covid kicked in dementia) swears I grew up with the iPhone. I was in my mid 20s when it came out. Meanwhile his older brother at 95 can work wifi and basic smartphones (fwiw I was 13 when I got most time w computer)
their called xennials. micro-generation born between 77-85. born analog, adults digital.
I discovered computer at about 3. But it was a Commodore VIC-20.
I have had a computer since about 7th grade some time around 1982. Sometime after that I got one with cassette tape storage.
You can play Barbie Horse Adventures and JumpStart before then, but the right time for The Web is definitely fifth-seventh grade
Computer at like 4, but internet at 13. I think it worked out about as well as could for anyone appropriately maladjusted to this world
The internet is the palantir. Gen Z is Pippin. Boomers are Saruman. Gandalf and Aragorn are Elder and Younger Millennials staring straight into the heart of the info overload and beasting through it without going completely insane.
If the world’s finest mathemeticans would assemble to determine the optimum time for a to first be exposed to goatse, we might actually figure this thing out
Honestly yeah.
🙋🏽♀️ I feel crazy bc everyone else is crazy 👍🏽
No children should use a tablet until after they know their homerow keys No children should know how a touch screen works until after they know how a dropdown menu works
🖐️
Reposting bc funny & generational solidarity but IDK if even that's true. I'm sane online don't get me wrong but I'm clearly addicted, and I see it clearly as I try to save my 6 year-old from that fate. The other day I negotiated "no screens tonight" by applying it to me too for once, it was SO HARD
should be like santa when you're little, you're very carefully never exposed to any tech more advanced than a microwave and then at 13, they let you into the study you've never been allowed in before and show you how to setup a livejournal account
We carry our burden responsibly, and with only medium amount of Strong Bad quotes
Dude got a laptop for Christmas at 13...
And the internet exposure starts out very slow and small-scale and only ramps up gradually over a course of years.
Elder millennials and young Gen X are the only ones smart enough to see bullshit on the internet.
Well, then… I don’t know. I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting a lot of BS on the Internet & I came way before you. 🤣😱. Question everything! But I’ve really been enjoying the conversations. my daughter fits into your category, millennial I think. We had one of the early Apples and no Internet Yet.
Young gen X? Uh…hmmm🧐! Doesn’t track with me
Well I’m in my late 40’s and my millennial wife is only 40.
I’m in my mid 50’s. I’m not the beginning of GenX but I’m not a younger GenX
I’m 48. I’m on the younger side. You were an adult when Nirvana broke. I was still a kid. You are a true blue Gen X. I have a lot of crossover with millennials.
I bridge the gap
Late 50s GenX Dial up modem, dot matrix printers, your choice of amber, green, or B/W computer monitor screen. Been there, done that, bought the soundtrack, on vinyl, for one penny from Columbia House and BMG. 😉
I was at the late end of vinyl. We would buy a cassette at Camelot music, dub it, and then return it. Either or one friend who buy a tape and then we’d all have it. Blank cassettes were the best.
That was always a popular method of sharing music. We would take turns buying the original, and make copies for the others. I had a turntable/ 2-tape deck unit, so I could tape the record as it played, or play a cassette on one and tape it on a blank. But that way, we could all have the albums.
Did your stereo have the option where you could dub a tape at 2x the speed?
Just 60, vanguard of GenX, 300 Baud dial up ➡️ 1200 ➡️ 2400 ➡️ 9600 ➡️ 128kb ISDN (2 56k circuits) ➡️ ADSL, etc, etc. Though I think the true mark of the GenX is that coming of age with the emergence of caller ID means we never answer an unknown caller so GenX never shows up in polls or surveys.
We’re definitely the most cynical generation.
My penny got me a dozen cassettes. My memorex was for the top 10 of Casy Kasem’s America’s top 40.
That's not age 13, though. It's Americans born 1970 to 1975.
I was born in 76. I was in high school when the internet began to become a thing.
I was born in 1978 but we had a great computer literacy programme in the UK and I lapped up all things computer, happy memory aged 9 or so my grandparents took me to a computer programming course, which I suppose was also a me programming course.
Oregon Trail generation got the only good introduction to computing.
The correct age is 28
I discovered computer right before the 2000 election, so i went insane despite being in the right age bracket.
a/s/l?
Preach
TRS Model III, 2MHz, 48kB RAM. I learned Z80 assembly and Radio Shack sold its schematics.
The first computer I ever used in elementary school had two floppy disks and no hard drive and it was obvious that to some extent everyone involved in making it was operating on the same level as a 5th grader.
Have personally witnessed a customer's three-year-old pick up a magazine and do the pinch gesture to try to "zoom in"
Gen X here, discovered computer aged 8 in 1984 Just finished two day’s hard programming for a deadline Still crazy for computer
my children are going to type circles around you cowards
Nah, we're fucked too. The difference is that a large number of us are aware of just how fucked we are.
You shouldn't be allowed on the internet if you've never been on a BBS!!
Damn, ZX81 at 11. Explains a lot
I guess I started with Basic at my 15yo.
have you read the extensive author's note for The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer? the only correct age to discover computer is 1837.
Modems are too good. Make them start with 5.25 inch floppies.
Great idea! My job at the time (as a Generalist) required working with engineers, but I wasn’t permitted anything connected to the Net or wireless. My wife got a very early Mac & I saw how it functioned. Later, my ignorance was detrimental when I was transferred to a group filled with techies!
"graphics mode" was a mistake
Bring back flash player! /s
Bring back ZORK!
www.gog.com/en/game/the_...
when I was 13 my 16yo sister wouldn’t stop bogarting the chat rooms I was born in the darkness
If the picture of the naked lady took a minute or more to load and a little slice more was revealed of it at a time, you were in the sweet spot of computer-knowing.
Shout out to all my peeps on Prodigy.
I mean I'm gonna be real, the insane amount of trauma I got from being a pre/teen on the unregulated wild wild west that was early 2000s internet would argue there is, in fact, no correct age to discover computer
😹
Firm believer that elder millennials are the only qualified internet users
A bit younger for me. My first exposure was at a Radio Shack in Aylmer, Quebec. Today, I'm a senior software developer creating small miracles.
If you couldn't navigate Battlenet to get to your custom 7 vs 1 Comp Stomp match on Starcraft then I know you can't navigate your way through the modern info sphere.
I'm a cannon whore, in a cannon world.
The problem with today's youth is that they never had to learn to mod video games. That teaches you the patience of a saint.
Everything is instantaneous for them. And they want to jump from thing to thing rapid fire. Had to drive into my son that when we play a game, we will be playing THAT game for a while. Like... the hell are you even doing in a 15 min Minecraft session?
Honestly... yeah.
Zero notes.
I went from dialing into a BBS on a 14.4 modem in high school to having broadband and AIM in college, and that feels right.
Troll detection skills: maxed Experience in navigating low-stakes flamewars, graduating to higher-stakes flamewars: maxed Ability to tell by the pixels: maxed
I like this analogy a lot.
Excellent analogy!
This seems exceptionalist, but...I truly believe it
They don't realize you need to save all of your elixirs for the end of the game and never use them.
pre-order bundles suck!
I keep thinking about this and not only did we get it at the right age but we had speed restriction training wheels. We had to live with 18kb/s download speeds and .mp3 files. Friction is good.
The jokes are awesome but also yes. Though that's more a reflection of how the internet was at the time I think. This tumblr post summarizes it well I think:
Floppy disks.
Go ahead, date yourself. They did screech though
If you weren't using a BBS at 13, you missed the window.
that is the exact age I found a 300 baud modem in a closet (why did my parents have that??) and was mysteriously helped to set it up and connect to various things Somehow gopher didn't deter me, but I guess there wasn't much else to do
Jesus christ it me
That age group is the elder millennial/late gen x ie me
bsky.app/profile/misa...
Oh thank God I'm safe
Computers are such a wild mindboggling invention that there probably needs to be a step by step program to introduce it a human, at the correct age, for the human to fully comprehend and utilize it. Shoving an iPad into the hands of a toddler and telling them to go ham isn’t it. 😅
If you ever got kicked off the computer because “your (mother or father) is expecting an important PHONE call” and your Diablo character lost all their gear that you spent 30 minutes duping then you were there at the right time
I ran my virtual Hot Dog Stand in elementary school like an Eastern European Authoritarian and ended up okay!
As a kid, I played games on the Disney Channel website (Zoogs, where 'ya at?) and made friends on a Harry Potter forum that I still talk to today. It was pretty wholesome for the most part, you know, the occasional A/S/L? in an AOL chat room but besides that...
GenX was counting from 1 to 99 in odd numbers using BASIC at the age of 13; we could also create a picture of a clown that was made up of the letter “x” repeated in a pattern and printed on a dot-matrix printer. Take that, you whipper-snappers!
You just couldn’t fit ones and zeroes through those tiny pipes fast enough to do damage. Perfect For building up tolerance.
That's right. There used to be one website with like 50 funny videos, and we'd just watch those on repeat like God and Al Gore intended.
I was 13 in 1998 Perfect, no wonder
Me, seeing tits for the first time: I am going to be very normal about this.
Start em' slow with a little Oregon Trail
You had COLOR Oregon Trail?!
Nah, it's just a gif. 🤣 Green screen all the way to Oregon!
🙌🏻
I discovered the computer first hand at 19. It was an IBM 1401. Wrote a Fortran program that accepted two numbers at the terminal (a non-Selectric typewriter) and returned the product. Good times!
So, we need a rite of passage where community elders induct you into the hidden world.
whew thank god I was 13 when I discovered the internet.
I was forged in UseNet.
RETVRN
I discovered computer at 8.
it is too late for me
I had a 14.4 x2 modem and an extra phone line i was a good amongest my adolescent peers that it only took 3 minutes to open a single porn pic and not 5 and a parent picking up the phone wouldnt cut the pic off mid download.
Yep, mine was mid-80s. Are you keeping up with the Commodore?
excuse me I discovered computer at age 8 but it was green and mostly text. I discovered INTERNET at age 22 and that was perfect no really it's fine SOB i never got off it's FINE
You need to slowly up the dosage, like developing a poison immunity.
start with ms dos and Carmen sandiego, move to windows 95 in the computer lab, searching web crawler for “Michael Jordan dunk”, then get dial up internet and windows 98 with AIM and ICQ and start a xanga. Then Napster on fast dorm room internet. No MacBook until you are 25.
The geocities webring step has been accidentally omitted.
Ran out of characters but I had an angel fire site
xoom for me 😆
Damn came here for the same comment… add in a little Mavis bacon teaches typing and Oregon trail and you are set! Oh shit and sim city transition to the hamster dance
This is all comfortingly familiar
I think that may be what we all need a little bit of right now
You gotta play at least one text-based game.
I recommend this one. homestarrunner.com/dungeonman
I’m of two minds on this rule - either “and the paper clips one is the only one that counts” or “and the paper clips one doesn’t count”
He’s not wrong.
You gotta discover computer when it’s kind of a pain in the ass
these days the 8yos are 13
I discovered it at six and have a really peaceful life. Thirteen is too late. By then I was sysadmin.
If you weren't born between 1977 and 1983 (maybe 1976 and 1984), we're issuing you a CRT television for your own protection.
Please do I miss them.
Being older genx who discovered computer at 11, I'm wondering about your statement of only "one generation". Which generation do you mean?
Me!
Wrong! Age 2! At least in my case 😄 and that was before internet.
It needs to be something you discover as a young teenager, because anything you like at that age is something you'll eventually feel embarrassed by once you grow up.
Imagine if there was a parental tool that not only had parents able to control what the youngsters see like a lot of them do, but forced the youngster to see through the dial up modem noises every time they wanted to hit up a new website or lode more of a feed
Watching the same scene from Star Wars over and over via Encarta ‘96
It's why I'm so well adjusted.
👋
Notable exception: discover computer at 7-8 but only for playing hello kitty cutie world
Incredible
Only those who remember the Citrus Scale came out unscathed. I mean, obviously this is also untrue but the odds are slightly in their favor.
That would explain so much!
insane (fun) instead of insane (derogatory)
Was that the fanfic thing? One of my friends in middle school hosted a lemon competition and I totally misunderstood what she was asking for 😂
Me, to everyone else in the replies: OK, computer
There's something needed about watching the beast grow with you. Young enough to follow along but old enough to recognize what's new.
The real question is: can millennial parents sort of titrate modern computers to their children to achieve the same effect? Or are we all just screwed until either computers or humans evolve some more?
The exact age range you're talking about is the one responsible for Facebook & Twitter
Yeah we thought everybody else could handle it
Jack Dorsey himself couldn't handle it & Zuck is a hollow shell that barely resembles a person anymore
Got my first computer at age 11 [1996]. First modem at 13 and that's where shit really kicked off. Especially when I found IRC!
I started on the computer when I was 8 or 9, but it didn't have the internet and I was just playing Jill of the Jungle, Bushido, and Wolfenstein. I was 12 when I first started using the internet so... you are totally right. I don't think I got DSL until I was 14 or 15.
About that bsky.app/profile/mugr...
Betting a great deal of money he'd been online many many times before then
Wild to think about getting familiar with computers on a laptop. So you can just.. LAN party without dismantling a whole ass setup?! Back in my day we had to drag giant monitors both ways in the snow dangnabit And we could play with tower components! Remember swapping out your first graphics card?!
Came here looking for this comment
How about they start with, umm, books?
Um actually they should start with a healthy breakfast
I was only half-corrupted by dialup BBS'es
oh yeah mashable.com/archive/oreg...
There are generations of people that are too young/old to have been scammed in Runescape during middle school, and I can tell exactly who they are.
This is the perfect age because the mental age of the internet will always be 13
Prime Runescape playing age
Gen X voting patterns may undermine this theory.
I think is pretty solid. At least according to Civiqs.
*it’s
Images you can hear
Your alotted baud rate should be: age multiplied by 100 bits per second
Must be 16+ to use Zmodem
I'd say even bigger impact is the Internet. It came at the perfect time for me personally (teens). Old enough to have experienced what the world is like with real fleshly human connections and young enough to still have that naive sense of wonder and thirst for knowledge and new experiences.
It is known
Could you please write 3000 words that is just this repeated over and over again in different ways?
Safe computer use starts with cd\
I dunno I was about 6 but computers were like fancy BASIC machines. I was 13 when the internet even started to be a thing, so I think your point remains valid.
Earliest Internet I remember is AOL AIM and some random websites that probably don't exist anymore. Landscape has changed since the 90s and early 2000s. I don't even know how I'm gonna handle the internet for my own children. I fear I might end up being a controlling parent But I don't want to be.
You had to go to a store to get your porn at 9600 baud… and when you got home, your 4mp image had still not rendered. Life was hard in the dark days of aol dial-up
Ha, I got my first computer at exactly that age.
The 56k gooner knows the virtues of patience and effort.
People like me (young Gen X) are a tricky case because we all KNEW Computer fairly young, often before thirteen. But computer didn't REALLY become computer until we were past the WORST danger zone, age wise.
Like I was doing some stupid-ass shit online at 21 but it's a world different than getting into that at either eight OR fifty.
I’m in this boat, too. Computer at 10, internet at 18. Definitely *some* damage, but I feel like I got off light.
I choose to believe that the Apple II was such a pure and joyful human invention it inoculated us against some of the Evil Computer to come.
we know where our towels are. we know how not to be eaten by a grue. what else do you need
Our tragic little robot buddy Floyd. A lizard to be squeezed to death under the light of a crescent moon. A featureless white cube, with "field" shakily engraved upon it with a magical burin. Sergeant Duffy waiting to take away our evidence and analyze it. A black cat with a white-marked face.
burins, not bullets
in the end, truly we all find ourselves in an open field west of a white house
We know when to use Frotz, when to use Rezrov, and why to use Gnusto.
chapstick for kissing the frog
yeh there's only so much trouble you can get into passively surfing a web ring of dancing cats and badgers and academic journals about Xena
I learned to spot BS on the internet at 20. After getting bored of pictures of swimsuit models or text-only pages of bad jokes I stumbled on a page full of scientific fact (i.e. lunacy) where the author claimed having a foreskin was objectively superior to being cut and lamented that his was gone.
oh my GOSH you wandered into one of the OG realms of internet crankery right off the bat. Precocious! Even now, if you mention, uh, THAT procedure in any searchable online space, somebody's gonna show up to talk about it.
also see: talking about FGM, or, oh just a LOT of topics really... I have also been advised that some of the most vicious wars have been between mommy bloggers over breast feeding
No kidding. This was what, 1995? The phrase "sheath within a sheath" appeared on that page at least a dozen times. It was pure distilled batshittery, yet presented as professionally as anything else on the web at that time.
I miss Leslie's House O' Chicks "an eddy of estrogen in the (something dude dominated web)"
It's social media. It's just social media. If your introduction to the internet was having your dad show you hamsterdance and hunt-and-peck typing "nintendo . com" because you like Nintendo, you're fine. If your introduction to the internet was Facebook or TikTok, you're cooked
I'm a very normal autistic trans catgirl
I have it from friends that 300 baud is the perfect speed to read poetry.
Only generation that grew up with this youtu.be/gsNaR6FRuO0?...
Oh shit. There may be something to this. Discovering computer in its infancy and growing alongside it may be the thing. Shit. I don’t know if you’re kidding or not but maybe that’s right…
I'm not at all
I had never really considered that old people’s brains were all hard and smooth when the internet was becoming a thing, and that’s why they can’t handle it.
It’s so weird watching boomers lose their mind at the dumbest AI slop. I’m looking at this shit like it’s stupider than “Oww My Balls” from Idiocracy and it will have an ocean of likes and comments from boomers.
I was floored as my brother and I were in a Micro Center and he was asking an employee to help him find an appropriate cable because the specs he was looking for weren’t listed on the label, when an elderly man approached and said rather than asking an employee, he’d ask ChatGPT.
To me people that mention they use this shit are like people who just got bit in a zombie movie
Like, what was ChatGPT going to do here? Magically find the information through the ether? Find a message on the label written with invisible ink? I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time picking a fight, so I told him my brother’s question was too complex for an AI to answer 🙃
a picture of a topless woman slowly being revealed four lines at a time was exquisite tease and an exercise in antici.....................................................pation. It was practically Burlesque rather than EVERY F***HOLE FILLED IN SCREAMING 4K like kids have these days.
So true. I got it a little bit earlier because I'm smarter than most but yup, I came out completely fine. That's the beautiful of Computer. It's powerful, but Demands a huge price in response...
"I came out completely fine" If you have to say that out loud, then you didn't.
I also feel like the work you used to have to go through just to get on like a usenet forum was somehow part of an inoculation process.
AOL disk with only 20 hours of dialup access would do it. And a single porn pic download at 56k would take about 10 minutes!
Gotta ease into it with Lemonade Stand and Carmen Sandiego, otherwise you get burned.
Then there's the generation one half notch before, the cuspers, who tinkered their way either to early dotcom money or a series of shit jobs at Radio Shack and Circuit City
Yeah, if you didn’t ever have to wait 30 seconds while your computer yelled “bing…bing bong BINGGGG shhhhhhhhhh” at you, then you’d never know the innate incompatibility of our lives and the online world. You would view this thing as it is: an occasionally amusing trinket to be discarded on a whim.
Like most pathogens, it is more dangerous to those with compromised or underdeveloped immune systems
We grew alongside the “Internet,” when it started to become available was dial-up bulletin boards and chat. Surfing was tel-netting from one company or library to another. This soon morphed into browsers and AOL. Online mostly from 6p-6a when there were no dial-up charges.
We got dial-up at home when I was 13 and I don't have computer madness. You are 100% correct.
I concur. Born 1968, first computer ZX81. Revelatory.
And we discovered it when it was a lawless place not yet steeped in capitalism. Old Youtube literally was mostly just emo boys kissing and Taliban beheadings, you picked your poison and either turned out gay or a Republican, and most of us ended up gay. Simpler times, man, simpler times.
What the hell were you searching for?
Emo boys kissing, duh 🤣
If you didn’t play any games from Sierra or Interplay you need to log off now
When I was 13, we didn't even have PONG yet (that was a few years in the future). And when we did get PONG, it belonged to my father. He bought it for himself, not for us. /been online since 1990 with a 1200 baud modem.
We were protected by the environmental lead exposure
Fight off the existential dread by gettting real mad about the time at the turn of the century when you got PK'ed by phone call. Also, pay 2 win existed even then. People with satellite internet could lag you out by dropping heaps of shoes in UO. Great, now I think I miss full loot again
My family had computers when I was very young, but no internet until I was a teenager. That's the way it should be. All I did on there was play games/paint.
We used to go to a room for the computer. a respected place in the home.
It was the one place you wouldn't find your father.
Respected? It was a dungeon. We made it think about what it had done. When we wanted to go online, we made it scream. We never should have stopped
That death hum was music to my ears.
"It is now safe to turn off your computer"
There was a time in my house it was the baby's room, talk about natural limits on screen time! (Dial-up was no longer the natural limiter by then)
We have fun here, but I do really feel like things went crazy since we put the computers in our pockets. The internet really did feel more like a destination to visit, not this always-on madhouse overlaid on the real world.
I’m bringing it back. I’ve started calling my home office “the computer room”.
Next stop: raised flooring and jetted tiles! "Sweetheart, why is your floor 8" higher than the rest of the house...?" "It's the computer room. Also, it is restricted space. If your hubby badge doesn't work at the door, you cannot be in here."
Well, for me, it was 14. Apple II in my school’s computer lab. We had 3 units but only one disk. We hot-swapped it between computers. Yes, that was exactly as stupid as it sounds. Please note: 14.
My math class in 8th grade taught a week of coding in Basic. I created a neverending flight of stairs. And, I’m less crazy than I should be!
I know they're technically computers so it's basically the same thing- but it tracks for cell phones too - like if you started on a smart phone or jumped to one instead of growing up with them from the bricks to the flips to the screens - you crazy
Honestly this should be global government policy, and even when they start at 13, they should have to deal with dial up for the first 2 years
Instead of age verification we need to mandate DOS 6.2 for everyone under 21.
We played lemmings in six colours. We have lived for eons, watched epochs die and fall
Just the right age for your brain to be malleable, but not too malleable
back in mid 90s when it used to take like 5 minutes to load the espn webpage...
Gen X, truly the greatest generation.
It’s the Xennial sweet spot!
I think children should have full access to computers as long as they do so in FORTRAN or COBOL and the screen displays only monochrome text.
Having lived a 24×7 off-line world gives you an unique mindset. Millennial pride ✊🏼
Demonstrably false. Unless you meant discovering the joys of an HP-3000 time share computer accessed via acoustic modem and teletype printer with paper tape upload. Circa 1973, junior high school.
That explains a lot. I was 8 and I’m SOMEWHAT crazy.
Make Computers Yell At You And Be Burdensome To Get Online Again
I learned how to program a computer before I ever got to touch one. I feel that saved me from radicalization but not from helping every relative I have seemingly non stop.
Some people have never waited for a boobs to download and it shows. A strapless top could waste your entire afternoon. You had to click on the blue words. It all made a kind of sense. Not like today. 😵💫
I was 7 but it was an Apple Mac II so im not sure that counts
we learned to distinguish the pedophiles in AOL chat rooms THE RIGHT WAY.
The lone generation with a function BS meter
Steve Jobs was a boomer.
GEN X HERE. I agree.
🙋
Commodore Teachers PET forever baybee!!
This is the the true true.
you need to earn EXP and level up your Mb/s by posting quotes from songs and writing fanfiction
And we are the only ones who can fix the printer
Yeah, considering my age, and I had an Apple II plus in my house as a teenager as my first computer, I completely agree with this statement!
I feel like there's an important distinction to be made between "computer" and "internet". We had computer way before I turned 13, but launching The Oregon Trail or KidPix or Tank Wars via DOS commands doesn't drive you insane if encountered at the wrong age. Only internet does that.
Is this the AIM generation? Cause we ain't ok.
No generation has ever been ok
Yay! That's my kids!
I don’t think it’s an age thing. I think it’s a decade thing. I discovered computer in 1986. I also would be completely content to never use one again. It’s actually a dream of mine.
I feel scene.
Everyone should learn computer at 13 in an environment that only other 13 year olds can see and then that environment should be deleted every year and reset.
That kid is groyper-proofed
Great photo.