Random  | Best Random Tools

  • They Spent Hours In Chat Rooms on Random Weird Things People Used To Do Before Wi-Fi Existed

    (#8) They Spent Hours In Chat Rooms

    Back in the 1990s, there was no better way to wile away the hours than popping into an internet chatroom and engaging in conversation with total, anonymous strangers. Chat rooms were often arranged by subject, and those subjects ran the gamut from the general (teen chat, music fans, book lovers) to the incredibly specific (Toyota Corolla drivers! Icelandic hip-hop! Any bizarre sexual fetish you can imagine!). It was shockingly easy to get sucked in and spend whole days chatting with people you'd never met. AOL was considered the cream of the chat room crop, and many a computer user wasted good portions of their young lives lost in aimless interwebs conversation. Incidentally, chat rooms are still around today, populated mostly by old people and trolls.

  • They Unplugged The Landline To Avoid Getting Disconnected on Random Weird Things People Used To Do Before Wi-Fi Existed

    (#2) They Unplugged The Landline To Avoid Getting Disconnected

    Folks in the pre-Wi-Fi world had to depend on dial-up modems connecting their computers to the Internet. And once you got logged on, you wanted to stay logged on. You couldn't risk someone else in the house picking up and dialing out on the landline, which was your computer's mainline to the internet. If they did, the connection would be lost, and you would have to start the dial-up process all over again. This was especially frustrating for those playing MUD games or chatting on AOL Instant Messenger (RIP). A lost connection meant a lost game or a lost conversation. Grr. The solution? Unplug all the landline phones to avoid anyone calling out.

  • Before Wikipedia And Facebook, There Was GeoCities on Random Weird Things People Used To Do Before Wi-Fi Existed

    (#9) Before Wikipedia And Facebook, There Was GeoCities

    Before Wikipedia became the information hub for anything and everything, there was a site called GeoCities. But GeoCities was far more than just an information storehouse. It was social media before social media existed, "an organization of like-minded user-created homepages in different topical communities like sports, entertainment, and tech." It was a way to connect, but also a way to share knowledge on things you knew a lot about, or were just particularly passionate about. GeoCities was acquired by Yahoo, and about ten years later in 2009, Yahoo shut down at least 38 million GeoCities sites in the United States.

  • They Sat Around Waiting For Images To Load on Random Weird Things People Used To Do Before Wi-Fi Existed

    (#4) They Sat Around Waiting For Images To Load

    With slow dial-up speeds came slow page-loading. This was simply a fact of pre-Wi-Fi life, something you accepted if you wanted to visit all those AOL chat rooms and porn sites. And speaking of porn sites, didn't it always seem like the connection was worse when you were looking at dirty pictures? TThe images - loading line by excruciating line -took forever with saucy stuff.

  • Netscape Navigator Was THE Browser To Use on Random Weird Things People Used To Do Before Wi-Fi Existed

    (#10) Netscape Navigator Was THE Browser To Use

    If you were fortunate enough to be able to surf the net with any regularity in the days before Wi-Fi, you probably used Netscape Navigator as your browser of choice. When Netscape first launched, there was practically no other product on the market that could do what it did, making web browsing smooth and effortless. And so, it eventually became the standard browser for many early web surfers. Of course, Microsoft was increasing in productivity and popularity around the same time, causing everything to change dramatically. The rise and fall of Netscape reads like a Shakespearean drama.

  • They Initiated IM Conversations With A/S/L on Random Weird Things People Used To Do Before Wi-Fi Existed

    (#7) They Initiated IM Conversations With A/S/L

    Instant messaging conversations always started out with one greeting: A/S/L. No, not American Sign Language. A/S/L stood for Age/Sex/Location. This was usually in lieu of a hello and was presumably intended to see if the person with whom you were chatting was a good fit. Regarding the A/S/L phenomenon, Lifewire recommended the following: "Using full word spellings shows professionalism and courtesy. It is much easier to err on the side of being too professional and then relax your communications over time than doing the inverse." WTF?

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking

About This Tool

Nowadays, all smartphones, laptops support Wi-Fi Internet access, which is the most widely used wireless network transmission technology today. The invention of Wi-Fi meets the needs of personal and social informatization while allowing users to save money. In today's society, many services cannot be performed without Wi-Fi service. It is really difficult to return to a life where Wi-Fi was not invented for most people.

The random tool generates 12 items, you will learn about some weird things that people used to do before Wi-Fi existed. Welcome to check the collection and refresh it to get more items.

Our data comes from Ranker, If you want to participate in the ranking of items displayed on this page, please click here.

Copyright © 2024 BestRandoms.com All rights reserved.