A Funeral For The Internet Applications Of Yesterday.

This is funeral attire. Goes with the funeral theme of the article. Actually. You know what? Don't ask questions.

At the cusp of the tech boom, a friend and I attended an “Internet Expo.” It was our first introduction to the fascinating world of the Internet. We expected to harvest the tools needed to become pioneers of a new era.

Instead, we bailed early and hit the arcade.

Played that bubble-popping game made for Asian kids.

That game, though?

So good.

So as the rest of the world made billions of dollars on new tech ventures like Hotmail, eBay, Google.

We trail blazed through the annals of losernessdom.

Ha!

Annals.

Here’s a list of technologies that I’ve used over the last 15 years and a brief farewell to them all.

Bulletin Board Systems (BBS)

The BBS was my first introduction to the online world.

What a horrible introduction.

My 14.4kbps modem would take forever to connect to a local BBS. Then just as it was about to connect, my dad would pick up the phone and say:

Hello? WHO’S THIS!? WE DON’T WANT ANYTHING.

My dad believed anyone calling our house was a telemarketer wanting to sell us something.

So even a robotic, machine noise got the blunt edge of his anger.

Finally, I’d connect to the BBS and immediately hit the file transfer area to download images of Alyssa Milano.

I know. I know. But come on. I was nine.

Fifteen.

OK, twenty-two.

One image would take close to seven minutes to download. And just when there were 3 seconds left?

Hello? WHO’S THIS!? WE DON’T WANT ANYTHING.

Goodbye BBS. You won’t be missed.

IRC Chat.

IRC was the Internet’s first chat. You would open the IRC application and select a chat room to enter. I picked “Movies”, because I thought I could talk about movies.

Apparently, no.

I would enter. Some girl from LA would be chatting to her “internet boyfriend” from Virginia whom she had never met while hundreds of others would call them both shitheads.

jjJUlz143: everyone lay off my BF! Ur just jeluz

D-RockA: YEH. I dun like how you talk to my girlll!

Arkham: You guys are both idiots. Admin, boot them.

Me: Did anyone see Jurassic Park!? Great special effects!

I finally logged off for good when people offered me Alyssa Milano images and instead, they were pictures of the Golden Girls.

Try, just try erasing that from your head.

Goodbye IRC.

ICQ.

When I entered college, ICQ was the new rage. You would install the ICQ chat application with a green flower, be assigned an ICQ Number and then add others after entering their ICQ numbers. When you received a message, it would make a sound similar to an underage teen being poked with a cattle prod.

Wait. I don’t know what that sounds like. Really.

The best part of ICQ is you could uncover your friend’s devastating inability to type. The chat engine showed you them typing in real-time.

I lost respect for everyone.

RIP ICQ.

(Except if you’re from Botswana. Apparently, it’s huge there and everyone just got it. Wow. You know what? If you’re from Botswana and you’re reading this, this is like going Back To The Future.)

Friendster.

Friendster was like a predecessor to Facebook. It brought you new ways to stalk people you know and don’t really like. You would post your profile and then add others to your network. People could leave “testimonials” on your wall where they would let others know how great you were.

I actually enjoyed Friendster until the day someone told people from the Philippines to join. After that day, 38.9 million people added me to Friendster and every one of them had webcams to show me.

Look, I’m a guy. Of course I checked out one of them.

You guessed it.

Turned out to be photos of the Golden Girls.

Farewell Friendster.

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I could include a girthy index of every social media application that lived and died in my generation, but that would take too long. Let me know what I’m missing. Leave a comment. Leave a link.

Just make sure it’s not a link to pictures of the Golden Girls.

I’ve seen all of them.

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