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  • They Believed In Y2K on Random Weird Things People Used To Do Before Wi-Fi Existed

    (#11) They Believed In Y2K

    Once upon a time, computer timestamps were coded with a two-digit year instead of a four-digit year. This raised concerns about computers developing bugs and glitches come the year 2000, when the timestamp would recognize the year as "00," making 2000 essentially indistinguishable from 1900 and thereby causing our computers to go haywire. There were all sorts of what-if horror stories, nightmare scenarios, and premillennial hand-wringing as the year 2000 approached. Would nuclear bombs spontaneously detonate? Would the world's banking system collapse? Would all modes of mass communication suddenly shut down? These were all very real fears, producing very real paranoia over what would happen come midnight on January 1; a 1999 cover of TIME read, "The End of the World!?!."

  • 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 Went To A Special Computer Room In School To Play Educational Games on Random Weird Things People Used To Do Before Wi-Fi Existed

    (#6) They Went To A Special Computer Room In School To Play Educational Games

    Before computers were on all of our desks, in our homes, and in our pockets, entire throngs of schoolchildren used to assemble around their school's one or two computers and marvel at its wonders. If they were really lucky, they'd get to sign up for a half-hour slot to use that computer, upon which they'd most likely play educational games. The most popular, of course, was The Oregon Trail, in which you'd attempt to travel west as an old-timey frontiers-person. Most people got cholera or died of dysentery along the way. Also popular was Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, wherein users would try to find the elusive thief as she left sneaky clues all over the world.

  • 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?

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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.

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