Dial-Up.
Sure we know the noise, we joke about the porn images taking time to load and we joke about other things. But I would rather have a 10mbps connection or even 5mbps connection than ever having dial-up again. It wasn’t that good and it amazes me that dial-up still has life at all today, even if little.
Inflatable things.
I never really liked those inflatable chairs. I always feel like I’m going to pop them or some seam will unseal itself and air will gradually leave the inflatable chair and eventually I’ll sit on floor. These kinds of things were everywhere for a time, some still are, but at least are made by companies that have a better idea about making inflatable products work. Like camping equipment.
Exactly :) The dial-up era was when a lot of people first got online and experienced the Internet, so of course it was an exciting time.
The sound of dial up triggers a nostalgia in some people, but not for dial-up itself - rather for the Internet as it was in that era, an undiscovered country full of possibility. Sure, things took longer to load and that sucked, but at least most of what you were loading was real content, not ads.
A lot of sites were small communities and forums run by the people, for the people. Companies hadn’t yet figured out how to exploit the web. Social media hadn’t been invented yet, and the modern nightmare of service enshittification and subscription paywalls on your kitchen oven were an unimaginable fever dream.
That’s what was better then. Not the dial-up.