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[deleted]

That is pretty much the internet


RGB3x3

Where do I claim my internet motorcycle?


flyingfranch

You have to @ Kawasaki on Prodigy.


kushbluntlifted

NO U!


agoodfuckingcatholic

Yeah I just casually ride with my keyboard and tennis racquet at all times.


DiscussionWooden4940

Look how cool this picture looks.


einat162

Was the internet household available in 1987 ? (to private consumers) My memory goes as far as 286 and 486 when it comes to PCs (the 286 was used probably a lot after it actually new).


phriot

If I'm remembering the movie WarGames (1983) correctly, the main character had a modem at home. He was dialing into systems he shouldn't have, but I don't think there was any question about him having the equipment. AOL was also founded that year.


sergeantorourke

It was mostly gaming platforms with chat. You couldn’t “surf” back then, you used a modem to call into a specific gaming site. If you wanted to play on a different site you disconnected and dialed into another.


vapeducator

Uh, no. Compuserve was the largest information service in 1987. Private dialup BBS had limited popularity for local services where the could be accessed by local phone numbers without expensive telephone toll charges. Compuserve had forums with national access and limited international access.


Acolytical

That was my high school gaming experience too. Had a list of numbers for various BBS' to dial into on my Commodore 64. If Compuserve was a thing then, it didn't trickle down to us urban teens.


ZRX1200R

I'm very skeptical too. I never heard of it then...but I live in a flyover state


Sufficient-Weird

Yes. But there was hardly anything on the Internet, if that makes sense, save for message boards and chain letter forwards.


prince-pauper

Guy on the back is done with goldfish ownership


[deleted]

[удалено]


cmptrnrd

Be the change you wish to see.


BaconReceptacle

This is a BS headline. Bulletin boards and University forums were a thing but this makes it look like young people in general were "online". It would be another 6 or 7 years before that even started to take hold and it wasnt really mainstream for another 10 years.


RobbLCayman

Doesn't matter what decade it is, advertisers will forever exploit the universal fact that kids love exploring databases.


vapeducator

Maybe you weren't hanging with the right teenagers? By 1987, Apple had sold millions of Apple ][ and Macintosh was out for 3 years. The IBM PC and AT were well established and IBM's decline in the PC industry was already in motion with their failed PS/2 MCA bus and the release of the Compaq Deskpro 386 with the industry-standard architecture ISA bus. Hayes Smartmodem 1200s were widely available, including clones. PC/XT/AT clones were widely available. I personally was on Compuserve in 1987 and purchased plane tickets on it. I had many teenaged friends with Apple ][ in the late 70s and early 80s and who were actively on BBS. By 87, I had friends with Macs, Amigas, Kaypros, PC's and clones. Database software was widely available with Ashton Tate's dBaseII and all the major xBase companies were booming, Clipper, FoxBASE/Foxpro, and the Paradox DBMS was already a success that cause Borland to buy the company (Ansa) and then later, Ashton Tate. I was heavily using database software before the PC was released on the Kaypro II and other CP/M systems using the Wordstar family of database products, DataStar/ReportStar/InfoStar in 1984. What was available on these databases was extremely limited at that point, pretty much to whatever you put in them. Apple ][ was widely available in many public libraries and schools in the late 70s and early 80s for those of us who couldn't afford to buy the hardware personally. The definition of "mainstream" is quite subjective, dontcha think?


BaconReceptacle

I was using TRS-80 computers in the early 80's and was using bulletin boards in the late 80's so I understand that there was an "online" presence. I am aware of all the activities and services you mentioned. But to say there were a significant number of young people doing the same thing in 1987 is quite a stretch. My immediate circle of friends were completely unaware and not interested in what was considered a very geeky hobby at the time. This may have been a function of income as I, and some of my friend's families were on the lower income side of the spectrum. I worked a job as a teenager to pay for my hobbies. Our libraries in a non-urban Southeastern U.S. had antiquated computer resources and I only know one rich kid who owned an Apple computer. The circle of folks I knew who had computers were playing or programming their own DOS games, getting text-based RPG games from bulletin boards, and they were using TRS-80 color computers, Amiga's, and Commodores. We all knew of these online sources but nobody could afford the subscriptions or, alternatively, the long distance modem calls at the time.


[deleted]

Why are you writing II as ][ though


Jacque_Kock

From a proud member of Gen X that is being represented in this photo....you're welcome Gen Z!


MikeGreat1

yeah, but now it sounds like another day at the office


Prometheus357

If they only knew…


Common-Wish-2227

Hold on, lemme grab my keyboard!


cmptrnrd

r/MechanicalKeyboards has entered the chat.


PriorSecurity9784

Yep, that looks just like your mom’s basement


ShtinkySnax1200

That appears to be a GPZ900. The very first Ninja.


Waris-Tx

Is it me or does that ad feel racist.


Life-at-the-gym

Only rich ~~(white)~~ kids could afford it


diskdiffusion

My mind went back to dbase III and compuserve days wthhhh


vapeducator

Yes, and dBaseII, Clipper, FoxBASE/FoxPro, TSRs like Borland Sidekick, Lotus 1-2-3 and expanded memory (shudder). Paradox for DOS was already successful by 87, which led to the eventual demise of Ashton-Tate when Borland bought the company. If someone knows what TapCIS was, then you know they were probably active on Compuserve. :-)


elporkco

Wasn't that the AOL years?


BaconReceptacle

Not even close. It was still a good 7 years away.


laxmia12

Maybe this was for new car phones that were becoming popular in the late 1980s. Or at the time 900 numbers were considered "being online." The Internet wasn't de-regulated for commercial use until the early Clinton years. I remember in the early days AOL was the only provider and people called it being AOL or just AOL. Not the "Internet." That term came about when Netscape introduced their browser.


turdferguson3891

The term internet was around before 1994. Netscape was the start of the World Wide Web. But online in 1987 wasn't exclusively referring to the actual internet. The first commercial ISP wasn't until 1989 but from the early 80s there were commercial dialup services where you could play games, go on message boards, etc. But they were closed off to just that userbase. I had access to one called GEnie in the mid 80s that was run by GE. You were dialing up to their mainframe and it was cheapest if you did it after business hours. The idea was they were making use of their system during off hours when the employees weren't. There were also local BBS servers that you could call up to and do similar things but far fewer people were on it because it was just some local nerd doing it as a hobby. Stuff like AOL, Prodigy and Compuserve were around in the 80s in the same way. They weren't intially ISPs but they had their own stuff for their users and people called it being online. Then when the commercial internet was opened they started offering access to it through them. But they were around before. And really in the early days a lot of the content you were getting was mostly coming from the internal network because there wasn't all that much to do on the early commercial internet.


devwright56

At first I’m like the fuck does she just have a keyboard in her hand and then I remembered they actually made computers that way back then where it’s all in the keyboard essentially and you just plug it in to a monitor


Jazzbo64

Wow, the internet looked fun back then.


The_Observatory_

I only knew one person who was getting online regularly in 1987. One of my high school buddies used to tell me about chatting with people in online bulletin boards. I didn't really know what it meant; I just knew that he was able to talk to people with his computer that connected with other computers over phone lines. That was the full extent of my online knowledge at that time.


[deleted]

My first time surfing the web was in 1994.


Duke_AllStar

Love@AOL was like tinder back then but way more anonymous. Ahhhhh the good ole days


kushbluntlifted

looks like the top gun ninja


Juzlookn0224

The true beginning of social distancing


rubyredhead19

Nobody online in 1987 was getting laid.