Life before the Internet

[Leo656]

What sucked is that if your Dad wasn't into porno, or didn't leave it in a spot where you could find it, you had a real hard time. Like I was pretty well set, my Dad had a whole Porn Closet and so by the time I was out of school I'd already seen a ton of stuff I wasn't prepared for and in some cases have never fully recovered from. But some of my friends had it rough. They'd have to resort to smuggling Playboys out of the barber shop, or worse, poking around in the woods behind the school since someone for some reason ALWAYS used to leave hardcore porno mags lying around in the dirt and leaves in the woods behind the school(s) back then.

Remember that? Remember "Woods Porn"? I bet it's not even a thing anymore. But back in the 80s and 90s if you went traipsing through the woods you'd inevitably find a stack of half-ruined porno mags, usually not far from a Hobo Shack of some type. I'm pretty sure that "custom" is extinct by now. Which is probably for the best.

But yeah, porn in the pre-internet days was a bit rough to make a hobby of, unless you knew someone. As it was, most of my friends would come to me asking if I could get something. Like I said, I was pretty well-set thanks to my Dad, but it wasn't like I could just go up to him and ask him for it. If I wanted anything "new" or specific, I still had to ask someone like my older sister to obtain it. And sometimes it wasn't even worth the hassle, like the time I gave her money to pick up a copy of Pamela Anderson's sex tape, which turned out to be f*cking terrible. But how were we to know?

So yeah, the internet was a great thing if, like me, you're a huge fan of porn. I THOUGHT I'd seen it all by the time I was 17, but thankfully everything up to that point was just preparing me for the wonders which lay ahead.

Probably for the best that I grew up exactly when I did, honestly. If high-speed internet existed back then and 13-year old Me had a computer in his room, I don't know for certain that I'd ever have left the house. As it was, there were a few rare cases in high school where I cut school just to stay home and watch porn all day since my Dad wouldn't be home until the evening. It's probably better that such temptations were limited to whatever my Dad had in the Porn Closet, most of which I'd seen already. If there'd been an entire Internet full of depravity to explore at THAT young and impressionable age... man, I don't know.
------------------------------

As for how I kept busy In General back then (and not just before going to sleep), it was easy. We didn't always have cable so lots of times after school I had a "ritual" of making something to eat and then reading a stack of comics or wrestling magazines, then in the early evening I'd either watch movies or wrestling tapes. I always had an extensive collection of all of those things, and we also had a video store up the road that did dollar rentals - "Three tapes, three days, three dollars" was their main promotion - so if ever I got bored with any of the stuff I'd already seen a bunch I'd just grab a few movies from there.

Most times I had two buddies who'd come over almost every weekend and we'd have little "parties" all weekend long; rent a few tapes, get a stack of Domino's pizzas and a case of soda and just alternate between playing the N64/PS1 or watching stuff on the VCR. Good times.

I definitely have a lot more options post-2000 insofar as how to entertain myself, but I can't genuinely say I was ever bored before that. In fact, despite having so many things to play, watch, and do, I'd probably engage more with ALL of it if not for the internet. Since a lot of times I end up reading stuff and/or watching videos of stuff and then suddenly half a day is gone. We didn't have any internet access between 2006 and 2011 and I probably got a lot more done in general. It can give lots of options for things to do but can also be a terrible mindless distraction.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

What sucked is that if your Dad wasn't into porno, or didn't leave it in a spot where you could find it, you had a real hard time. Like I was pretty well set, my Dad had a whole Porn Closet and so by the time I was out of school I'd already seen a ton of stuff I wasn't prepared for and in some cases have never fully recovered from. But some of my friends had it rough. They'd have to resort to smuggling Playboys out of the barber shop, or worse, poking around in the woods behind the school since someone for some reason ALWAYS

Hah! The same, almost exactly. Though less a "porn closet" and more random porn stuff here and there, like back issues of "Cherry Poptart" and CD-ROMs full of galleries and little videos. Maybe 2 or 3 VHS things like from the mid 80s. None of it I found or bothered to look for in the 80s itself (at the end of the 80s I was a grand total of 8 years old), but in the 90s? Yeah. I found it. Yet I suspect it was always kind of left out for me to intentionally find when my parents were away (it was far from well hidden)... like a passive way to make sure I didn't end up gay or something. It probably didn't hurt, honestly.

[Leo656]

Haha, "Cherry Poptart". Man, I wish I'd seen those back then. I only found out about those comics through the internet, and they seem pretty hard to come by nowadays. At least the physical copies.

I wonder if my Dad had similar "ulterior motives" (i.e. "I'd rather he get used to looking at tits because I don't want him to be gay!" even though I don't know if life works that way But that might've been part of the intention). I do know that he used to do a really half-assed job of keeping the porn "hidden", although he did used to rotate the hiding spots. When we had a house, he had multiple spots with stuff spread out - a few magazines in the filing cabinet in the storage room, a few books and magazines under the couch in the den, a stack of VHS tapes on top of the entertainment center in the living room, a stack of books and mags under his bed, and a few under a stash of clothes in the bedroom closet.

And those are frankly very sh*tty "hiding spots", for the most part. By the time I was 6, I'd already found them all and looked at ALL of his magazines and read all of his filthy novels (which used to be a big thing back in the day, apparently). It wasn't even like I'd go looking for it; a toy rolls under the couch in the living room, naturally you go retrieve it... "What the... WOW, here's something to look at!" Or sometimes I'd sit in bed with my Mom watching Star Trek until I'd fall asleep, and I'd usually have some comics with me or something and one or two of them would fall on the floor, you go to get them and it's "Well what have we HERE?" Stuff like that. Literally the only stuff that was hard to find or out of reach were the VHS tapes, and once I was tall enough to reach with a chair you better believe that was the first thing I did the very first time I was home alone by myself.

Oddly enough, while 7-year old Me loved looking at naked women, and I'd seen pictures of people doing it in some of the magazines, the sight of actually seeing human beings fornicating in motion was pretty gross to me at that age, and I could only watch it for a minute. By like 9, I was way over it, but yeah, my first "taste" of Actual Porn was pretty gross. In my defense, porn people were a lot hairier back then. I still looked at magazines or softcore stuff on Cinemax whenever I could but I didn't end up watching actual porn videos again until I was like 9 or 10.

But yeah, I genuinely don't think my Dad ever gave a sh*t and in fact he probably wanted me to find it on some level. My Mom, she thought all that sh*t was gross, didn't want it in the house, didn't want me seeing it, all that. They used to have big screaming fights about it, like if I went down to pee at 11pm and he'd be watching some titty movie on Showtime or something in the living room and I accidentally caught a glimpse, forget it, they'd be fighting the whole next day about it.

In her defense, her argument of "He's gonna turn out to be a sick pervert just like you!" turned out to be 100% accurate, so points to her on her foresight. BUT, there's honestly no proof that wouldn't have happened ANY ways. And in HIS defense, his counter-argument of "So he saw tits... big deal!" makes a ton of sense.

But yeah, he did such a sh*t job of "hiding" it that I think he only even bothered so my Mom wouldn't yell at him. Once they split up and we had an apartment he never really tried to hide it anymore at all. He knew me and my friends were borrowing his tapes and only said anything if he couldn't find one for a long time.

My Mom was also kind of promiscuous and a big hippie in general so I honestly have no idea why she fought wars with my Dad over whether or not I was "too young" to see boobs. It seems even more stupid in hindsight. But they fought about it a LOT, very loudly too. Not even so much him having it, which I know she hated but didn't raise much hell about. Just that I might see it, which... who cares?

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Back in the 1990's and early 21st Century, the Internet allowed you to explore more of the funny, free and open democracy-guided world that expanded with the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

These days, interestng websites are abandoned and replaced with social media. Log-in requirements and paywalls have become the new norm.

Lurking behind the corner is a future world guided by the People's Republic of China and its mass surveillance system. We all need the open Internet more than ever!

[Coola Yagami]

I don't know how we got from internet to porn, but I guess they both go hand in hand. As for me, my parents were very religious and growing up, I actually cared what my folks thought about me. I kinda think a lot of stuff going on with today's youth is a bizzare mixture of 'mommy/daddy never said they loved me/were proud of me' and also 'I don't care, my way or the highway, who gives a **** what mom/dad thinks'. I find some of the few people I ever dated that were 'my type' still had strong family values and care a lot about what their parents and/or family think of them. I don't know, I feel that kinda stuff keeps certain people in check from being too wild, you know? Kinda like back then some girls were hesitant to sleep around cause no one wanted to be known as the town slut, but nowadays that kind of behavior is pretty much celebrated and 'empowering' so way more of people sleep around nowadays with no cares in the world. Like I knew girls that wished they could bang everyone they found hot but were too shy, ashamed, embarrassed to, but if they were kids in today's era.... hoo boy.

But anyways, my folks did have a hidden stash, one of the areas we were always forbidden to enter was their bedroom, so naturally I'd go there whenever they were gone and I knew they'd be gone for a period of time. It's been years but I remember a lot of nooks and crannies until I finally found something worth discovering, which was my first ever Playboy.

I forgot how old I was back then but I know I didn't fully get the concept of sex back then, but based on the kids at school I just knew you had to be naked, it feels real good and everybody has to have it. So when I saw my first fully nude centerfold, I remember going full mast before having a full understanding why. Like I didn't know, but my body sure knew. Guess you can say I was born straight.

I also remember back then in them days there was a lot of talk about bobs and vagene, as in all the guys would always be talking about this girl's boobs, or 'you gotta eat pussy man, you just gotta try it' (and keep in mind this was grade school). I remember most everyone didn't like our female classmates, mostly cause girls are annoying at that age and also they weren't developed yet, but you couldn't find a kid that didn't want to **** Cindy Crawford or Madonna in her prime. The point is, I didn't hear too much about ass though. I guess in parts, it my own self discovery the day I saw some hourglass woman in tight jeans that make me think to myself 'I don't know why but I wanna grab that butt'.

Some time later some cartoon came out about weird green guys with karate weapons and whatnot and a particular female in a skintight yellow jumpsuit with enough ass to perfectly fill it out was introduced to me.....

I also remember in Mexico, the magazine stores kinda... didn't care. Keep in mind this was in my small town, the larger cities are more similar to how the US runs things, but in my small town as long as you obviously weren't a little kid, they didn't even bother to ask if you were 18 or not. Sure the signs were still there, but they didn't bother to ask or check. (Side note, in my town people had no problems selling beers to kids cause at that age you knew it was for dad. Kinda like 'hey son, run on over to Pancho's and bring me a six-pack will ya? Get yourself some candy or whatever with the change'.

I still remember the first time my dad ever sent me out for a six pack. I still had America on the mind so I was like 'dad, they're gonna card me, I'm 16'. 'Trust me, they won't care'.

But anyways I was still 16 or 17 when I was finally able to buy Playboys myself, but I was still careful to hide em from my parents. I didn't want them to think I was 'growing up to be a degenerate' or whatever. It was also a small town so I went when the streets were kinda dead and hid the magazine in between comics or whatever. I didn't want gossip of 'oh hey, the Coola kid buys porn every other weekend, doncha know?'. It was still a slightly religious area, we had at least 3 of the town gossipers and our town was so small and so nosey even something like 'Looks like Laura bought a red dress, I thought she hated the color red, hmmmm' is 'big news'. I didn't want to be like 'oh hey, them church going folks, their son sure loves buying porn'.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Leo656

But back in the 80s and 90s if you went traipsing through the woods you'd inevitably find a stack of half-ruined porno mags, usually not far from a Hobo Shack of some type.

Dude. WTF was this? This was such a weird thing to read because.... I don't know. It clearly rekindled the memories of events like this and it is absolutely true. LMFAO!

I mean... I've had that experience.... wtf was that?

If you never posted this, that memory would've been lost to me completely. Holy $#!(. I'm not even joking.....

Actually this brings back a flood of memories of weird forest/sewer/rainwater-runoff-creek kind of $#!( we used to go stomping around in as kids. Basically "playgrounding" in f'n hepatitus and other awful $#!( in the water that somehow didn't kill you as a kid of the 80's.

[Prowler]

I was too young back in the 90s to care about or even know what porn was. I wasn't an early bloomer like Leo656. Plus, there were no porn mags or tapes lying around our house.

That being said, I quickly found porn when we got cable and Internet. It was by accident, but that further proves the point how common place that stuff is on the Internet. And thus my innocence was now gone.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Prowler

I was too young back in the 90s to care about or even know what porn was. I wasn't an early bloomer like Leo656. Plus, there were no porn mags or tapes lying around our house.

That being said, I quickly found porn when we got cable and Internet. It was by accident, but that further proves the point how common place that stuff is on the Internet. And thus my innocence was now gone.

Back in the 'internet is shiny and new' days, I remember going to the WhiteHouse-dot-com for whatever reason, and it turned out to be a porn site, lmao. Talk about accidental.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Back in the 'internet is shiny and new' days, I remember going to the WhiteHouse-dot-com for whatever reason, and it turned out to be a porn site, lmao. Talk about accidental.

I think the first time I ran into porn online was when I was doing some searches about cartoons and ended up seeing Flinstones and Simpsons hentai. Not too long after I ran into TMNT hentai as well. First time I saw FW April in all her glory.

[sdp]

It's silly to think that the internet wasn't "good" in the 90s, especially since those posts are from people who didn't use it back then. Using the internet in the 90s was like magic and in many ways since it was more exclusive to "normies", better than today. You could get info that no one else could and everything was so experimental, closest thing that exists today to early internet is VR.

As I mentioned I used to try to get as much nintendo info once i learned how search engines worked in 1996. To me the internet was just something computers always did, like when I clicked on Encarta or PC games. I remember the Jurassic Park Lost World website, and all the cool story bits hidden i there that you didn't get in the actual movie, this was in 1997. In 1998 the countless rumors of how to get the triforce on ocarina of time were so much fun and of course reading spoilers for the WWF PPVs in chatrooms. The year after reading everything about that new Star Wars movie Episode I, it was HYPE. The early internet memes like all your base, 1999 with the pokemon fad / pokemania. Chatrooms, shrines for forgotten shows, nowadays it's just a youtuber reading dubious information from wikipedia. Doing my homework in minutes because all the information was at my fingertip. Internet in the 90s as a little kid was just rad.



I still did all the things you guys mention from "before" the internet like play video games, read magazines, play with toys, go out and play with friends. That didn't change I still watched live TV since streaming didn't exist. Once I became a teenager of course I had porn available wherever, bad news for people who didn't have it as easily available.

[Andrew NDB]

People act like the internet was the beginning of, well, the internet. It wasn't. There would be local Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) that you could get the numbers from from your local computer store and you could dial in with your modem and post on boards kind of like this one. Or go into chat rooms, or play games and so on.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

People act like the internet was the beginning of, well, the internet. It wasn't. There would be local Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) that you could get the numbers from from your local computer store and you could dial in with your modem and post on boards kind of like this one. Or go into chat rooms, or play games and so on.

A while ago at a wrestling forum, I saw someone post a thread with links to an ancient wrestling discussion board... From 1993. It blew my mind. It was people's é actions to Wrestlemania 9.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Prowler

A while ago at a wrestling forum, I saw someone post a thread with links to an ancient wrestling discussion board... From 1993. It blew my mind. It was people's é actions to Wrestlemania 9.

Had to be a BBS for sure. Or something like it. Compuserve, Prodigy had their own things you could dial into (long before AOL was a thing), I think, but I didn't mess with those.

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Had to be a BBS for sure. Or something like it. Compuserve, Prodigy had their own things you could dial into (long before AOL was a thing), I think, but I didn't mess with those.

I guess.

Anyway, it might be hard to remember what life before the Internet was like. But it's not so hard to remember what life was like when you could still survive with it. That was quite possible until Smartphones and social media became a standard. In 2003-2008 I still had some classmates who didn't have Internet at home. I don't think there's anyone left without home Internet access except for super old people and homeless people.

Over a decade ago, spending a long time online made people judge you a bit harshly. When I told my HS classmates I spent most of my free time on the Internet, they thought it was the saddest thing they had heard, and began telling stories about going out with friends, doing sports, etc.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by IMJ

Dude. WTF was this? This was such a weird thing to read because.... I don't know. It clearly rekindled the memories of events like this and it is absolutely true. LMFAO!

I mean... I've had that experience.... wtf was that?

If you never posted this, that memory would've been lost to me completely. Holy $#!(. I'm not even joking.....

I'd definitely come across stashes of porno mags in the woods myself. And while there wasn't quite woods super close to the house I grew up in, there was kind of this "no man's land" between the houses on our street and the walled-off apartment complex adjacent to it. There, there was an actual hobo shack that always had half-ruined porno mags around.

[CyberCubed]

When I first got the internet the first thing I did was type in:

Nintendo.com
Ninjaturtles.com
N64.com
sex.com

I guess that says a lot of what was on my mind as a 13 year old in 1997.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

I'd definitely come across stashes of porno mags in the woods myself. And while there wasn't quite woods super close to the house I grew up in, there was kind of this "no man's land" between the houses on our street and the walled-off apartment complex adjacent to it. There, there was an actual hobo shack that always had half-ruined porno mags around.

There were these woods that were like.... "socially off limits" just off the property of our Middle School. It was sort of an area spoken about in hushed tones and we crept into those small woods once and it was exactly what Leo was describing above. Seriously. Small shack thing that looked only a little bigger than an outhouse or something. Firepit. Smut. Unreal. These are the stories you don't tell because they are so cliche and weird, but experiencing it as a kid, you can't make that $#!( up.

Now that I think about it, this was the 80's in a Northwest area of Chicago so you know - weird shack/tattered smut pile in the forbidden woods basically just off the property of a Middle School. In hindsight, the math on that one doesn't play out too well.

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

When I first got the internet the first thing I did


was type in:

Nintendo.com
Ninjaturtles.com
N64.com
sex.com

I guess that says a lot of what was on my mind as a 13 year old in 1997.

For me it was "The Crow" and "Stone Temple Pilots". And then we used to go into some chat room that was based in Sweden at the time and everyone would banter. There was the known-chat-room weirdo there with the handle "Oscar the Janessierre" and he used to write posts in these awkward sort of mannerisms from the 1600's or something..... "You doltless twit shalt not speaketh to me like that!"

The internet. First adopted by and for the weirdos of the Earth before regular people. The chatroom had some unique name, but I'll never remember it. It wasn't a place for "specific" conversation. It was just some chat room that caught on somehow at the computer lab at school.

[Andrew NDB]

Probably my first memories of the actual WWW internet were centered around ninjaturtles.com, other people's TMNT sites, and a bunch of Wing Commander fan sites and clubs. And aintitcool.com. IMDB.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by IMJ

And then we used to go into some chat room that was based in Sweden

Torget? Or Maybe Lunarstorm?

[sdp]

A lot of revisionist history in some posts here, people are misremembering a lot of stuff of early online. A shame since it's that misinformation that will make it into youtube videos by youtubers eventually only spreading the false info further.

Hell for those people that think I'm being a contrarian, f-cking I'm pretty sure you could get AOL floppy discs in 1994 or so from those Toys R Us treats boxes they used to give out in the early 90s:

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

People act like the internet was the beginning of, well, the internet. It wasn't. There would be local Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) that you could get the numbers from from your local computer store and you could dial in with your modem and post on boards kind of like this one. Or go into chat rooms, or play games and so on.

I remember BBS's, I hated them, looking back they are just an early form of what forums became but man they were so clunky to use they were nearly worthless. But that would still be the "internet" though, I guess what you wanted to say is that before the "world wide web". Though you might be thinking of something different if it was from the late 80s and early 90s when the internet was still in its infancy but that was before my time when I was a toddler.