Speaker 1: Welcome to the Solid Verbal.
Speaker 2: I'll that for me.
Speaker 3: I'm a man, I'm forty.
Speaker 2: I've heard so many players say, well, I want to
Speaker 2: be happy.
Speaker 1: You want to be happy for Dake Edith State.
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 1: Whoo whoom? And now Dan and Tie, welcome, you've got mail.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Solid Verbal. Boys and girls. My
Speaker 2: name is Ty hilden Brand joining me seated directly to
Speaker 2: my left. Another show. We're in the same room.
Speaker 4: Dan, It's true. Well, this is the most important show
Speaker 4: of the This is why I'm here do this show remotely.
Speaker 2: I am here for this show. It's true, Dan Rubinstein,
Speaker 2: how are you?
Speaker 5: Life is good?
Speaker 4: I am giddy excitement over today's show because it is
Speaker 4: the third annual one off topic show with our poll
Speaker 4: Bill barn Well, and this year's topic is arguably the
Speaker 4: most personal and most important.
Speaker 5: Topic we've ever discussed.
Speaker 4: If you've already downloaded the show, which I assume you have,
Speaker 4: if you're listening, you know that we are talking basically
Speaker 4: our experiences with the nineties internet and computer every see.
Speaker 2: I am disappointed in you, yeah, because you are usually
Speaker 2: the guy when we're doing our college football show that
Speaker 2: has something cued up on Spotify. How do you not
Speaker 2: have Phil Collins in the air tonight for this show?
Speaker 4: Well, I was doing this show for real. In that spirit,
Speaker 4: I would either bring up a Metallica song, yeah because
Speaker 4: shout out Lars Ulrich, the best and worst person of
Speaker 4: the nineties as it relates to music and the Internet,
Speaker 4: or maybe the buddy Holly Weezer Windows ninety five.
Speaker 5: I think that might have been the move.
Speaker 2: You need to play it on Winning, which really still
Speaker 2: does whip the lama's as.
Speaker 4: It very much does. And if you heard a very
Speaker 4: faint laugh right there, that's our pal from ESPN.
Speaker 5: Seen your NFL writer.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, I don't know what my title is, Bill Barnwell, Hey,
Speaker 3: well back Bill, Thanks guys. I gotta admit when I
Speaker 3: actually sparked a memory for me when I I believe
Speaker 3: I somehow downloaded a clip of some Metallic a song
Speaker 3: maybe nothing else matters. I had a three second clip
Speaker 3: on AOL that replaced that you've got mail clip whenever
Speaker 3: I got an e mail with that is nothing else matters.
Speaker 4: So great because I had totally forgotten, in deep diving
Speaker 4: my own nineties internet experience in my brain, totally forgot
Speaker 4: that you could replace all the waves. You know that
Speaker 4: you've got mail to welcome goodbye everything with you. There's
Speaker 4: custom Seinfeld or terminator two, and.
Speaker 2: Early of the early AOL modding was the thing that
Speaker 2: you could do for sure. So, okay, the title of
Speaker 2: this show, I don't know if we've necessarily agreed on that,
Speaker 2: but it's nineteen nineties internet things. Dan and I discussed
Speaker 2: this bill before you came over a little bit of
Speaker 2: of a loose restriction there on the Yeah, nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: You know, it doesn't have to be up until nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, but in the.
Speaker 4: Spirit of the late nineties essentially, But yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 4: try to stick us as much as we can to
Speaker 4: the nineties. And before we get fully into the things
Speaker 4: that we're going to discuss, I think it's good to
Speaker 4: set a baseline, Ty, what year.
Speaker 5: Did you graduate from high school?
Speaker 2: Two thousand?
Speaker 4: You graduated from two thousand, So this pushes right up
Speaker 4: against So this is like high school and the Internet
Speaker 4: are basically one in the same.
Speaker 2: Baby.
Speaker 5: This is the popularity.
Speaker 2: This is when we're growing up right here.
Speaker 5: I'm o one, Bill, you are I'm also one.
Speaker 4: You're also one, So we are just right smack dab
Speaker 4: like as we are going through these life changes. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the world this thing is also this is essentially the
Speaker 4: world's puberty.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, you're you're making like the sign for pubes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true, the International Pube sign is what's happening
Speaker 4: at this table. No, what I'm saying is this is like,
Speaker 4: you know, coming of age, like you know, whether it's
Speaker 4: video games, whether it's you know, talking to people from
Speaker 4: high school or talking to total strangers on the internet,
Speaker 4: or you know, playing games or what.
Speaker 2: Well, it's here's what's interesting about this, And especially since
Speaker 2: this is the same crew as the Emo Show we
Speaker 2: did two years ago and then last year the ninety
Speaker 2: sports video games, this is sort of the tie that binds.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, absolutely does all of those things. This
Speaker 2: was like the the the one thing that held it
Speaker 2: all together. It definitely amplified the EMO obsession being so
Speaker 2: access to things like Napster, and it absolutely made the
Speaker 2: gaming a little bit more intense because now all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, you could talk to people on the Internet
Speaker 2: about the same game.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean I was running a I was one
Speaker 3: of the people running a video game website for from
Speaker 3: paid sports Football Pro that's in the mid nineteen Like,
Speaker 3: you know that that does not happen if there's no Internet.
Speaker 4: So right, exactly, I mean, and the majority of your
Speaker 4: income since then is in some way directly or indirectly
Speaker 4: tied to the Internet.
Speaker 2: I saw that website and it's just been it's.
Speaker 4: Straight cash front page sport. It's still loaded. No, But like,
Speaker 4: obviously you've been at ESPN for a while. You were
Speaker 4: at IGN doing things, Yes, you were, I mean ESPN
Speaker 4: slash grant Lands before that, before fully ESPN. So this
Speaker 4: is one of my miss you were football Outsiders, a contributor,
Speaker 4: so we collectively even tie on your day job, you're
Speaker 4: connected to the internet.
Speaker 2: Connect. Yeah, we're all. We're all connected to the interwebs.
Speaker 4: And I have, yes, my my salaries have all been
Speaker 4: tied essentially to the Internet.
Speaker 2: So here's what we should do to establish another baseline
Speaker 2: before we really dive in. Let's talk about our our
Speaker 2: our general like foundation with how we use the internet.
Speaker 2: What was our computer situation, what we're rig what did
Speaker 2: we connect to How did we connect to the internet
Speaker 2: in the nineties.
Speaker 5: Bill, what was your mid nineties rig?
Speaker 3: A few different ways I was connecting to the internet
Speaker 3: I had AOL before you could use AOL to access.
Speaker 2: The World Wide Web. Okay, so there were just those topics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was there was no outgoing thing. It was
Speaker 3: just you were in that AOL space and there was
Speaker 3: no way to escape it. They were right, we'll start there.
Speaker 3: There was Prodigy.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you guys remember, I still remember
Speaker 2: that my handle was j C m U eight five A.
Speaker 3: Name, Oh God, my AOL screen name was. I believe
Speaker 3: I could be wrong. I want to say it was
Speaker 3: NFL Wiland, which was a combination of Oh and Scott Weiland,
Speaker 3: the Start Temple pilots, my two favorite things combined into one.
Speaker 4: So I think, so when people come across you, they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: this guy is for real, this.
Speaker 3: Guy two things, this guy super And I mean, like,
Speaker 3: you know, like you had a profile. You could search
Speaker 3: for an AOL, but you could search for anyone's profiles
Speaker 3: by typing in a name, So like I remember, I
Speaker 3: would go and look for Steve or Bill or Bob,
Speaker 3: and I'd be like, Wow, this guy was early doctor.
Speaker 2: If only I had.
Speaker 3: Bill on AOL would be golden. So had AOL had Prodigy,
Speaker 3: I think I preferred Prodigy to AOL especially. It just
Speaker 3: felt like it was more immersive because it was like
Speaker 3: it was a DOS program, so it was like your
Speaker 3: entire screen as opposed to a window.
Speaker 2: And then we had.
Speaker 3: Imagination, which I'm not sure how familiar with. Imagination was
Speaker 3: a little different from the other one, so you could
Speaker 3: only access it between seven pm and seven am, like
Speaker 3: if you you dial if you dialed into it, it
Speaker 3: was like before that you had to pay like some
Speaker 3: exorbitant feel like it was fifteen dollars an hour to
Speaker 3: access it before seven pms. You had to be really
Speaker 3: addicted to it. Yes, they had it was like its
Speaker 3: own little program. It had a bunch of different games.
Speaker 3: It had actually football from Pageports Football Process in Company
Speaker 3: had like Right Barron. It had some repgs, and of
Speaker 3: course it had a password protected adult zone, which I
Speaker 3: did not go to. I actually not not being conditioned,
Speaker 3: I didn't not I actually did not go. But it
Speaker 3: was clearly like this was a thing for adults, like
Speaker 3: where they talk about taxes, they talk about taxes, child
Speaker 3: care for one kids, all the deductions. So there are
Speaker 3: message boards of course, but there was a lot of
Speaker 3: sportulated content there and a lot of actually sports games
Speaker 3: you could play, so I preferred that one, but it
Speaker 3: was very tough to get access to it because, of course,
Speaker 3: you know, I was sharing a computer with my my
Speaker 3: friends and family, most of my family occasionally my friends,
Speaker 3: but you had to share with two a younger brothers
Speaker 3: and computers. By the way, this is a packard Bell
Speaker 3: might have been an IBM PS two at some point,
Speaker 3: but it was. It was not a fantastic computer. But
Speaker 3: I was pretty good at programming stuff together, especially back then,
Speaker 3: so I was able to upgrade it. I sat up
Speaker 3: some money being an ultra boy to ge get a
Speaker 3: faster video card so I could play NHL ninety three.
Speaker 5: So as soon as you got a taste, you were like,
Speaker 5: all in.
Speaker 3: A man, this is my thing, absolutely so AOL prodigy
Speaker 3: and if I got lucky sometimes imagination.
Speaker 2: Wow, no copy serve on there though.
Speaker 3: You know I could never deal with compuser because the
Speaker 3: email addresses and the US names are.
Speaker 2: Just a bunch of numbers.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: True, I couldn't deal with that.
Speaker 3: I was not into that. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 3: used compuster. Did you guys use computer?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: And surely who you could not find NFL Island No?
Speaker 2: So Dan what was your rig?
Speaker 4: So I have a unique situation in that the first
Speaker 4: computer we had was probably in nineteen ninety two, and
Speaker 4: it was we got the computer because I won it
Speaker 4: on a game show. It was a Mac or an Apple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the game show. We have posted our YouTube in
Speaker 2: that is that's the winning computer.
Speaker 3: I would love it if it was a different game show.
Speaker 3: You did not know about it.
Speaker 4: Well, I've been on four Yeah, so no. So we
Speaker 4: won that computer and we didn't have the Internet, and
Speaker 4: it was just a lot of like Oregon Trail math blaster,
Speaker 4: you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Love the blessing math.
Speaker 4: My parents went out to dinner once and I wrote
Speaker 4: a memoir as like a ten year old on there
Speaker 4: because I discovered a word processing whatever it was like
Speaker 4: text edit. I wrote my memoir there. And then we
Speaker 4: got AOL and I was net Ace seven two five,
Speaker 4: and it was that double meaning of both the Internet
Speaker 4: and I was a tennis player.
Speaker 5: What I'm July twenty fifth, my birthday.
Speaker 4: You were a birthday so net A seven two five.
Speaker 4: Although my first aim screename we get an aim as
Speaker 4: like different Animal was originally net A seven two five
Speaker 4: changed it, I believe to Jackal to bo, don't know
Speaker 4: what that means, no idea, and then later became this
Speaker 4: bridge is the gap between this and the EMO show.
Speaker 4: I want to say laid high school became something corp
Speaker 4: for like something corporate but said in a different way.
Speaker 4: Something I don't like the word something not many people knew,
Speaker 4: but here I I. We were just an AOL family
Speaker 4: until we got DSL. Maybe laid in high school, early college,
Speaker 4: but I lived in a different in state in college,
Speaker 4: but AOL all in on profiles, the chat rooms, fantasy sports, everything,
Speaker 4: and it was and we asked the internet like I
Speaker 4: asked the internet today, what were your nineties memories on
Speaker 4: the Internet? Blah blah blah, And an overwhelming number of
Speaker 4: people were you know away message, You've got mail, blah
Speaker 4: blah blah. I cannot state how enormous of a deal
Speaker 4: it was to me, and I'm assuming to you just
Speaker 4: hearing you've got mail for sure and seeing new email.
Speaker 4: Now we get thousands of emails, like it feels like
Speaker 4: a day that was that major day.
Speaker 2: It was a new event back then.
Speaker 4: It was such an event, of course, so we were
Speaker 4: so we were as the Rubenstein's were an AOL family,
Speaker 4: and it went from the Mac, I went into PC's.
Speaker 5: I had a gateway.
Speaker 2: Oh everyone had Did you have a gateway? I did
Speaker 2: not have a gateway? Oh, spots box.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I bought my computers from Tiger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tiger Direct, Tiger Direct, very nice.
Speaker 3: I did not get that. I'm sure I looked at them.
Speaker 5: So did you build any Did you build a tower
Speaker 5: at a certain.
Speaker 2: Point in late high school?
Speaker 3: In college? Yes, I was I could build a tower,
Speaker 3: but usually I was not building that. That was not
Speaker 3: out of a lack of interest or ability, just they
Speaker 3: did not have the funds to purchase a tower, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I so my earliest memory of having a
Speaker 2: computer was Mama h bringing one home from school over summer.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: Nice, And I believe that was an old Apple LG two.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, it had something like five hundred and twelve kilobytes,
Speaker 2: which you know, you couldn't you couldn't you couldn't run
Speaker 2: a toaster on that nowadays. But that was my earliest memory.
Speaker 2: And then we kind of progressed into Dell. There was
Speaker 2: at some point a Gateway two thousands, and then probably
Speaker 2: more Dell's after it, but we we sort of dabbled
Speaker 2: in the Prodigy stuff early JC NU eight five A
Speaker 2: long live yeah, but then beyond that it was mostly
Speaker 2: just AOL. Can never get into the compu served thing.
Speaker 2: I had a unique situation being so lived with Mama
Speaker 2: h Dad, who's never been mentioned on this program. Right,
Speaker 2: would go to visit with Dad from time to time,
Speaker 2: and Dad had a separate gateway two thousand. Oh okay, okay,
Speaker 2: So I had two and oftentimes I had two separate
Speaker 2: systems to work on, and so on his computer, I
Speaker 2: became you know, we weren't connected to the internet in
Speaker 2: the same way we are today. I can only assume
Speaker 2: the best in the world that mind sweepers have to assume, right,
Speaker 2: And would construct ornate paintings within paint and then on
Speaker 2: my own home computer.
Speaker 5: Nothing but catfishing if that was the cat fishing rig.
Speaker 2: But that was more of the AOL. That was more
Speaker 2: of My screen name was of course wow. So and
Speaker 2: you kept that to this day? Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 2: I may still have that to this day.
Speaker 5: May, I asked before we transit is sort of bracketing.
Speaker 4: This is an early bracketing of So when you went
Speaker 4: away to college, laptop or desktop desktop.
Speaker 3: I was given a desktop as a graduation gift that
Speaker 3: I was giving them money to build a desktop. Desktop
Speaker 3: brought it with me.
Speaker 2: Ty I had a desktop, as it did. I.
Speaker 4: You went to college within driving distance. You went to
Speaker 4: college within driving distance. I did not, and shipped a
Speaker 4: god dang desktop eight hundred miles away to school, back
Speaker 4: from school, back to school back.
Speaker 2: There were a lot of big cow spotted boxes, yes,
Speaker 2: footing around college campus.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you, I would have possibly considered going
Speaker 3: to a different school as I went to Northeastern University
Speaker 3: rap in New York, went to school in Boston. I
Speaker 3: probably would have gone to Arizona State University. And this
Speaker 3: is related to the show. Were it not for the
Speaker 3: fact that in two thousand, when I was looking at schools,
Speaker 3: most of their dorms did not have Ethernet connections. You
Speaker 3: had to except up to the internet in two thousand.
Speaker 3: That was eighteen years ago.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 4: I visited Arizona State in two thousand and I too
Speaker 4: many garlic fries at Gordon Beerson threw up. Was not partying.
Speaker 4: Was with my dad and our friend Dave and just
Speaker 4: puped everywhere. Did not end up at Arizona State.
Speaker 2: So we were all on AOL. We all were part
Speaker 2: of the do we want to call it like the
Speaker 2: aim economy whatever?
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure, you know at AIM.
Speaker 2: If we're going to talk about this era of the Internet,
Speaker 2: it was the thing. It was. It was the social media.
Speaker 2: Before social media even came into existence, everyone had a
Speaker 2: screen name. My daily regimen was you wake up, you
Speaker 2: go to school, you come home, you do whatever you
Speaker 2: gotta do, and then from like seven pm until it's
Speaker 2: time to go to bed, you hop on AOL burning
Speaker 2: that keyboard. Yeah, you start typing with your friends. I
Speaker 2: don't remember doing that much else on the Internet than
Speaker 2: typing to my friends on AOL.
Speaker 4: We had a different experience. We had a different experience. Anyway,
Speaker 4: we need to go deep into AIM. But what bod
Speaker 4: are we talking baud your connection?
Speaker 2: Oh god, well, I mean at first it was fourteen four.
Speaker 5: You were you went all the way back to fourteen Yeah.
Speaker 2: At first it was fourteen four. It was fourteen to
Speaker 2: four for me.
Speaker 3: But like they would be, AL was so popular and
Speaker 3: so difficult to access at the beginning that one of
Speaker 3: the ways people would connect would be to try a
Speaker 3: slower bods like I got down to four digit bods.
Speaker 2: Oh no, at my, at my worst, and it was bad.
Speaker 2: It was pretty sight I mean bad then was real bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, it's not even it's not even a question.
Speaker 3: Like you compare that to I remember like AOL being
Speaker 3: super excited about oh, we now support fifty six six
Speaker 3: K mode.
Speaker 2: That was insane madness. Nothing could be fast.
Speaker 4: It was like the four K of nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4: I remember we jumped from fourteen four to thirty three six,
Speaker 4: a mode of big jamb and everybody was just slumming
Speaker 4: it in twenty eight eight. But the Rubinsteins were got
Speaker 4: dang in on thirty three six and it felt like
Speaker 4: we were zooming. And then we got to fifty six K.
Speaker 2: Please please, my internet at home right now might be
Speaker 2: about fifty six because it is no but it you know,
Speaker 2: the question that I jotted down in our little notes
Speaker 2: she here, did anyone have a separate phone line? Because
Speaker 2: we're in that era now where you know you're tying
Speaker 2: up the phones a lot, especially at night, and to
Speaker 2: really be a true power user of the interwebs, can't
Speaker 2: be interrupted, can't be interrupted. Did you have the separate
Speaker 2: phone lines?
Speaker 3: Which oh I would have loved, it would have been
Speaker 3: the dream, but did not have not happen, though we did.
Speaker 4: We had two lines in our house before even the internet,
Speaker 4: and the second line was mostly became for like facts internets.
Speaker 4: And then in high school, I mean old chatty Dan
Speaker 4: over here. You know, well, you guys couldn't help it,
Speaker 4: the ladies.
Speaker 2: You guys may have had an experience than me, right
Speaker 2: with just sharing the computer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I'm an only child. Oh yeah, I have
Speaker 4: two little brothers. Bill has two siblings. So how did
Speaker 4: that work at night where you got nightmare? The one
Speaker 4: phone line and you didn't have more than one computer? No,
Speaker 4: No one had more than one computer? No, how did that?
Speaker 4: Eventually we did, but it took a long time.
Speaker 3: Yea, yeah, it's awful. It's just it was a terrible mess.
Speaker 3: You get about ninety minutes, so it would be like,
Speaker 3: you know, you're in at five thirty, you're out at seven.
Speaker 3: You know you have that much time to work. You
Speaker 3: got to get a lot of everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so then when after I graduated high school, my
Speaker 3: parents said, you can get a computer by a desktop.
Speaker 3: We'll pay for it. Just put it together, be reasonable.
Speaker 2: And I did.
Speaker 3: And that was like the biggest luxury was not only
Speaker 3: number one, I have my own computer, I don't have
Speaker 3: to share it. But number two we had a cable
Speaker 3: on them at that point, so I could just stay
Speaker 3: online all day yep, as opposed to like having to
Speaker 3: structure my time. That was like, I could not imagine
Speaker 3: life being better than that. Those are the days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, you think back fondly. But also that
Speaker 4: was a nightmare. That was a full on nightmare. Two
Speaker 4: little brothers also wanting to use the Internet and everything.
Speaker 4: And it's not like those ninety minutes were used in
Speaker 4: a constructive or like in an efficient way. No, you're
Speaker 4: talking fifty six K thirty three six. That's a slow experience,
Speaker 4: so you're getting a tenth of what you can do
Speaker 4: in ninety minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the other thing too is now when we
Speaker 2: go online, we know what we want to of course
Speaker 2: get done. We know what sites are out there, we
Speaker 2: know what's available to us. But back to the new planet,
Speaker 2: it was a totally new planet. New things are popping
Speaker 2: up all the time, so you couldn't be efficient because
Speaker 2: the entire experience was exploration. Yeah, you're just seeing what
Speaker 2: was out there as opposed to searching and destroying.
Speaker 4: Also, the idea of loading a picture. I'm not even talking.
Speaker 4: I'm not talking about porn. I'm not talking about anything
Speaker 4: like I mean, I could be, but I'm not talking
Speaker 4: about anything at all inappropriate. I'm talking if you're loading
Speaker 4: a picture of I don't know who, like Kobe Bryant
Speaker 4: in nineteen ninety eight New Laker or something like that,
Speaker 4: it is like making bad.
Speaker 2: You're like, what's gonna happen next? What are the next
Speaker 2: pixels going to be?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 4: Is this going to be in focus? Is it, you know,
Speaker 4: a high quality is it a low quality image? And
Speaker 4: everything is You're just on the edge of your seat
Speaker 4: waiting for a picture?
Speaker 2: Can it? Can I tell you his story? Please?
Speaker 3: About how naive I was Once upon a time I
Speaker 3: was downloading a picture of an athlete I don't remember
Speaker 3: who hockey play.
Speaker 4: That's a thing, mind, you just downloaded athlete pictures, just
Speaker 4: collect because you could.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, I'm just gonna get this Joe Sackic photo,
Speaker 3: of course, why not? I gotta hoard it? And like
Speaker 3: I wanted to see something on the other side of
Speaker 3: the photo, and like I think, like maybe his back
Speaker 3: was facing the camera and I wanted to see what
Speaker 3: was going on the front. So I downloaded a image
Speaker 3: editing software and hit the rotate button trying to get
Speaker 3: the photo to Rota, not realizing that it would just
Speaker 3: rotate the actual pixel. Yes, very upsetting to find out if.
Speaker 4: An hour and a half of work you thought you
Speaker 4: could you had three dimension access to all of life
Speaker 4: in perpetuity.
Speaker 2: As it turns out. Oh man, yeah, that was insane.
Speaker 2: It was incredible. And then of course we graduated up
Speaker 2: into college and you know, same deal where you get
Speaker 2: to college, it's talk about a new planet.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh it's not even necessarily, but it's it's steroids, it's.
Speaker 4: Everything is up. It's it's basically going from a covered
Speaker 4: wagon to a Ferrari right with nothing in between.
Speaker 3: The moment for me was really Napster, where it was
Speaker 3: like you know, in the past, like you could find
Speaker 3: files and you can download them and it wouldn't be
Speaker 3: super fast, but you could like get in your fifty
Speaker 3: six K speed download a five megabyte.
Speaker 4: Files Simpsons Waves or something like Copter.
Speaker 2: You know, you can get that stuff.
Speaker 3: But then like Napster coming along, and there were other
Speaker 3: sides when Napster's I think was the most prominent one.
Speaker 3: From first, like I got a iPod rider ad the
Speaker 3: same time. Okay, and that, yeah, I think it was
Speaker 3: right before I went to schools like two thousand hours.
Speaker 3: It doesn't one and you're like getting like a sixty
Speaker 3: four maybe a fifty gig twenty five gig iPod and
Speaker 3: having cable modem and unlimited access to songs was like
Speaker 3: it just was like, this is this is the absolute
Speaker 3: feature nothing can possibly time.
Speaker 4: Did you have like the the shared iTunes like in
Speaker 4: your dorm situation, we had direct connect? Oh yeah, so
Speaker 4: you could you could download any movie in a matter
Speaker 4: of seconds, any like every person's shared music libraries, or
Speaker 4: like if I wanted to, like I was a big
Speaker 4: email fan at that point, if I wanted to download
Speaker 4: a Jimmy World album, I had access to every gimm
Speaker 4: eight World album, a bunch of live bootlegs, like any
Speaker 4: possible thing in a matter of seconds. After years ago,
Speaker 4: I would not have AC I couldn't there, I could
Speaker 4: not have even a year before, have listened to a
Speaker 4: song of Theirs on the internet. Right, Like it was
Speaker 4: that amount, that was that sort of jump overnight. How
Speaker 4: quickly did you both go from Okay, here's your standard
Speaker 4: AOL chat room, AOL profiles blah blah blah. And then
Speaker 4: there's news groups, there's alt dot whatever. And if you're
Speaker 4: somebody responded with like I was an Eyelid unders fan.
Speaker 4: I was just burning up the new the like all
Speaker 4: dot islander.
Speaker 3: That's sports dot. Yeah, new Dash York Dash Islander. Yes,
Speaker 3: I think I did it for like a week.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Then I was like, I can't.
Speaker 4: I found albums like people would post like actual downloadable interesting.
Speaker 4: I mean it was very much a thing I just
Speaker 4: know I could never get into.
Speaker 5: Really, Yeah, I r C.
Speaker 2: It was intense O I r.
Speaker 3: C for sure.
Speaker 2: I that was more two thousand, two thousand slapping people
Speaker 2: with a fish on I r C. That's right. I
Speaker 2: I r C was another means of getting files.
Speaker 4: Of course, you know shout out video pimp absolutely if
Speaker 4: you were were you a video pimp, his name was
Speaker 4: video pimp out.
Speaker 2: If if you were looking for something that wasn't on Napster,
Speaker 2: you could always find it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then you had the naps not clones, but
Speaker 4: like there were a bunch of you know, Kazah and Audio.
Speaker 2: More Tower, dot Net, bear Share, which all had virus.
Speaker 4: That's like wire I want to go back to Napster
Speaker 4: because one I loved win Amp so so much win
Speaker 4: skins near skin.
Speaker 3: I got admit I was a music match jukebox guy.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 2: Oh it came with the first iPod Nobody's perfect. I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I I.
Speaker 4: Used the hell out of wind Amp, the visualizer for
Speaker 4: wind Amp.
Speaker 2: I never understood that. I still don't.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't get it either.
Speaker 4: But I had like a pioneer your pioneer audio like
Speaker 4: somewhat higher ends like sub Monster.
Speaker 5: Yes, I had.
Speaker 4: I had a pioneer skin, and I felt like I
Speaker 4: was souping up my wind Am, like I was getting
Speaker 4: extra good audio quality because somebody decided to slap a pioneer.
Speaker 3: Logo and nail the levels on this one.
Speaker 4: Yes, ooh the mix is just a little bit better. Yeah,
Speaker 4: But Napster wise, I had a huge library. I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: recording industry and artists of America.
Speaker 2: I I actually have an interesting story in this because
Speaker 2: one of my good good friends from high school was
Speaker 2: actually on the early, early, early Napster beta. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: so we're talking about the people who had Napster before
Speaker 2: the world had Napster, where he is communicat with the
Speaker 2: creators of Mew like.
Speaker 5: Sean Fanning is on the other side.
Speaker 2: Oh, there is an email or was an email on
Speaker 2: his machine from Sean Fanning inviting him to be part
Speaker 2: of a broader beta. And I believe many of the
Speaker 2: individuals who were on that beta were later in some
Speaker 2: sort of legal peril, of course, because of the copyright
Speaker 2: infringement situation that came about from Napster. But Naster changed
Speaker 2: the world. It changed the world.
Speaker 4: Napster changed the world, but it didn't really We weren't
Speaker 4: arrested as far as I know, for downloading songs. My
Speaker 4: question is, though Napster's one thing, Napster plus a CD burner. Oh,
Speaker 4: how early were you in having a tower with CDR capabilities?
Speaker 2: I was pretty early, was pretty early on the show.
Speaker 2: I was not either, Yeah, I was pretty early.
Speaker 4: I remember Andrew Einhorn, who was also responsible for my
Speaker 4: pinky being short by the way, he was in a
Speaker 4: very early.
Speaker 2: He's in the Yakuza.
Speaker 4: He's in the Yakuza. People don't know that about him. No,
Speaker 4: I'm almost positive as him. Maybe Matt Levan. I know
Speaker 4: these names mean a lot too. But they had CD
Speaker 4: burners and would bring CDs to school and it was
Speaker 4: their writing and a sharpie on the CDs, not the
Speaker 4: actual printing from like a press of a CD, and
Speaker 4: I felt like they were living in the future. Somehow
Speaker 4: their dad's robbed like a shipping container that came over
Speaker 4: from Japan, Like how were they allowed to have this technology?
Speaker 4: And for months anyway, they were on a higher social
Speaker 4: strata because they had that CDR CDRW. They had that
Speaker 4: cdr W.
Speaker 2: I mean that that was a legitimate thing.
Speaker 3: And so when I moved to Long Island, one of
Speaker 3: the first ways I made friends was that I knew
Speaker 3: how to edit auto exec dot bat and can figure
Speaker 3: that and so like when people's computers were like my
Speaker 3: friend's computer was like not morning super Bowl, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: I do this, this and this, and I showed them.
Speaker 2: And they were like, wow, this is you know how
Speaker 2: to fix this?
Speaker 3: And then I became friends with people because like we
Speaker 3: were the ones who had AOL, right, and we would
Speaker 3: use AOL and so it was like, this is the
Speaker 3: thing you do with your friend.
Speaker 5: It's a big deal.
Speaker 3: And then I remember in high school, like when that
Speaker 3: mapster was around my final year, my senior year of
Speaker 3: high school, and showing people Napster for the first time.
Speaker 5: Mind blowing.
Speaker 3: Mind blowing, just like because like people, you know, I
Speaker 3: found out about it like slowly, like I heard about
Speaker 3: it and then I was like.
Speaker 2: Well, how can it be? And I used it and
Speaker 2: I was like wow, but like just showing someone who
Speaker 2: had no idea it even existed. H Absolutely. There were
Speaker 2: three distinct levels of Napster usage for me. The first
Speaker 2: was when you used it care free, sure, and downloaded
Speaker 2: at will stuff you didn't even want, but just because
Speaker 2: you could.
Speaker 3: This is now the seventh version of Every Morning by
Speaker 3: Sugar Ray. I have on this computer, but why not?
Speaker 3: True exactly.
Speaker 2: The second I would status level would be, I know
Speaker 2: this is probably breaking some sort of lawkay, therefore I'm
Speaker 2: gonna use it, but sparingly right, I'm.
Speaker 5: Gonna pick my spot.
Speaker 4: I'm only going to download like the Impossibles, see right,
Speaker 4: I'm only going to download like Nelly.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know if they're watching me,
Speaker 2: but just in case. Wow, Okay. Yeah. Then there was
Speaker 2: the third level where it was like, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: like twenty six, maybe.
Speaker 4: I should just afford it's time.
Speaker 2: You should just go out and buy something, right, you know,
Speaker 2: because really if you think about it, Napster, whether it's Napster,
Speaker 2: Cozah Bearish, all these file transfer services, they were the
Speaker 2: early pilot for the iTunes store.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and what's strange if and I know you were
Speaker 4: into it somewhat, but Bill and I were probably a
Speaker 4: little bit deeper into that, like emo pump punk. Around here,
Speaker 4: you couldn't get a lot of these records that like
Speaker 4: your local Sam Goodie and so Napster was in a
Speaker 4: lot of ways super good for a lot of exposure
Speaker 4: for these bands they'd become popular, it was just untrackable,
Speaker 4: unmonetizable and be illegal. But I had access to so
Speaker 4: much like just like Bucko nine, you know, those types
Speaker 4: of bands that like of course, like Blockbuster Music or
Speaker 4: the warehouse isn't carrying them, but I could go see
Speaker 4: their show because I had heard of them, and I
Speaker 4: would go so that I'd buy their CDs at the shows.
Speaker 2: We could probably do fifteen shows on the master for sure.
Speaker 2: But that was the one thing that all the higher
Speaker 2: ups in the music industry overlooked. The discovery element. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure. The discovery element of it is really what
Speaker 2: still drives it today. Not the fact that you can
Speaker 2: buy it online. But the fact that you can find
Speaker 2: new stuff and.
Speaker 5: Neither one of you got in trouble. Am I correct?
Speaker 2: I in trouble?
Speaker 5: Did you get a warning notice?
Speaker 3: I didn't get any trouble from the DMCA, but my
Speaker 3: high school uh like study hall teacher yelled at.
Speaker 4: Me for oh and it was specifically he knew he
Speaker 4: or she knew it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I got paid. I got pegged a couple
Speaker 2: times for seeding bandwidth from my I okay, in college, I.
Speaker 3: Actually I read I got even more trouble. I had
Speaker 3: a great after school job high school senior year where
Speaker 3: I would just watch the computer lab and the library
Speaker 3: and like two people would come in every week and
Speaker 3: that would be it. So it's great, said, they do nothing.
Speaker 3: And but the internet was like filtered, and I found
Speaker 3: a way to get past the filter and showed my
Speaker 3: friend Brian, how.
Speaker 5: Did you get past the film?
Speaker 2: I don't remember how I got so some of those
Speaker 2: early filtering mechanisms superre there. It was a lot of
Speaker 2: duct tape and shink.
Speaker 3: I just I just came into a proxy server and
Speaker 3: that got past it, and so I should my friend
Speaker 3: he did it, and then a teacher saw him accessing
Speaker 3: something that was not appropriate for the Internet course, and
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, how did you find that? And he said,
Speaker 3: he just sold me out basically, And so then he
Speaker 3: got the summer job at the library, which was the
Speaker 3: freem job, and the job I hadn't promised to also
Speaker 3: work with him did not ever show up, Oh Bill, heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't think we ever got notices. I don't think.
Speaker 4: I don't know if maybe we got banned with ones,
Speaker 4: but never d M c A anything. So now you're
Speaker 4: talking about connecting the proxy server. So this this strikes
Speaker 4: me as a gentleman who knows his way around. What
Speaker 4: else were you doing at that? So you mentioned programming, sure,
Speaker 4: auto exec dot bat files. Sure, what other kinds of
Speaker 4: stuff were you were you experimenting with? This is gonna this,
Speaker 4: This is not where I'm trying to go. But what
Speaker 4: kind of stuff were you playing around with? As it
Speaker 4: relates to mainstream protocol?
Speaker 3: It sounds way more illicit than actually, yeah, of course,
Speaker 3: I mean like I was teaching myself to program, like
Speaker 3: I was learning Q basic, you know, I was basically
Speaker 3: trying to modify simple things, just trying to figure out,
Speaker 3: like how I can get the most out of the computer.
Speaker 2: I was, you know, doing tiny things. Who were there?
Speaker 3: Like I was running dots and high umb as opposed
Speaker 3: to lo dos. I don't know what that actually means.
Speaker 5: Where are we going with that show?
Speaker 3: But like, like you know, I went to school as
Speaker 3: a computer science managers like that was like, oh, this
Speaker 3: is my thing like this, And then I got there
Speaker 3: and I was there for a year and a half
Speaker 3: and I was like, this is actually not my hell.
Speaker 3: And from that point forward, I have not been a programmer.
Speaker 3: I have not learned anything more in my computers, and
Speaker 3: I am now just a total army in terms of
Speaker 3: my computer. So up to that point, I was great,
Speaker 3: But now.
Speaker 4: I know nothing were you into? And I know Ti,
Speaker 4: I'm setting this up because I know Tie has a
Speaker 4: lot to say on the topic. So there were certain
Speaker 4: tools that people made for even just AOL.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, so I'm gonna get more water yeah, get
Speaker 2: more water tight.
Speaker 5: This is Ties.
Speaker 4: When we were chatting about this show beforehand, he was like,
Speaker 4: I'm so happy for this show. This is my like
Speaker 4: twenty seven year, I'm my year twenty seven, age twenty seven.
Speaker 4: I'm rounding into my prime for this show. Well, a
Speaker 4: popular one was Aohel Sure of course TI mentioned I
Speaker 4: think it was was Fate Fate And basically it was
Speaker 4: a series of tools which you could mail mass mail people.
Speaker 4: You could punt people from AOL. You could put in
Speaker 4: weird or dirty, ASKI things into chat rooms, and you
Speaker 4: could have sent. You could send an email from an
Speaker 4: email address that wasn't yours. It could appear to be
Speaker 4: from your email address to hide the actual sender.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 4: It made me feel like I knew what I was doing.
Speaker 4: But I was just an ass. That's all it was,
Speaker 4: was me being an idiot dick. But I felt so
Speaker 4: much power coursing through my veins using all the proggies
Speaker 4: or progus.
Speaker 3: You weren't You weren't a dirty Warez boy, were you?
Speaker 4: That actually sounds familiar. I don't know what that is,
Speaker 4: but I know I know Warez is a city, but
Speaker 4: like what is dirty Warres? I'm just oh, you're.
Speaker 2: Saying, He's say where? I was gonna say, yeah, Warrez?
Speaker 2: And wherees is the Yanni and Laurel where? Because I
Speaker 2: was always under the parents was like Softwares.
Speaker 4: I've gone, I've gone both.
Speaker 2: I used to be Warez and then I had a
Speaker 2: computer science friend telling me that it was actually wares
Speaker 2: I I switched. I am the dirtiest of Where's Boys. Well,
Speaker 2: I used the hell out of What's funny about those
Speaker 2: programs is, by modern standards, they were just like sophisticated macros.
Speaker 2: You know, they didn't really do anything. They were all
Speaker 2: they're always like talking about all the all the cool
Speaker 2: stuff that you can do that they don't. They don't
Speaker 2: want to tell you about it.
Speaker 4: And I used it to Like, the very important thing
Speaker 4: I used it for was downloading leisure Suit Larry six, right,
Speaker 4: of course, yeah, that sense, that's yeah, of course.
Speaker 2: But my favorite was the I was a fate guy
Speaker 2: fate X. I don't know fate X I remember pretty vividly.
Speaker 2: And the two things I remember about it is that
Speaker 2: when you started it up, there was a wave or
Speaker 2: m P three file of pd P diddies I'll be
Speaker 2: missing you that one, of course, and that would play
Speaker 2: for about thirty five seconds, very long, was not well held.
Speaker 2: Wait out Diddy to start, had to wait out Diddy.
Speaker 2: And then there was an I am bomb instant message
Speaker 2: down utility where you could just pick buddy and send
Speaker 2: them the same thing. One hundred thousand times or whatever,
Speaker 2: but you could never really do a whole lot with them.
Speaker 2: And for me, using those programs is more about like,
Speaker 2: is there something I'm missing here that I can't do more?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Because it was it just seemed like it was marketing.
Speaker 2: It's like this is this is like the keys to
Speaker 2: the Hidden City. But then you would try to use
Speaker 2: it and you can never really modify the software the
Speaker 2: way you'd think. Right, that was disappointing to me. I'm
Speaker 2: just starting to hear that I was disappointed by that.
Speaker 4: Bill mentioned running building front page sports football stuff. Oh sure,
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 5: Off the top of my head.
Speaker 4: I remember making sites, but it was more to just
Speaker 4: make and see what I could do with gifts and
Speaker 4: rolling marquee blinking, yes, all of those things.
Speaker 2: Oh god, bless the counter. Oh you take counter, Oh
Speaker 2: my god.
Speaker 3: The counter going on.
Speaker 2: Guestbook.
Speaker 3: You got the guest boys. You're part of the web ring.
Speaker 3: You got that little Netscape navigators download that for optimization
Speaker 3: purposes until it's up.
Speaker 5: You're under construction.
Speaker 3: You're always construction. You got stuff blinking. You got that
Speaker 3: little pop up when you go to the pange asking
Speaker 3: for your name, so you insert that into the page
Speaker 3: you go to. Was it Matt's script archive downloads?
Speaker 4: So I messed around with that, but not for any
Speaker 4: sort of purpose there was. I never had like a
Speaker 4: pulp fiction fan site.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It was never like purpose to what I was building
Speaker 4: other than just like, hey, I'm Dan and this is
Speaker 4: my website. I made a website probably two thousand in
Speaker 4: Microsoft Publisher. Sure, yeah, always fun. But I didn't have
Speaker 4: like a thing that I didn't have, like an early
Speaker 4: version of a blog. I didn't have a fan site
Speaker 4: for something. What did you guys build aside from Bill's
Speaker 4: front page sports that you if you built anything whether
Speaker 4: it's Geo City's angel Fire or whatever that like you
Speaker 4: had a parked identity online.
Speaker 2: I appreciate the setup here, Yeah, because you know exactly
Speaker 2: where this is going to go.
Speaker 4: Well, no, I know one of the answers. I don't
Speaker 4: know how many there are so.
Speaker 2: Well, the first and most notable was that I started
Speaker 2: playing fantasy football among friends entirely manually based on the
Speaker 2: box scores in the paper. We would manually keep track
Speaker 2: with our Byzantine scoring system with who was winning and
Speaker 2: who was losing.
Speaker 4: In between all.
Speaker 5: Of the dates that you guys were all going on.
Speaker 2: This is as of like nineteen ninety five, before anything
Speaker 2: is you know, really out there online. And my initial
Speaker 2: test run with creating things on the internet was creating
Speaker 2: just a site where we could look to see who
Speaker 2: we had on our teams and what scores were some standings. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: So that that was actually a very practical way to
Speaker 2: use it. And in between you kind of mess around
Speaker 2: and figure out other things that you can do.
Speaker 3: That's like crew into yahoo dot com.
Speaker 2: What's that? That's like grew into Yahoo dot Yah dot
Speaker 2: com sold for several billions, yes, But the most notable
Speaker 2: was the article I sent you where my junior year
Speaker 2: playing varsity baseball. I did not play a lot of
Speaker 2: varsity baseball on that team. You were baseball adjacent, that's right,
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I was a participant on that team and my junior
Speaker 2: year anyway, was the designated scorekeeper and or Signs Steeler
Speaker 2: along with a really good friend of mine. And so
Speaker 2: again kind of building on this idea we can use
Speaker 2: the Internet to keep track of stuff. We built a
Speaker 2: website for our varsity baseball team that made the local paper.
Speaker 4: In case you haven't heard, the world is going online.
Speaker 2: Reading the art. This is the article I sent it
Speaker 2: to you.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna skip a little bit thus far. However, there
Speaker 4: are relatively few websites that contain extensive information on local
Speaker 4: high school sports teams that are constantly updated. That makes
Speaker 4: Steve Hinkle and Tyler Hildenbrandt's pioneer. This is from the
Speaker 4: Allentown Morning Call. Yeah, so Tie is on a baseball
Speaker 4: team and he's being written up as a webmaster.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, And I remember the author of that
Speaker 2: article asking our coaches about it, like have they have
Speaker 2: they filled you in on this, and it was as
Speaker 2: if they had seen a ghost, where as if the
Speaker 2: author had two heads of course, you know, because back
Speaker 2: then it was like it's this like you know, it's
Speaker 2: just something something the kids are.
Speaker 4: How old are you at this point, you're like fourteen, fifteen, sixteen?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, so this is this is the time when
Speaker 4: I mean, did you make anything else other than front page?
Speaker 4: Like did you devote your time?
Speaker 3: What's it?
Speaker 2: Two things?
Speaker 3: Number One, I played fantasy sports at this time too. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but we played in my neighborhood in Queens and it
Speaker 3: was always it was fantasy baseball through the mail, so
Speaker 3: you would get like you would get updates every week
Speaker 3: with like a like a I got print out that
Speaker 3: the commissioner would get and then like make copies of
Speaker 3: it give to you and you saw you on the street.
Speaker 3: So it would be like a fifteen page like you
Speaker 3: know dot matrix print out of the numbers every week,
Speaker 3: but like like fantasy football and hockey, same thing. We
Speaker 3: were just watching like the ESPN two bottom line and
Speaker 3: just writing it down and then comparing it at the
Speaker 3: end of the week.
Speaker 2: But I did not.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I did, but I don't remember what it was.
Speaker 3: All I remember is that it was on the Geocity
Speaker 3: site in the Colisseum neighborhood.
Speaker 2: That was your hood, that was I was also a coliseum.
Speaker 3: I thought about Times Square. I was open to Times Square.
Speaker 3: There are other ones I was considering, but Colisseum sports related.
Speaker 3: You figure it's got to be the way to.
Speaker 4: Think to you, Okay, So this is this is though
Speaker 4: an important time because we mentioned aim or aim, I don't.
Speaker 4: I think I always called it aim to be honest,
Speaker 4: I called it Juarez Warez Yanny. It's the no matter
Speaker 4: what you're doing with websites, no matter what you're doing
Speaker 4: with fantasy sports. And I do have a really bad,
Speaker 4: shameful fantasy sports story to tell. But AM was the
Speaker 4: center of the universe, sure, because and I don't think
Speaker 4: I'm speaking out of turn here. I assumed the three
Speaker 4: of us were not necessarily the most popular, the most charming,
Speaker 4: especially with people we were trying or we had crushes
Speaker 4: on or anything like that. But you're a different self
Speaker 4: on lots, right. You're not anonymous with these people. Obviously
Speaker 4: you've shared your screen names whatever, and so like you're
Speaker 4: talking to these people. But you get home from school,
Speaker 4: Pop open AIM person signs on, and you're just cracking knuckles.
Speaker 4: You're like, all right, here we go, here we go
Speaker 4: today the day I can't I can't chat her, maybe
Speaker 4: she'll I am me. But then you start thinking about, oh,
Speaker 4: what's a good entry, Like I can let me let
Speaker 4: me hi, Hi, Let me tell you about sixteen year
Speaker 4: old Dan eventually did alright with with AIM and essentially
Speaker 4: started dating somebody because I was pretty good on it.
Speaker 4: I AM because it was way better than I could
Speaker 4: be in person, because in person was an even worse
Speaker 4: version of that high.
Speaker 5: So I AI AM did actually work.
Speaker 4: Out well for me eventually late nights, you know, chatting
Speaker 4: into well into the night. But that the idea of
Speaker 4: signing online seeing her also then sign on and then
Speaker 4: have her I am you, it's your heart is like
Speaker 4: soaring through your ribs. I cannot overstress the extremes that
Speaker 4: that feeling gave me.
Speaker 3: I could do this for a half hour. Yes, the
Speaker 3: stories about that, I can say that the most satisfaction
Speaker 3: I've ever felt about anything I've ever written.
Speaker 2: Whoa, whoa, Yeah, no, this is totally true.
Speaker 3: Is that like I put some like pithy emo ish
Speaker 3: thing in my ame profile and my crush took it
Speaker 3: and put it in her profilesble quoted me.
Speaker 4: Was I saw that with attribute? Yes, it was like
Speaker 4: Bill Barnwell, so it was like you miss all the
Speaker 4: shots you can't take, Wayne Gretzky, Bill barn But.
Speaker 3: But this was not I was not quitting a band.
Speaker 2: I write myself.
Speaker 5: So it was like that was the So was it
Speaker 5: something like poetic and deep that you.
Speaker 3: Like eighteen year old me?
Speaker 1: Of course?
Speaker 3: But sure that was I think.
Speaker 5: There is no bigger and better feeling.
Speaker 4: No, it was incredible that like the affirmation on aim
Speaker 4: through chatting through a way messaging through Oh this is
Speaker 4: my screen name. You should we should chat online whatever
Speaker 4: that is. I don't know if it's like just fake
Speaker 4: endorphins send like screwing your brain up, But that to
Speaker 4: me is like if I'm thinking of one like lasting
Speaker 4: emotion from like the high school digital experience, it is that.
Speaker 5: And I don't know that there's a second place.
Speaker 3: So I mean like not only in high school, but
Speaker 3: that in college there was that thing for sure. Like
Speaker 3: I remember there'd be like a Friday night where I wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Go out, and I'd be like, oh, I'm a loser.
Speaker 3: I'm not going out, and like I would didn't touch
Speaker 3: AIM because I wouldn't want my name to go from
Speaker 3: grade out.
Speaker 2: You don't want to be actor on Friday, so black
Speaker 2: to act in course.
Speaker 3: But then of course, if I saw that the girl
Speaker 3: I liked was signing on, then suddenly I'm like I'm back, baby,
Speaker 3: I'm like, let's talk. And I remember my friend on
Speaker 3: the other hand, who developed several AIM hacking things and
Speaker 3: warning who we can get to as well. He started
Speaker 3: talking to this girl at school online, and the way
Speaker 3: that she showed him that she liked him was that
Speaker 3: when he put in this way message and went to sleep.
Speaker 3: When he came back, she had sent him no fewer
Speaker 3: than seven hundred and forty messages. Who because the coundo
Speaker 3: showed up on your on your yest, which was like
Speaker 3: not only just like you don't have your way message,
Speaker 3: ndeath it to be like this person two messages, this
Speaker 3: person three messages, yes, and so like that would be
Speaker 3: the first thing you would see when you'd wake up
Speaker 3: would be like, who's that any messages?
Speaker 2: How many of a cent and seven hundreds that's numerous messages.
Speaker 3: You're not going to believe this. That relationship did not
Speaker 3: work out. Wow, it was not a sustainable pace.
Speaker 2: It seems so good together too, Yeah, I know.
Speaker 4: She really seemed like what were.
Speaker 2: Your strategies for away messages? Because you know there were
Speaker 2: the most obvious was of course like lyric the song
Speaker 2: lyrics or something to you, But then there were other
Speaker 2: quotables that you could pull from Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky
Speaker 2: or whoever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you could actually like write where you were,
Speaker 4: You're like I'm going out with my parents, like hit me,
Speaker 4: hit the cell, hit the cell, which, of course if
Speaker 4: you had a cell in like nineteen ninety nine after
Speaker 4: you come out. But no, if it would be like, oh,
Speaker 4: give me a call on this line, or send me
Speaker 4: an email here, or leave where, leave where you guys
Speaker 4: are going to get burgers or whatever. That's that's the
Speaker 4: more innocent of the away.
Speaker 2: Message, because I bring that up because you guys are
Speaker 2: talking about strategies, you know, the the heart beating out
Speaker 2: of the chest. I'm getting worked up just thinking about it.
Speaker 2: I can see, go get some water for yourself. But
Speaker 2: there was also the strategy of like I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: play cool. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna put up the away
Speaker 2: message that's meaningful to me and maybe maybe somewhere out
Speaker 2: there meaningful to someone else too.
Speaker 4: I would say no.
Speaker 2: So then it turns into a bit of a phishing
Speaker 2: exercise where it's like, maybe if I get the message
Speaker 2: to this hook, you know, maybe may we're talking about
Speaker 2: your friends in high school time so many.
Speaker 3: But then there's the other side, which just of course
Speaker 3: the original subweet, which was the I'm going to leave
Speaker 3: this vaguely oh my message. Yes, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: point out who it's for what it is, but they
Speaker 3: know what it means.
Speaker 4: I think basically you could tell my emotional states ups
Speaker 4: and downs essentially ninety one percent. If you just looked
Speaker 4: at my away message from nineteen ninety nine through like
Speaker 4: two thousand and two, of course, absolutely, and it would
Speaker 4: be like happy weird quotes from emo bands when things
Speaker 4: were good, and it would just be down, down, down,
Speaker 4: what's wrong with Dan?
Speaker 5: When things were going to.
Speaker 2: Going super well.
Speaker 4: You could fully gauge if you really want to know
Speaker 4: where my head was at. You didn't have to think
Speaker 4: any harder than looking at my away message.
Speaker 3: So you listed those three different kinds of away messages. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when I first got to college and I could use
Speaker 3: AIM every day for the first time, really, one of
Speaker 3: the things that I found really exciting was I could
Speaker 3: just do all those things in my own message. So
Speaker 3: I would have like Emo song lyrics, I'd have like
Speaker 3: update on what's going on in my life, and.
Speaker 2: I like this is where I am right now.
Speaker 4: You blogged your away message pretty.
Speaker 3: Much, Yeah, so like other people had like one line,
Speaker 3: mine was like three paragraphs. I don't remember that being
Speaker 3: a huge limit on what you could do, so it
Speaker 3: was kind of ridiculous, maybe not appropriate.
Speaker 2: I remember aol AIM member profiles because early blog all
Speaker 2: there was the AOL profile, which was like a ton
Speaker 2: of real estate. There's a lot differ pitch. Yeah, But
Speaker 2: then the aim profile as well. You could sort of
Speaker 2: like expand upon your world to a little bit there
Speaker 2: and put yourself out in a more visible way.
Speaker 3: You could put your important emo poetry in your email poetry.
Speaker 5: Did you ever have?
Speaker 4: And I wrote this down in our notes and I didn't,
Speaker 4: but I knew somebody who did. That sounds like it's made,
Speaker 4: but I trust me, it is not me. I would
Speaker 4: I have a friend. So the only idea of an
Speaker 4: online girlfriend, boy, this is like the pre lineykukua.
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about catfishing.
Speaker 4: I'm like, actually, just like, oh, this is a person
Speaker 4: I met online and we've never met in person. We
Speaker 4: don't necessarily have an intention to, but it's just somebody
Speaker 4: I like talking to.
Speaker 2: When you're running a website for your high school baseball team,
Speaker 2: you don't have tax You just don't have time for
Speaker 2: an internet girlfriends.
Speaker 4: Good buddy of mine in high school I ran Dubinstein
Speaker 4: Don Roberts. No good friend of mine in high school
Speaker 4: did and told me about her, and I remember talking
Speaker 4: to what I presume but cannot guarantee was a girl
Speaker 4: my own age, and I remember like having a conversation
Speaker 4: with her and like it would get like personal, just
Speaker 4: like asking about each other's lives, but it was it
Speaker 4: never got to any sort of like actual relationship wearing.
Speaker 5: It never no, it was. It was never creepy.
Speaker 4: And at this point I would tell you, because I married,
Speaker 4: my wife is not divorcing me because of this shout
Speaker 4: out Jody with an eye. But I remember talking to
Speaker 4: somebody like that. I was like, Oh, it's very easy
Speaker 4: to meet these supposed new people. But he, this buddy
Speaker 4: of mine, had what he considered to be like more
Speaker 4: than just like a chat buddy, and they made plans
Speaker 4: to meet in person, and they like they planned to
Speaker 4: like she was she, I have no idea. It was
Speaker 4: going to be in La And my buddy was like
Speaker 4: fifteen sixteen something like that, and she was gonna be
Speaker 4: in like Long Beach, which is nowhere near where we lived.
Speaker 4: And she was like, Oh, I think we're going to
Speaker 4: like the Long Beach Aquarium or something like that. Why
Speaker 4: don't we meet in front of the aquarium. And my
Speaker 4: buddy had to convince his parents to drive him like
Speaker 4: an hour away, so he could meet his online girlfriends.
Speaker 4: She never showed no, because of course she didn't, but like.
Speaker 2: That was a thing where like when he was telling
Speaker 2: me this, I was like, I don't know fully how
Speaker 2: the internet works.
Speaker 4: This sounds like it could be a thing. I don't know.
Speaker 4: I'm a very stupid fifteen or sixteen year old. And
Speaker 4: then when he told me she didn't shaw, I was like, yeah, well.
Speaker 5: Those are the breaks.
Speaker 2: I don't know, chicks, man.
Speaker 4: But yes, that was that was a thing that happened
Speaker 4: to him, And that was like, looking back, like that's
Speaker 4: super e f and weird.
Speaker 2: Of course it is.
Speaker 4: But when you're that age and the internet is, you know,
Speaker 4: it's nineteen ninety nine, the AOL has been around for
Speaker 4: six years, five years, whatever, you have no idea what
Speaker 4: like protocol is with meeting people online.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean like my friend was when we were eighteen,
Speaker 3: and this is not this is not me honestly my
Speaker 3: friend I was there, but like he started talking to
Speaker 3: this girl on like a nine inch nails message board. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then like we were there talking and he's talking
Speaker 3: to her a bunch and I'm like, okay, guess I'll
Speaker 3: just go play middle gear salad while you talked to this.
Speaker 2: Guy wake three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this all checks out, and then you know, a
Speaker 3: few hours passed and it's like midnight and like so
Speaker 3: much probably like I didn't have a car and he
Speaker 3: had a car, and he's like, probably go home, and
Speaker 3: he's like, I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: Go meet this girl in New Jersey.
Speaker 5: And this is not close to New Jersey.
Speaker 3: This is like Long Island. This is like it's a
Speaker 3: two hour drive and you your parents are home, like
Speaker 3: you have to kind of get out without your parents.
Speaker 3: And so he drove to New Jersey and hung out
Speaker 3: with this girl all night.
Speaker 5: So I mean she was real.
Speaker 3: She was as far as I know, unless he's been
Speaker 3: lying about it ever since, which is not I don't think.
Speaker 2: No, it's not at all. If I were, It's two hours.
Speaker 3: He got to the Vistlambardi rest stop and then called
Speaker 3: in a night and it's Nathan's while this girl did
Speaker 3: not respond, but I guess they met up and like
Speaker 3: that that was impossible to believe could happen.
Speaker 2: Did any of you guys dabble in the AOL chat rooms?
Speaker 4: Of course?
Speaker 3: Online hosting me were good friends. I was rolling dice.
Speaker 3: I was rolling dice in the AOL chatrooms all the
Speaker 3: time I was part of. I'm sure it was a
Speaker 3: It must have been like an e wrestling fed where
Speaker 3: you like roll dice. In term of what happened with
Speaker 3: the moves, I would guess wow, I would wow. I
Speaker 3: don't remember the specifics, but that does sound like something
Speaker 3: I did in the past.
Speaker 2: The AOL chat rooms were like really wild wild less.
Speaker 2: It was. It was the early Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, is what it amount. You'd hop in and
Speaker 3: then people would be like press nine if you like
Speaker 3: boys to Men, and it's like, okay, well we're chatting.
Speaker 2: This is great.
Speaker 5: God, that would be such a good memoir.
Speaker 4: Name press nine if you like boys to men for
Speaker 4: the nineties episode, maybe that's the name of our episode.
Speaker 4: And it doesn't make any sense if you're scrolling you
Speaker 4: see PAC twelve preview, acc.
Speaker 3: I think just call it nine.
Speaker 2: So what what did you guys do on the internet
Speaker 2: beyond chatting with friends? So I'm not trying to take
Speaker 2: this to an affairs, but seriously, what what did you do?
Speaker 2: Because as we got older, you get to college, you
Speaker 2: get a faster internet connection. All of a sudden, you
Speaker 2: can play games a little bit more easily online. Not
Speaker 2: that you couldn't before, but now you've got faster, you've
Speaker 2: got the inction, you know, quake three, quake whatever.
Speaker 5: Online a lot of high school counter strike for this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, there's there's a lot that you can
Speaker 2: play all of a sudden, But when you're not playing games,
Speaker 2: when you're not chatting with friends, it's sort of like
Speaker 2: a new place.
Speaker 5: Oh, there's a lot of sports.
Speaker 4: What are you doing. I was reading a lot of sports,
Speaker 4: playing fantasy sports, especially when it like moved online in
Speaker 4: a yeah, oh yahoo, Yeah, when was Kurt You would
Speaker 4: know this because football is what you do. When was
Speaker 4: Kurt Warner's first year with the Rams where he exploded?
Speaker 4: After it was ninety nine? I was the first year
Speaker 4: I played fantasy football, and you had Kurt Warner after
Speaker 4: week one when he threw for a Bajillian passes. I
Speaker 4: had Kurt Warner and like Isaac Burgs and I just
Speaker 4: ran things. My fantasy sports story is I went to
Speaker 4: a couple of years. I went to like a camp
Speaker 4: or an academy whatever at Stanford for tennis, not academics police,
Speaker 4: and it was you know, there was there boys, there
Speaker 4: were girls, whatever. Everybody's fourteen fifteen hormones are raging. Whatever
Speaker 4: of course it is going now, this is totally grated.
Speaker 4: But I remember specifically, I was like hitting it off
Speaker 4: with the girl. We're like fifteen years old and we're
Speaker 4: all staying in dorms. This is total Again, Bill's covering
Speaker 4: his face because he thinks I'm going to a disgust.
Speaker 5: I'm not at all.
Speaker 4: And like we would hang out, and the more we
Speaker 4: would hang out, the more I got antsy about not
Speaker 4: knowing what was going on with.
Speaker 2: My fantasy.
Speaker 4: And mind you, this is Stanford. Even though it's Stanford,
Speaker 4: this is nineteen ninety eight or so, there's not we
Speaker 4: don't have nobody brought laptops and there's no obviously iPads, iPhones,
Speaker 4: nothing like that. And there's only one place to check
Speaker 4: my fantasy team, and that's the Stanford Bookstore, because like
Speaker 4: the downstairs basement had computers that were connected to the
Speaker 4: Internet at like a pretty fast rate. And I remember specifically,
Speaker 4: like near the end of this week, because it's a
Speaker 4: week long like sleepaway camp, this tennis camp. She wanted
Speaker 4: to hang out and I don't even think we had
Speaker 4: kissed or anything like that. We was just like hearts
Speaker 4: beating kind of thing, and I was like, I really
Speaker 4: I had this like fork in the road moment where
Speaker 4: I hang out with this pretty girl as like a
Speaker 4: fourteen or fifteen year old or check to see, like
Speaker 4: what Bernie Williams did for my nineteen ninety eight ESPN
Speaker 4: remember baseball challenge, Sure, a salary cap league. Sure, So
Speaker 4: that's something you had to update that. This isn't like
Speaker 4: you drafted a team in the spring and this is
Speaker 4: you're making moves. It's a weekly update. So like Bernie Williams,
Speaker 4: if he goes off that week, his price is gonna
Speaker 4: be more expensive and not being able to keep him
Speaker 4: or something like that. And at a certain point, I
Speaker 4: was just like, baby, I gotta go.
Speaker 2: This brings up three different story.
Speaker 3: Bobby Lopez is going off, Jeff Blauser is having a.
Speaker 5: Great yea baby baby, baby, baby baby.
Speaker 2: This makes up three different So that lets you know
Speaker 2: how my creepiness level.
Speaker 3: Okay, as like a fourteen years old clarifying, yeah, fourteen
Speaker 3: year old me as a nineteen year old in college,
Speaker 3: stop talking, like ended a conversation with a very attractive
Speaker 3: girl I would like to be friends with because I
Speaker 3: wanted to go home and read the Bill Simmons column,
Speaker 3: which I know going up at any particular time at
Speaker 3: particular what year is this? This is two thousand and two. Okay,
Speaker 3: So like I knew, Tuesday four pm. I got to
Speaker 3: get there see you later. Very nice lady was talking
Speaker 3: to me. I'm going to go read this sports thing
Speaker 3: now worked that well in the long run for me,
Speaker 3: I suppose it did.
Speaker 2: Number two.
Speaker 3: I remember going to Disney when I was a junior
Speaker 3: in high school and going to like the five dollars
Speaker 3: for ten minutes internet thing in Disney to check out
Speaker 3: a pro wrestling newsport to see what happened in ECW
Speaker 3: that week.
Speaker 2: So has that happened?
Speaker 3: My big thing was I played that football game front
Speaker 3: PA Sports Football Pro, and you would like exchange playbooks
Speaker 3: every week. You would exchange games every week. And so
Speaker 3: there was one week where I was in the finals
Speaker 3: of a league for the first time. I was playing
Speaker 3: this guy and you could see what they plays there
Speaker 3: week before, and you could do custom plays. You could
Speaker 3: take plays from the game. And this guy had a
Speaker 3: punt block play that blocked like three punts in the
Speaker 3: previous game. How do I beat this guy? And I
Speaker 3: realized if I just run a fake punt every time.
Speaker 3: They can't cover it.
Speaker 2: Right, And so there was a guy that's like the
Speaker 2: Joe Montana football thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, And so I assumed, well, basically, I'm assuming
Speaker 3: they're gonna run the same fit pump block play this week,
Speaker 3: So why not run the fake punk fake punt every time?
Speaker 3: And I could tell my team. I had to like
Speaker 3: code it in. I could tell my team every time
Speaker 3: run a fake punt, whether it's a once, it's four
Speaker 3: and thirty. And there was this guy who was doing
Speaker 3: a friend of mine who was doing commentary on this
Speaker 3: game on real audio, okay, of course, and so they
Speaker 3: released the real audio file of the game. That's how
Speaker 3: you find out whether you won or lost. And so
Speaker 3: of course every time I got the fourth down, it's like,
Speaker 3: well here it.
Speaker 2: Comes the punt. Oh it's a fake.
Speaker 3: And I won the game like fifty seven to three
Speaker 3: because I ran a fake punt every single time. And
Speaker 3: this guy was so upset. I was like, you can't
Speaker 3: do that, but of course it.
Speaker 4: Was You're what's the word I'm looking for? You're like,
Speaker 4: if you're playing a video game and you were always
Speaker 4: using the same like drilling Street Fighter you were like
Speaker 4: cheap essentially, sure you were.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I'm trying to in.
Speaker 2: The back of my mind as I'm hearing word what warez.
Speaker 4: As I'm as I'm hearing Bill tell the story about
Speaker 4: programming in fake puns in sports? The only the gears
Speaker 4: that are turning in my brain are basically telling me,
Speaker 4: how do we top this depth of nerdiness next year?
Speaker 4: How do we go deeper into our disgustingly nerdy digital
Speaker 4: souls to top this?
Speaker 2: I don't know, fake punt? May do you have take
Speaker 2: the cake?
Speaker 4: And I think I tried to stress that I was
Speaker 4: keeping the Tennis Academy story pges like you said, g
Speaker 4: G excuse me? Do you have a PG thirteen story
Speaker 4: you'd like to share from out the internet at usage?
Speaker 5: I'm not talking.
Speaker 4: I don't care. Like everybody's looked at poorn, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 5: That's boring.
Speaker 4: But do you have a story involving anything with like
Speaker 4: library accidental? Like is there anything like embarrassing that either
Speaker 4: happened to you or anybody you knew?
Speaker 2: I have a story?
Speaker 3: Okay, so I dude, try to uh groom me on
Speaker 3: the internet and I read about it for broom You yeah,
Speaker 3: like you know, like try like a clearly an adult
Speaker 3: man like found my profile and tried to like come
Speaker 3: on to you. Yeah, okay, and like it was like, hey,
Speaker 3: let's talk on the phone. My grandma was watching me,
Speaker 3: and it's like I don't know, sure, nice. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: so like he called like said some creepy stuff, and
Speaker 3: I honestly did not know what he was talking about,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of was just like I don't.
Speaker 2: Know, like that's weird.
Speaker 3: I wrote about it for this recording, which is an
Speaker 3: intertro website that I worked on with Molly Lambert years
Speaker 3: and years ago, so it's on there the full story.
Speaker 3: It's not super it's a little creepy, but it's not
Speaker 3: I'm not the creepy and I'm like the naive, like
Speaker 3: I don't know what do you want me to do,
Speaker 3: sir in this scenario.
Speaker 2: So he kind of like realized I did not know
Speaker 2: what he was talking about and kind of.
Speaker 3: Like this speared and was like don't tell anybody. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so I was almost the victim of some some real
Speaker 3: creepy stuff.
Speaker 2: Wow, I got nothing. I got nothing like that.
Speaker 4: The only thing that I can point to that is
Speaker 4: I think it just speaks to. It's so specific for
Speaker 4: this time, and I'm going to tell you this is me.
Speaker 3: Yes, sorry, sorry, I forgot I apologize. I remember his
Speaker 3: screen name? Oh really yeah, his screen name was hot Umbros.
Speaker 4: If you were really a comedic mind football, right, I know. No,
Speaker 4: the only like real story that's just like of this time,
Speaker 4: that is just it's super embarrassing, but I'm just gonna
Speaker 4: roll with it because this is of this shows.
Speaker 5: It's a show about honesty.
Speaker 4: Is I remember coming across on AOL or probably in
Speaker 4: a browser that like, oh there are websites with women
Speaker 4: not wearing clothing, and I came across a shot of
Speaker 4: I probably couldn't even remember the name if I thought
Speaker 4: about it, but somebody in Playboy, a playmate of some
Speaker 4: kind human most likely, and I remember coming across its like,
Speaker 4: my friends are never going to believe me that I
Speaker 4: found this, But I'm not going to send it to
Speaker 4: them because then they'll get in trouble. So I don't
Speaker 4: want them to come over. I don't want my computer
Speaker 4: privileges taken away. So I very quickly printed the picture
Speaker 4: as any respectful fourteen year old would do. Printed the picture,
Speaker 4: folded it into like eights, you know, and like put
Speaker 4: it under some sort of not furniture, but like a
Speaker 4: wooden chest or something that was in my room. And
Speaker 4: at some point in the next couple of weeks I
Speaker 4: probably forgot about it, and my mom was in my
Speaker 4: room looking for a book and like move the chest,
Speaker 4: and the folded picture fell from underneath the chest and
Speaker 4: it fell onto the ground, and my mom opened the
Speaker 4: piece of paper with me sitting right there, and it
Speaker 4: was just a black and white print out of a
Speaker 4: playmate that I was that I printed out to show
Speaker 4: my friends how expert I.
Speaker 5: Was at the Internet.
Speaker 4: And my mom looked at the picture and I will
Speaker 4: it is etched into my brain, scarred into my brain,
Speaker 4: something like these look like rice bowls. This is not
Speaker 4: what women look like. And I was like, I need
Speaker 4: to implode onto myself right now, Mom, please leave forever.
Speaker 4: As my mom was discussing fake books with fourteen year
Speaker 4: old Dan, Yeah, I did not point quite like that.
Speaker 3: I can tell an embarrassing ri not not that love
Speaker 3: love embarrassing. But when I was g seventeen or eighteen,
Speaker 3: I was an Emo fan. Obviously I had friends who
Speaker 3: were Emo kids. They were like, hey, you should sign
Speaker 3: up for Makeout Club, which is aren't familiar with. They
Speaker 3: got club. It is a yeah, it is a as
Speaker 3: you can probably figure out a punkin Emo themed. I
Speaker 3: guess online dating slash friend thing like me with friends here,
Speaker 3: it's cool. And so I was back in New York.
Speaker 3: It's just like my first summer. I would have been eighteen,
Speaker 3: my first summer back from college, and so like my
Speaker 3: friends were in Boston, and so I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll do this whatever. I started talking to this girl.
Speaker 3: I don't think I told the story on the Emo Show,
Speaker 3: but it's Emo Show related. I started talking to this
Speaker 3: girl and she's like, oh, do you like STD And
Speaker 3: I was like, no, that's awful, it's gross. And then
Speaker 3: she was just like you don't and I'm like, what
Speaker 3: are you talking about? And she's like, oh, save this yeah,
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh yeah, I like say this today.
Speaker 3: But then I was so embarrassed that I ended the conversation.
Speaker 2: There's no coming through my account.
Speaker 3: I just also bleeded my account and everyone back on
Speaker 3: the side.
Speaker 5: Again faked your own death. Yeah, that'll makes sense at
Speaker 5: the end of this.
Speaker 2: So one thing that we did not mention not to
Speaker 2: take too hard of a turney AOL forty hour free CDs. Yes,
Speaker 2: the whole idea of CDs is madness in twenty total madness.
Speaker 2: But we can't talk about this era of the internet
Speaker 2: without talking about the forty three hours that you get
Speaker 2: from AOL. Of course, how people would hoard those CDs.
Speaker 2: I had friends who would have eight ten different screen
Speaker 2: names because they were somehow able to acquire that many.
Speaker 2: And you could get on the internet for free for
Speaker 2: an extended period of time just using CDs that were
Speaker 2: sent to you, that were sent to friends that grandparents
Speaker 2: couldn't use anything. Were you a forty hour free CD
Speaker 2: kind of guy?
Speaker 5: At some point? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I use those, I eventually know. But we we had
Speaker 4: an AOL account we you know, I don't know if
Speaker 4: it was unlimited at that point. There's certain number of
Speaker 4: hours you get, I think.
Speaker 3: To the point where it went from being like an
Speaker 3: hourly thing, so you can get this unlimited limited Prodigy Actually,
Speaker 3: remember when we got our first computer, Prodigy gave us
Speaker 3: like a year for free. Like they were like, we
Speaker 3: have this incredibly long period of time.
Speaker 5: Where that zero was always for free.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you couldn't use it for like, you know
Speaker 3: more than a certain number of hours a week, but
Speaker 3: it was free for like an extended period of time.
Speaker 2: Was anyone to hear on Juno, Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 5: I dabbled.
Speaker 3: I was aware of Juno, but I never used it.
Speaker 3: Was it also did like aol or Prodigy buy Juno
Speaker 3: at something.
Speaker 2: I think prod I want to say Prodigy bought merged
Speaker 2: something I know somebody did, but I was aware of it.
Speaker 2: It was it was an interesting concept. It wasn't It
Speaker 2: wasn't a bad concept. It was it would dial up,
Speaker 2: pull down your email, disconnect all did just an email service.
Speaker 3: That would dial up get it just kind of like
Speaker 3: Crimson tie like they would just that's right, just trying
Speaker 3: to forget the message.
Speaker 4: And then that was.
Speaker 1: That was all once.
Speaker 4: So earlier today, I asked Twitter, what do you remember
Speaker 4: most fondly about the late nineties Internet?
Speaker 3: And you may it is so different talking about this
Speaker 3: era of my life that I'm so fond of in
Speaker 3: the past. Yeah, and thinking about Twitter now, that is
Speaker 3: this awful thing that's so bad. It just disappeared from
Speaker 3: the Internet. At least this thread of the fans of
Speaker 3: solid verbal are great. Yes, of course, the people who
Speaker 3: are in my mentions.
Speaker 4: Right, they are bad, They're probably bad, but they might
Speaker 4: have some similarly good memories. Yes, so I asked people,
Speaker 4: what do they what do they remember most fondly. I'm
Speaker 4: not going to go through all of these, but stop
Speaker 4: me when any of these jump out to that we
Speaker 4: haven't mentioned. First of all, multi CD installation, please insert
Speaker 4: disc four of seven madness.
Speaker 3: I remember using like playing like hard Ball three for
Speaker 3: the people and having like this like weird like copy protection,
Speaker 3: like go to page seventy three of the manuals sentence
Speaker 3: for a line two or.
Speaker 2: In the middle of a game where you come to
Speaker 2: a critical stage, please insert disc three for sure, you
Speaker 2: know it couldn't all fit on once, one CD, two CDs.
Speaker 4: A lot of people mentioning the AOL dial up sound, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, if you weren't supposed to be online,
Speaker 4: would totally blow up your spots to your parents because
Speaker 4: all of a sudden you're like, yeah, I know my
Speaker 4: homework that that was the word, but also kind of great.
Speaker 4: A lot of people talking about different games. We have
Speaker 4: a snowd reference in here.
Speaker 3: I would I would play a student like the snude
Speaker 3: characters would haunt me in my sleep. Yeah, they could
Speaker 3: see them.
Speaker 4: You can't play a little bit of snuode. No, a
Speaker 4: lot of bit of snuod. I've got some ASL references, which, yeah.
Speaker 3: Did you ever actually ASL someone?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I don't think I felt like that's what you were
Speaker 2: supposed to do. Yeah, that's why I did it, because
Speaker 2: it just seemed like it was the thing.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: It was a salutation people remembering aspect ratio jump, not
Speaker 4: aspect ratio, but resolution jumps and their monitors very oh.
Speaker 3: Sure, I remember going from EGA to VGA.
Speaker 4: Of course, somebody is very so Seth is like going
Speaker 4: from ten twenty four to seven six by seven sixty
Speaker 4: eight after eight hundred by six hundred, big, Just it
Speaker 4: is not Seth Throsenthal. Unfortunately, a lot of Napster references,
Speaker 4: a lot of uh oh, we got dancing baby, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 4: one of the original.
Speaker 2: Flying toaster, Yeah, screensaver.
Speaker 3: What I played yesterday? Was you mentioned the Buddy Holly video.
Speaker 3: I played the Ski game, the Windows Ski game that yeah,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, the Bear that h Yeah.
Speaker 4: We've got a couple in Karta references. Yeah, the pre
Speaker 4: I mean, so some of this was a good one.
Speaker 4: Discovering Cliff's Notes like summaries of most books I had
Speaker 4: to read in English. I think it was Baron's Notes
Speaker 4: or pink Monkey something like that I definitely utilized or.
Speaker 3: Pink Monkey like gues are not like two relatively similar things.
Speaker 5: Not at all, but good for pink Monkey for differential.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So we got with some win ampso I s Q references.
Speaker 4: If aim was to mainstream.
Speaker 3: I had a seven digit ICQ number that was, I believe,
Speaker 3: reasonably rare. Okay, I feel like I, like, you know,
Speaker 3: most people had like an eight eight digit number, Like
Speaker 3: it was like it was an order of when you subscribe,
Speaker 3: when you downloaded it. I'd use it like once every
Speaker 3: year and a half and I'd be like, oh, remember
Speaker 3: all these people. I have an ICQ and then I
Speaker 3: never use it again. I had a Microsoft Messenger as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys are.
Speaker 5: I don't know if I ever used us that.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's see just a lot of a lot of CDs.
Speaker 4: This is so great, a lot of modem references. We
Speaker 4: got a couple of under construction gifts. Oh this one
Speaker 4: spoke to me getting the newest versions of Coral draw
Speaker 4: and missed at Costco.
Speaker 2: Are you missed, guys.
Speaker 5: I was not a miss I was. I played a
Speaker 5: lot of triple play baseball.
Speaker 3: Does that to play a lot of hardball? A lot
Speaker 3: of fun paved sports baseball.
Speaker 2: There were some early versions of the n C Double
Speaker 2: a video game series that you could play in the
Speaker 2: oh yeah, yeah, I definitely did that were a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. You could get the controller, the gravest game pad.
Speaker 4: I was knee deep into Gravis and I remember a
Speaker 4: buddy of mine got a cable card his tower Holpite
Speaker 4: I believe, I don't know how that company is pronounced
Speaker 4: Help whatever. It's in New York, and he put in
Speaker 4: a card in his tower and he could watch TV
Speaker 4: on his computer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That was That was sort of the white whale
Speaker 2: of the late nineties and early two thousands being able
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 4: He would have one window of aim and another window
Speaker 4: of like Roy Firestone, you know whatever he was watching,
Speaker 4: and it was it was mind blowing. Yeah, I I
Speaker 4: did in college because I saved room my college gateway.
Speaker 2: I got that.
Speaker 4: That was a big deal to me to have that
Speaker 4: TV and computer in one Yeah. Anything else tie that
Speaker 4: strikes you that that's personal to you about whether it's computers,
Speaker 4: you used, it's people you spoke to, any weird emails.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was. It was just such a
Speaker 2: formative time.
Speaker 4: I got to college and I was on Morpheus, like
Speaker 4: our one, like American Pie two. Please, we're talking hundreds
Speaker 4: of kpps.
Speaker 2: I would like to go back in time and just
Speaker 2: take a good look at like the transaction logs of
Speaker 2: all the weird things I downloaded, basically because I could,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of Limp biscuit on that list.
Speaker 2: I saw a biscuit, baseball jersey, a couple of it
Speaker 2: for you, thank you.
Speaker 5: Gotta haven't.
Speaker 2: I haven't downloaded LILYMP biscuit in a while, but yeah,
Speaker 2: just the ability to connect instantaneously with your closest friends
Speaker 2: was like a huge jump forward. And I'm always kind
Speaker 2: of amazed thinking back how quickly it took hold of
Speaker 2: our generation, because it really did just come on very quickly.
Speaker 2: Before you knew it, everyone had it. It rewired our
Speaker 2: brains totally, sure, in probably a lot of negative ways,
Speaker 2: but also it was like the early foundation for what
Speaker 2: we have now, where we're hyper connected via text message
Speaker 2: in Twitter and all that stuff. But Aim to me
Speaker 2: was like the bedrock of a good five six years
Speaker 2: of my childhood. Well, for sure, it's impossible to imagine
Speaker 2: college without Aim, and it's impossible to imagine what my
Speaker 2: life was like before that, where it was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: well I have ninety minutes on the computer today, I'm
Speaker 2: going to have to use that. And I can't google anything.
Speaker 2: I can't you know, I can't connect with people unless
Speaker 2: they send me an email message like pre aim.
Speaker 3: Like it just was not. It's unfathomable.
Speaker 2: One of my lasting and pro I don't want to
Speaker 2: go to a dark place with this. But nine to
Speaker 2: eleven happened when you're in college.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it happened two weeks or like two days before.
Speaker 3: I was supposed to go to Capolic. I drove up
Speaker 3: from New York to Boston. Four days after nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: For I drove La to Eugene.
Speaker 2: So this was my sophomore year of college, started my
Speaker 2: sophomore year at college. And my lasting memory of that day,
Speaker 2: aside of everything else is horrible that went on that day,
Speaker 2: was looking on September the eleventh, two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: that night after it all happened, at everyone's away message,
Speaker 2: because the world, the world was glued to the TV right, yeah,
Speaker 2: and everyone had the same kind of a way message up,
Speaker 2: surreal awful, like no one knew what to say, but
Speaker 2: that was their way to say it through AOL. No
Speaker 2: one was I aming because no one, no one was
Speaker 2: interested in that because it was so traumatic. But I
Speaker 2: just remember looking at the list of all my friends,
Speaker 2: however many friends I had on the buddy list at
Speaker 2: the time, everyone having an away message up, and every
Speaker 2: single one of them striking the same tune.
Speaker 4: It was seventeen years ago.
Speaker 5: It's not all a different from Twitter.
Speaker 2: No it's not.
Speaker 4: It's not really hum all that far from away messages.
Speaker 4: That's the actual problem.
Speaker 2: No, of course, but that's my that among many other
Speaker 2: joyful things, that's one thing that is just burned into
Speaker 2: my brain as like, wow, this is this is this
Speaker 2: was this really was a bell curve of an emotional show.
Speaker 2: We're running the gamut here.
Speaker 3: Let me try and take it back to a friendler
Speaker 3: note when it comes to him, let me tell you
Speaker 3: a story about a con but I was I narrowly avoided.
Speaker 4: So there's this notre dame middle lineback. Yeah right, really good, yeah,
Speaker 4: super super good. Anyway I start, we gets to talk him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was in college and it was like
Speaker 3: two in the morning, and I was programming stuff for
Speaker 3: my computer science class with my friend and we were
Speaker 3: like hour hungry, let's go to seven eleven. So he
Speaker 3: walked to seven eleven and me see this guy and
Speaker 3: he tells us, Hey, you know, like I'm stuck in
Speaker 3: Boston for the night, Like I'm trying to get back
Speaker 3: to Providence and I have one hundred dollars bill and
Speaker 3: I can't use that to pay for the bus. So
Speaker 3: if you can just go to your ATM, take out
Speaker 3: eighty bucks, which was good about the money for people
Speaker 3: who were in college. Yeah, money, and give me four twenties.
Speaker 3: I'll give you one hundred dollars bill, you get twenty bucks,
Speaker 3: I get to go home. It's a win win, right,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, there's too many variables in this, Like
Speaker 3: I don't think he's.
Speaker 5: Thought this out too clear, right, Yeah, So you know we'd.
Speaker 3: Like, sorry, buddy, can't help you. Go to seven eleven.
Speaker 3: Get you know, our our pepsi ones and our our
Speaker 3: Mountain Dude code reds and go back and program, go
Speaker 3: to sleep. Wake up at ten am. The first thing
Speaker 3: you do every morning is check everyone's at a way
Speaker 3: mess what's going on? And I checked my my other
Speaker 3: friend Brendan's away message and it says, I can't believe
Speaker 3: I just got conned out of a no and pieced
Speaker 3: it together. He gave the guy, went to the ATM,
Speaker 3: got the eighty bucks. Gave the guy eighty bucks, and
Speaker 3: the guy was like, I'm going to go went into
Speaker 3: my house, like one to my house, got the hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: I'll come my back out.
Speaker 4: And oh so he didn't even I was thinking he
Speaker 4: had like a totally fake hundred dollars bill.
Speaker 3: No, he just was like, I'm gonna go in this house,
Speaker 3: get one hundred dollars bill. I'll be her back out.
Speaker 3: And Brandon waited for like a half hour. I don't
Speaker 3: think this guy's coming back out unless oh wow, so
Speaker 3: you could find out about a lot of things on
Speaker 3: am my front. That same guy, uh punched the other
Speaker 3: guy who I was talking about and broke his nose.
Speaker 3: And I came back to a our shared apartment and
Speaker 3: there was blood all over the wall, and I checked
Speaker 3: my friend's away message and he was like, yeah, just
Speaker 3: went to the hospitals. And I was like, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Detective burn Well two and two together the scene. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean it was.
Speaker 3: It was the primary mode of communication until people really
Speaker 3: had cell phones.
Speaker 5: I miss it, I do.
Speaker 2: I just sunset it not too well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think at the end of last year, AOL
Speaker 5: shut it down.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: It just like it feels like another universe, and it
Speaker 3: does in a good way in a bad way. Like,
Speaker 3: I do appreciate being able to talk to people I
Speaker 3: care about more frequently and not being emotionally dependent upon
Speaker 3: someone messaging me on AIM when they their icon turns black.
Speaker 3: But I I do think that it was simpler in
Speaker 3: a way that I found.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it one percent made it easier for me to
Speaker 4: socialize and nice well for sure, Like I would talk
Speaker 4: to people on AIM and then suddenly seeing them at school,
Speaker 4: You're like, oh, yeah, remember we were talking about whatever, missus, whoever,
Speaker 4: the English class, blah blah blah, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: it's just like it broke down walls.
Speaker 2: There were online friends of mine, people who I went
Speaker 2: to high school with who I didn't interact with it
Speaker 2: all in person. So I did, but I'll let me
Speaker 2: be clear. There are people that I went to high
Speaker 2: school with with whom I communicated solely through a shadow
Speaker 2: friend essentially essentially, Yeah, I didn't really have any relationship
Speaker 2: with these people outside of just hey, what's up online?
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean it was definitely a different time.
Speaker 2: We're essentially carrying aim with us now. Yeah, yeah, of
Speaker 2: course a text message, but there was there was a
Speaker 2: simpler component to There were at least some barriers with
Speaker 2: that where if you're away or if you're offline, they
Speaker 2: can't reach you, whereas now that's not exactly the case,
Speaker 2: but it was a precursor to a lot of what
Speaker 2: we have now.
Speaker 4: I am even though it has rewired our brains. I
Speaker 4: am so much happier that I grew up, like my
Speaker 4: formative years were late nineties instead of now. It's so
Speaker 4: much better totally.
Speaker 5: So that's all I have.
Speaker 2: Anything else?
Speaker 3: Still looking for that girl who No, I'm very very
Speaker 3: happily dating someone and now we talk like we have
Speaker 3: an entire relationship where she lives in DC like here,
Speaker 3: like we most of our conversations are on.
Speaker 4: G chat or yeah Skype and you openly now know STD.
Speaker 4: I know you talk STD with your girl friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah all the time. Yeah, we practice safe listening to
Speaker 2: save today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, safe listening to save the day.
Speaker 2: Why don't we leave it at that. Yeah, together, this
Speaker 2: has been very fun. We we have to up the
Speaker 2: ante again next year. I don't know how. We don't
Speaker 2: know what next year. I really I don't know how
Speaker 2: we do that. But we have a full year to think.
Speaker 5: Body stuff, just everything that's right and wrong with our bodies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's always has to be nineties body stuff.
Speaker 4: Nineties body stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, all change is like for you walk me through
Speaker 2: year to years again. You're making the pubes and but
Speaker 2: again which I don't appreciate listening. That's how I communicate
Speaker 2: Bill Barnwell, thank you always stopping all by Dan Rumerstein.
Speaker 2: I'll see you soon. Yes, sir, my name's Ty Hildebrand.
Speaker 2: Thanks again for tuning into the solid verbal. Write us
Speaker 2: at soliverble dot gmail dot com. Write us at solidverbal
Speaker 2: at gmail dot com. Let us know what you think,
Speaker 2: what's on your mind, what happened to you in the
Speaker 2: nineties Internet era. In the meantime, we'll talk college football
Speaker 2: a few days from now. Stay solid, peace, Goodbye,