Funny Text — how people laughed in a dial-up world
Gather round young’ins, we’re gonna take a journey back in time.
The year is 2003.
YouTube does not exist. Facebook does not exist. Instagram does not exist. Photoshop is something you pay $500 for or download illegally.
There’s some online video, but it loads slowly because you’re on dial-up.
What’s dial up, you ask? That was how you used the internet before the world of fast internet connections. You literally dialed-up to the internet to send and receive data. While connecting, your computer would brrrr and rnnnggg, making sounds that would put a printer to shame. This used your home’s phone connection, so you couldn’t receive phone calls while you were online.
When you think of a telephone connection, what comes to mind? Is it “super-fast”? Is it “ultra-modern”? Or is it “slow as hell”? Because dial up sure was slow as hell. The speed was 56 kbps, which means it would take 1.5 hours to stream your typical 5-minute video. That means there was no video :-)
GIFs are a little better, but still sloooooow. It took 3–7 seconds to load your typical gif. And it was harder to make them because you can’t browse a ton of images easily, because it’s all sloooooow.
So what do you do for entertainment? It was much easier to write and share text, especially on forums and message boards. So that’s what people did, they wrote and shared funny things. This was the golden era of Meme Letters.
There were so many good ones, and when you’re a 10 year old using the internet for the first time, everything is new and funny and interesting. Let me show you some of my favorites:
Notice of Revocation of Independence
This was a fake letter attributed to John Cleese which stated that the UK was revoking US independence. There are some gems in here:
You will learn that the suffix ‘’burgh is pronounced ‘’burra’’ e.g.
Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as ‘’Pittsberg’’ if you
can’’t cope with correct pronunciation.Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up
“vocabulary”. Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler
noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient
form of communication.
Look up “interspersed”. There will be no more ‘’bleeps’’ in the Jerry
Springer show. If you’’re not old enough to cope with bad language then
you shouldn’t have chat shows.
There was also a line about “George Washington will be removed from the quarter and replaced by George Clooney,” but I can’t find that line anymore.
A lot of people took this seriously for the first few paragraphs because of the combo of being new on the internet, seeing an official sounding note, and having no clue who John Cleese is!
Bash.org / QDB
In the early 2000s, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was very popular, and the first widespread form of global chatrooms. There were many epic convos and memes that originated from there. The Quote Database (QDB) attempts to capture much of this. The most famous one is likely the story of “hunter2”:
<Cthon98> hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
<Cthon98> ********* see!
<AzureDiamond> hunter2
<AzureDiamond> doesnt look like stars to me
<Cthon98> <AzureDiamond> *******
<Cthon98> thats what I see
<AzureDiamond> oh, really?
<Cthon98> Absolutely
<AzureDiamond> you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
<AzureDiamond> haha, does that look funny to you?
<Cthon98> lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
<Cthon98> yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> awesome!
<AzureDiamond> wait, how do you know my pw?
<Cthon98> er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******’s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
<AzureDiamond> oh, ok.
I still crack up reading this one. Even today, people use “hunter2” as a joke password or say things like “If you write your password, I only see ******.”
IRC chats were full of sarcasm and also innocence, as many of these users were just getting online. Two snippets that capture that:
<Khassaki> HI EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!!
<Judge-Mental> try pressing the the Caps Lock key
<Khassaki> O THANKS!!! ITS SO MUCH EASIER TO WRITE NOW!!!!!!!<i8b4uUnderground> d-_-b
<BonyNoMore> how u make that inverted b?
<BonyNoMore> wait
<BonyNoMore> never mind
😂
Student Essays
Another popular content category was fake student essays. Kids would write up essays and have a “teacher” grade them with hilarious commentary. Some of them might be real, but all of them were hilarious. Here’s one of the shorter ones on lasers:
That wraps up my nostalgic tour. Nowadays there is so much content online and no risk of boredom. But back in the day, there was less content and it was harder to find and load, which meant you appreciated it much more. Each snippet or paragraph was engrossing, and a lot of these pieces are things I still laugh at today.
The 80’s and 90’s kids are a lucky generation to have been able to see both sides of the Internet age, and I hope this post gives you a little more appreciation for the dial up days :-)