A/S/L?
I am a 90’s baby. Well technically, I was born in the 80’s but I consider myself a child of the 90’s because my formative years were completed in the 90’s. I WAS bucket hats and platform sneakers and choker necklaces and dial up internet. I played with Pogs and listened to Nirvana and walked around the mall for fun with my friends.
Life was a blast. Things felt so much more carefree back then. There were no cell phones, no Facebook or Tiktok. I remember riding around the neighborhood with my friends on bikes only told to be home before dark. We threw rocks at abandon buildings for entertainment.
Once the internet became mainstream in 1999 my friends and I would go into different chat rooms and talk to strangers. It’s actually quite terrifying knowing what I know now about the internet. A/S/L? the stranger on the other side of the screen would ask. And we would type back 13/f/NY giving anyone with ill intentions an open door into our life.
I consider myself very lucky that I made it out of the A/S/L era of chatrooms completely unscathed. The internet for me was a great tool to connect with others that had my same interests. I played the bass and was able to connect with other kids my age who were looking for a bass player for their band. I was able to listen to and download all the music I wanted through Napster and burn mix CDs for my first boyfriend.
Back then the internet was precarious, you could be logged off at any moment. You couldn’t even gain access to the internet if someone else in your household was using the phone. How insane is that to think about in today’s day and age. Internet speed in the 90’s was a fraction of what it is today. In 1997 it was 56kbps. That is kilobits per second. Today we measure by MBPS, Megabits per second. 1 KBS is equal to .001 MBPS.
Look at how far we have come across the globe with internet speed. This map created by the team at HP shows the fastest and slowest internet speeds currently in the world.
The US comes in at #12 on the list of fastest internet speeds and I am quite ok with that because I will never forget the wait time of dial up. I think that may also be why I have such great patience too. I may miss the big Scrunchies (which are back in style now), the fanny packs (also back!) but I will never miss that awful sound of dial up internet.
