For me, it was that the Internet never forgets and that you should never enter your real name. In my opinion, both of these rules are now completely ignored.
There always have been the nick picks. But now sometimes there is barely any connection between the post and the comments. Like two people with multiple strokes distributed between them having an angry teams call.
*nit picks
Dont believe anyone on the internet.
That’s my favorite Charlemagne quote
I don’t believe you
I don’t believe you
I don’t believe that you don’t believe me
Play Team Fortress on weekends. It’s cheaper.
Internet is a proper noun and should always be capitalized.

I never knew this until I realized my phone capitalizes it automatically.
THE Internet is a proper noun.
AN internet is an network of networks and is just a thing; like an intranet is.
This is the pedantry I came here for!
Don’t pick up the phone if someone is online… I’m old
You come from a nice family. My family disconnected each other all the time
I used to get hella annoyed that my mom would be online all afternoon so I would pick up the phone and blow into it for a few seconds until I heard AOL man say “Goodbye.”
I’m a millennial, I learned this, and now I just don’t pick up the phone.
It’s weird when someone calls me and it’s actually a live one.
I’m a gen z and I can’t put down the phone
Now try and call someone with it. I’ll wait
Feel free to call me whenever, it only costs you $69 a minute.
Don’t call them, it’s just them screaming " NOT THE BEES!" Over and over again for a minute, weirdest wank ever.
Hot damn! Where’s my wallet!?
I can’t remember. Did it make pterodactyl noises or is that just faxes?
The modem made noises when connecting, but if someone picked up the phone, your internet would just stop working and they’d get their dial tone.
Now dot matrix printers, those were real pterodactyl sounds.
Modems can still make noise. As recently as five years ago I still had to work with modems. A lot of them now have silent mode though
Modems also make noises when connected. However, the noise of them connecting is more distinctive because they go through a handshake where you can hear distinct tones, but then negotiate a higher baud rate involving modulation of many different frequencies, at which point to the human ear it is indistinguishable from white noise (a sort of loud hissing). If you pick up the phone while the modem is connected at a higher baud rate (post the handshake), you’ll hear the hissing, and then eventually you picking up the phone will have caused too many errors for the connection to be sustained (due to introducing noise on the line), causing both ends to hang up. You’ll then hear the normal tone you hear when the called party has hung up the line.
- Squeee
- Whale song
- Chunkachunks
- Teeth grinder
- Buckbuckbuck
- They’re here
oh yes it made the noise.
That, together with: I’m online, watch out for the ca… “No carrier”
only 1 hour a day! And if you accidentally click on a wrong link, the hackers can backtrace you or send the internet police.
Oh you dun goof’d now!
The consequences will NEVER be the same!
Don’t get into stranger’s cars, and don’t give out your real name or number or address on the internet.
Now you do most of these things when you call an uber. 😅
Technically so did you when calling a cab. Name, number and location
Sure, but there’s no verification when calling a cab so you can use an alias if you want.
Never click an ad
It’s easy for people to understand with banner ads but sponsored links seem to trip them up.
I remember being taught in school to apply source criticism, and that seems to have largely died as a concept.
This was back in the early 2000s…
I was taught to cite websites by using the date the page was updated. Now I’m lucky if web pages even have a date on them.
Either that, or the page says that it’s been updated in the last month, but the content is about how to connect to the World Wide Web ‘(WWW)’ with a free AOL floppy disc
Oh, that one’s easy! Just use the internet archivenevermind.
Never disclose any real personal info.
Nothing that happens on the internet matters.
I mean… I feel like this could still apply 😅
Social media killed online aliases and I have a hard time deciding if we’re all worse for it.
Instinctively I still stick by that, though, as you can tell by my anonymous profile with no bio, but when I volunteer any amount of personal info these days people are often confused that I’m not sharing openly who I am or where I’m from and every time someone does that it weird me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
Not only telling your real name, you weren’t supposed to tell your real birthday, give away your phone number or where you lived, even just saying the city was a bit much. So filling in those things like on Facebook or LinkedIn feels very wrong but it would be even more wrong to have fake info there. So my new rule is, only add ppl I know irl to places I use my real info and everything else can I add anyone to.
Ugh, the world of “branded people.” Everything is like “Add a picture of yourself, or you won’t seem trustworthy!”
Yeesh. Some artists and such can make it using a pseudonym, but it’s rare in more professional circles…but now if you hope to be taken seriously as a professional, you’re expected to put your real super genuine self out there.
…and we get news stories of people being harassed and doxxed literally to death. It’s crazy…
Yes that picture thing happened multiple times at my old job. They kept pestering me about give them a pic to add to the “about us” page and I had to use my face in all channels (jira, slack email and so on) because “otherwise I can’t tell who is who”… my current job handled that much better, they asked for a pic (if I wanted to) to be used as reference for an artist (always the same) to make an avatar and that is now the avatar my coworkers and I use in presentations, systems, emails, webpages anything, we never use real image of our coworkers unless the person wish for it.
Facebook tried that shit with me. Ban until I sent verification of my ID so I sent a paystub photoshopped (badly) with my alias, it was accepted and it’s still there even though I left FB years ago.
I wish they would ban me. I haven’t logged in in over 15 years and even block several of their servers, and yet I still get mails that someone in there commented on something.
Oh I get zero notifications, but the only real reason I haven’t taken it down is that my posts from IG are cross posted there for the business, which I have to have to advertise our specials because of the boomers that use it daily.
in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
a/s/l?
Aight, I put on my robe and wizard’s hat.
RIP bloodninja.
We were all 18/f/cal come on man…
Haha true
Every time someone does that it weirds me out because in the 90s telling (and asking) people those things would have been such a suspicious, sketchy move.
And now it’s come 180 in that some see it as a red flag if you don’t give up that information. I had someone on a different social media site accuse me of being a bot because I wouldn’t give up the specific town I’m from. I’ve seen it happen to others too. It is both fascinating and insane how viewpoints have changed regarding identifying yourself online.
Shit, I provide every single service with randomly generated data, unless legally required. Just doing my part to pollute the training data.

Me too, thanks.
This shit’s still true. I bet you’re taking me seriously as you read this and everything.
(Except other dogs, and we meet every night on irc:#awoo)
“Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” was both a lie (typically invoked to defend/justify bigotry, bullying, and such) and it also served to normalize people being assholes on the internet. “Perfectly well adjusted wholesome ordinary people chant nazi slogans when they log onto the internet, for real guys! It says nothing about their character as people because for some magical reason the internet totally has no connections to lived human experiences!”

I’m glad that the so-called rule fell out of use and the excuse rings very hollow for most people now. Also, I noticed that many “ironic asshole” comedians and entertainers from the “le epic trolling” era wound up being actual assholes that hurt people outside of the act. “Million Dollar Extreme” and Justin Roiland come to mind.
Huh. I never saw that used as an excuse. I always took it as, “normal” people show their true colors when they feel divorced from consequences for their actions/speech
That’s crazy. Makes a lot of sense.
I always tried to be the “shockingly nice person to game with” whenever I could. It was a lot more fun than just being mean to people for no reason.
I never understood that impulse to scream epithets over xbox live or whatever.
I’ve found the best way to really infuriate online edgelords was to be patient yet firm with them.
Like a parent.























