Abandoned website? (Internet nostalgia)

[MetalJunkie]

I remember the first time I discovered the internet. It was 1997 and I was in 4th grade. My mom and I moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma where she began working at my elementary school and had an evening job on the OSU campus; she watched over the computer lab in Gunderson Hall.

I remember the guy who trained her - sat us down and showed us the internet for the very first time. He brought up Yahoo in Netscape Navigator and showed us how to work our way around the web. I was essentially a latchkey kid, so a lot of  times I would spend my evenings at the computer lab browsing away while my mom sat in her little office. I'd spend most of my time looking for movie clips or stills, funny images, games, etc. I finally had a place to print off cheat codes for all my SNES games.

Anyway, somewhere in my random surfing, I stumbled across a website.
www.brainofbrian.com

It introduced me to the truth about Santa Claus, the theory of Barney being Satan, creating a hover device by strapping buttered bread to a cat's back, among a few other old time web stories that still linger today. I believe they appeared on this site before they wandered into "that joke is old" territory, though I could be wrong.

Here's my question. I found that site somewhere in 1997/98. This website is sixteen years old at the very least, and still exists in the exact same state it did back when I found it. Nothing has changed at all. Why would someone keep a website around for that long? Is it possible someone owns their own server and has a permanently registered domain name?

[Phoenix87x]

Interesting, I was also in 4th grade in 97 and have an almost identical experience, but its with the space jam site:


https://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

[MetalJunkie]

Gotta love web design evolution. Those sites are like a time machine into the past.

Edit: Good Lord, it's hard to believe that Space Jam site is official. So bad.

[Zook]

Interesting, I was also in 4th grade in 97 and have an almost identical experience, but its with the space jam site:


https://www2.warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm

Agony Booth brought this to my attention a couple days ago. The internet was so ugly back then.

[MetalJunkie]

Frames! Frames everywhere!

[MetalJunkie]

Oh, the memories.
aol.com in 1997 - https://web.archive.org/web/19970421165310/https://www.aol.com/

[dparrott]

My dad used to design modems, so I was exposed to the "internet" at a very young age, though it was only good for text and veeeeeery slow.  I didn't know about the real internet until college, and then I was printing guitar tab like crazy.  Then it was pron pron pron.  Just pictures back then though.

[ThatOneGuy2112]

This is probably not considered that long ago at all, but I recall, when I was much younger, being a constant browser at this Webstie, Putfile, which is no longer active now. I thought it was a great site, more friendly for uploading images and art as well as videos. I was part of a small portion of the community there but I stopped going there right around 2007 or so in favor of YouTube. In retrospect, not an old website relative to what's been shared here already, but a year back or so I used to the Wayback Machine to try and see if I could spot my old profile from long ago. I cringed hard.

[MinistryOfLostSouls]

My dad used to design modems, so I was exposed to the "internet" at a very young age, though it was only good for text and veeeeeery slow.  I didn't know about the real internet until college, and then I was printing guitar tab like crazy.  Then it was pron pron pron.  Just pictures back then though.

Back in 1995 on Prodigy it would take like twenty minutes to download a .gif on a 9,600 baud modem.  If you tried to look at a picture of a naked chick it would load from the top down, start with the hair, and then after like three or four minutes you were like, "Oh hell yeah, look at those eyebrows."   

[MetalJunkie]

My dad used to design modems, so I was exposed to the "internet" at a very young age, though it was only good for text and veeeeeery slow.  I didn't know about the real internet until college, and then I was printing guitar tab like crazy.  Then it was pron pron pron.  Just pictures back then though.

Back in 1995 on Prodigy it would take like twenty minutes to download a .gif on a 9,600 baud modem.  If you tried to look at a picture of a naked chick it would load from the top down, start with the hair, and then after like three or four minutes you were like, "Oh hell yeah, look at those eyebrows."   

[rumborak]

Back in those days Mosaic also had an option to not download any pictures.

[black_biff_stadler]

https://i.imgur.com/BjyOxmM.png

 

[Modah]

Many years later, as they faced the firing squad, DTF was to remember that distant afternoon when their fathers took them to discover the Internet.

[Jaffa]

Anybody remember Stickdeath?

https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20120722083224/https://www.stickdeath.com/warning.htm

[puppyonacid]

well this is weird:

https://www.stickdeath.com/default.aspx

[yorost]

Back in those days Mosaic also had an option to not download any pictures.

Odd hearing that, because most people talked about how Mosaic COULD display pictures.