
Friends don't let friends use AOL (2000) - brod
https://www.salon.com/2000/02/02/aol_friends/
======
navait
> He says that one of the company's irksome traits is deluging its members
> with advertising. "You know how when you log off, you get this message,
> 'Please wait while we update your software?'" says Cassel. "Well, they don't
> tell you, but what they're really doing is downloading ads to your hard
> drive, so that the very next time you sign on, you get hit with -- boom! --
> an ad. You get ads in your mailbox and in your chat room and an ad in the
> status bar."

When I read this article, there were these ads:

* A giant top ad for Intel

* Left Column: Hertz banner, fixed with scroll

* Right Column: Various ads that scroll as you scroll down the page

* Far right column: Animated McCafe ad, fix with scroll

* Multiple ads between sections including video

* Ads at the end of the article, including SalonTV

* Center Sidebar: Reese's ad

* Right sidebar: Ad for pharma product, video;

Firefox, no adblock brand new MacBook Pro was unable to smoothly scroll this
page.

The more things change, the more they stay the same indeed...

~~~
bartread
This is all of course true. uBlock Origin tells me it blocked 29 requests
(representing 41% of the requests made by the page). I turned off uBlock just
for a laugh and the page still hasn't finished loading even though I've had
time to write this whole paragraph.

One can only assume that when this article originally appeared on Salon back
in February 2000 there were less ads on the site... or maybe the editorial
team just had an acutely developed sense of - or an inhuman tolerance for -
irony.

~~~
derefr
> the page still hasn't finished loading

Now, why do you expect a page with video ads to ever _finish_ loading? Once
it's played the video ads it loaded with, it just moves onto the next ones. By
opening the page, you're actually tuning into an all-ads-all-the-time
streaming television network!

~~~
bartread
You make a very good point: using an adblocker means I'm simply not used to
this. It's interesting that this occurs only for video ads though: you'll note
that sites like YouTube and Vimeo don't suffer with this. (Of course the video
is still loading in the background, but the _page_ is done.)

------
sureaboutthis
Years ago (it would have to be, yes?), my two sons and I went to Blockbuster
to rent a video. The guy behind the counter asked us if we wanted to join some
Blockbuster thing which would give us some videos for free but it cost to
join. I knew we weren't interested so I just replied, "AOL sucks!"

A manager heard that and took me aside to let me know that all we had to do
was sign up for the thing, then go online and cancel the account, it would
wind up getting us the videos for free but at no cost and his store would
still get credit for signing us up. Win, win!

A few weeks later, we were at a theater thinking we got rush hour prices. When
told I was wrong, and we'd have to pay full price, I said, "AOL sucks!"
getting a laugh out of my boys. The lady behind the counter asked me what that
was about and then said, "Oh, here. Just take these. I don't care." Free
tickets!

So now you know the running joke. For several years, when we'd walk up to a
counter somewhere to pay, the first words out of our mouth, "AOL sucks!!"

~~~
beamatronic
I would watch a full length movie about this. Pitch it to Hollywood!

~~~
nvr219
same

------
ryandrake
I remember the exact same “conversion attempts”. In the late 90’s just after
getting out of undergrad, I lived in a 55+ seniors community (different
story...), and right away I Subscribed to the local cable internet service.
Everyone else in the community was on dial-up AOL and I couldn’t understand
why. Broadband is so much faster and you get all of the Internet! I even
helped a few of them move over to what was then high speed Internet but each
and every one of them went back to AOL within a month or so.

You can see the same thing looking at people glued to social media today. Same
mentality. I don’t care about Internet, I want [Facebook / Insta / whatever].

It’s scary. If FB was an ISP that offered Facebook-only for $5 a month, I bet
a lot of people would ditch their existing internet/data service.

~~~
zentiggr
Buy N Large wins. For most everyone. I've learned that most people want the
Fisher Price internet, not the Testors 500 piece glue it model, no matter how
much cooler the model is once its built.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It helps if you realize that there's nothing wrong with that. The smug
superiority of techies starts to feel like a guy who spends every weekend
tuning his car for track racing and just can't understand why anyone would
ever want a factory-standard sedan (even though they only need to it to carry
groceries).

------
asdfman123
Apparently you can still get @aol.com email addresses. I want to use one the
next time I'm applying for tech jobs just to freak everyone out.

~~~
exelius
Watch it become the new hot property as a nostalgia item. I mean jnco is
trying to make a comeback; anything is possible.

------
smhenderson
I have an older friend I help from time to time. When he or one of his family
get a new computer, when something breaks, etc.

His wife is still on AOL to this day. Their ISP is Comcast, they all use the
newest windows and she has a few applications installed other than AOL. But
95% of her time on the computer is on AOL. She just can't see doing it any
other way after using it for over 20 years.

I learned way more than I ever wanted to about AOL under the hood helping her
through a few hardware upgrades.

~~~
ravenstine
I'm surprised it even works at all at this point. My mom was using Photoshop
6.0 (18 years old!!!) until very recently when my parents upgraded their
computer to Windows 10, with which it is not compatible.

------
acomjean
I used to use it when I was out of college in the 90s.

There were some good reasons. I travelled for work to construction sites, and
they had local dial in numbers in many places. I could check email from the
construction trailer. They even had a 1-800 modem line (You were very time
limited, 3 hours a month or something.)

I thought it worked pretty well.

Ubiquitous Broadband killed it.

~~~
analog31
That was my experience too. My spouse and I were living in different towns,
and I wanted access to my e-mail when I visited her. In return I put up with
their quirky version of the Internet. My modems were too slow for any kind of
Web stuff anyway.

Not much later, they changed their technology so that they worked through a
conventional IP address, so you could fire up AOL, go online, then open a
conventional browser or e-mail program. One of the e-mail programs had a
facility for fetching your AOL e-mail, so it was like you were a regular
Internet user.

Alternatives for reaching the Internet involved a lot of delving into settings
files and setup scripts, which just didn't seem like a good use of my time. My
friends who did things the "correct" way seemed to have a lot more trouble and
maintenance effort. I listened to their adventures the same way I read Jerry
Pournelle's "chaos manor" columns, feeling a mixture of amusement and pity.

------
js2
Earlier this year I was pacing a marathon when I caught up to a young woman
and ran with her for a few miles. She had recently graduated from college, so
early 20s I suppose. We got to chatting and at some point I mentioned AOL. She
had never heard of it. I suddenly felt very old. (I'm 47.)

~~~
djsumdog
Anyone remember Compuserve, Genie (GE's online network) and that old dos
version Prodigy that did all the 256 color vector graphic rendering?

~~~
js2
I'm old enough to remember and have used not only those, but also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(online_service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_\(online_service\))

------
bovermyer
Oh man, Winsock. That takes me back.

~~~
harlanji
Winsock is the first thing I learned that felt legit in some way. Made an IP
chat app, 1998 or so. That rush led to at least a million dollars being
made... it kept me from smoking pot with the losers. Programming in general
was the escape, tho indeed a chat app was a claim to minor fame 10 years
later! (Nothing against pot, but in high school that’s pretty much the case).

~~~
marzell
I remember the days of roll-your-own proggies and feeling like we'd hit the
saturation point of what we could do within AOL... but then discovering how to
replace Winsock32.dll and install Netscape Navigator and starting to learn
what the internet really had to offer.

------
ibdf
The amount of ads on this article/post oughta be criminal

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j45
Reading this... Odd that Facebook is in some ways kinda like the community AOL
was with respect to walled garden services.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
IMO FB is AOL's direct descendant. There's always a niche for packaged social
internet, and it seems that niche is always going to be dominated by a single
company.

FB will be superseded when a competitor for that niche appears, updated with
significantly upgraded tech.

------
rbanffy
I think it'd be trivial to let a machine rewrite this for Twitter of Facebook
(or Reddit).

~~~
jlangemeier
s/AOL/Facebook/gi

------
digitalnomad91
Who can say no to all those free CDs though?!

~~~
djsumdog
People in my dorm used them for art. One guy made a sculpture. Others
microwaved them for a few seconds to get that spider pattern. Even with all
the art, we still had buckets of them. What a waste.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I recall a guy who re-tiled his kitchen with them.

