AOL Finally Ends Dial-Up… Wait, That Still Existed？! - Error Code Show

0:00 Things that you didn't realize still existed but for those of us and again, we're talking about my mortality again, right? You're all gonna remember this Are you doing some are you farting right now? You've got mail. The iconic dial -up sounded, you've got mail. That's right, folks, into the stuff that you did not realize still existed. AOL is ending its dial -up internet service. That's right at the year of our bug, 2025. AOL was still running dial -up internet service right now. And they had over 160 ,000 customers in America. that were using dial -up internet service. For anybody that grew up in early internet days, that dial -up noise and the, you've got mail, it's iconic, okay? It was cultural zeitgeist thing, right? But AOL has announced that they're finally, after 31 years, right? 1994, when their first dial -up had full internet connection, They are finally turning off their dial -up internet service on September

1:31 30th. And I know we're kind of joking about this, but in all seriousness, there are many rural places in America where dial -up is still the only way you can get on the internet, right? Because they don't have cable internet, and they don't have DSL, they don't have fiber or any of those lines run. Also, what are all the grandmas going to do? Back to joking. Jay. Two questions for you. First off, were you surprised to hear that AOL still had dial up internet? Because I know I was. And also, what are your thoughts on them finally killing it? One. Yeah, I was very surprised. And then second, I was surprised at the amount of people that are still on dial up. Like, I don't understand. You know, I always hear like crazy stories about like Spokane, maybe, you know, out there like east of the Cascades, like, you know, people have to use dial up. I don't know. But now this is this is crazy. I thought this thing died a long time ago. So did I. So did I. There's a part of me that's kind of happy that it's existed all this time again for the the you've got mail and that that very iconic AOL instant messenger noise, right? Okay, because that AOL, especially when I was a teenager.

2:55 Oh, boy. Now we got to go help people. These these noises that AOL instant messenger had. Right. Oh, wait. Let's do it again You're jumping for your thing looking to see who got on oh somebody Oh, yeah that door opens down Those those those im noises, okay Man that was just a thing Why would people again most people are you still using dial -up to answer chat question from YouTube?

3:38 Because that's all they have like legit. That's all they have out there in some of these really rural areas like That's what they've got. They can still use dial -up internet So I can't it just blows my mind I think everybody had AOL. Did you have AOL when you were growing up at all, Jay? I actually did not. I didn't have a so my first computer. I was it was like. 2008.

4:19 Oh, OK. Yeah, I. We were poor. And I. I was like very much like kind of an athlete growing up. So I started playing soccer second grade. I wasn't allowed to drink soda. I couldn't eat fast food. I couldn't eat junk food that much. It's kind of like a novelty. So I was like kind of behind the curve behind the curve. Now, when I was 14, I got a job and I think when I was 15, I started buying like my own like console games and everything. So I bought like Internet. I paid for Internet like around. When I say like 16 for like Xbox Live, literally, that's all it was for. So so yeah, I never had like any of those. Yeah. Back in the olden days, we didn't have a well instead.

5:22 Well, we had BBS's and everything was dial up. Oh, God. Okay, geez. Again, for an entire generation of 90s kids, this was absolutely iconic. Again, I'm amused that AOL still exists, and AOL... They're finally getting rid of it. That's amazing. Uh, we wish you luck in the future aol and everybody who's losing their internet for the end of dial -up. I'm sorry Uh, oh, yeah now people bring up other ones. Yeah, so aol was there then there was prodigy was the other big internet service and compuserve right and The other thing that was iconic about aol and and anybody who remembers this is aol used to send out disks right Um They would send you discs in the mail, right? And you can still buy them on eBay. Oh Here we go, this is the one I want because this is the one I remember They would send this to you in the mail Right and like just pop in this disc and you're online Right and they'd send it there'd be like a little flyer in there because back then you paid for it by the hour You're bought your service by the hour and so you pay a rate and you'd be like 50 hours a month and Then any

6:54 hour past that you had to pay an additional charge and so they they'd hit you with these discs, right? That they would just mail out like junk mail, right? Floppy disks and eventually we figured out how to use them for other stuff And they would send you these discs in the mail and you'd be like cool 53 hours click You know, and it was that was how they grabbed you was was these discs they did eventually upgrade to the CDs right I I would get a lot of those for some weird reason like all the time I would get the CD roms. Oh, here we go Here we go 500 hours free on America online 5 .0 right Here's your free disc with your five hours of free you've got pictures instant messenger microsoft internet explorer 5 .0 built in there you go um so so stop this one's gonna go a little longer there is a part of me that misses that version of the internet That was the absolute fucking Wild West and it was new and so different right and I Don't know if it's just nostalgia in my head But I want to say that

8:24 that internet was less toxic right because I think everybody was just so fucking excited to be there Right. It was like fucking digital Disneyland right And I wonder if that's just me or if that's Like something that other people feel as well like The internet back then just wasn't quite as crap like because now it's like in many ways we covered here on this show a toxic fucking wasteland Right. Um, I mean, what do you think do you think it's just progressive? We've we've taken it for granted now I Think they actually covered this on the Twitter documentary I'm pretty sure it was Twitter where they kind of mentioned they noticed like when memes started becoming a thing and like people really like realizing that you could hide behind the internet and you can make very insane inappropriate jokes that you would never say out loud in your day -to -day life make a meme out of it throw it on the internet and then like thousands of people would laugh and like it and whatever. And it became like a very toxic like it just kept going and going because I if I recall correctly like Twitter had a very like we're not going to take anything down stance. So they just let everything happen.

9:49 But yeah, so I would say I mean, I was not a part of this Internet that you speak of back in the day. But it does make sense. And based on that like documentary, I would say, yeah, probably, probably a lot less toxic. I don't know. I just you guys also had to wait like an hour for like. Titties to load, evidently, so well, you had ASCII art porn, and for those that want to do it, you can go ahead and Google that on your own. I'm not going to put it up on my stream. OK, but ASCII art. Porn was a thing, right? And if you know what ASCII is, you will understand, right? And that would load real fast.

10:41 I guess, I'm trying to, there was just times that we just didn't use it for that or you were just, you were so used to it that you just didn't care. You know what I mean? Like it just didn't matter. Right, and I think some people in the chat are actually googling it right now going oh Yeah, I don't know I don't know I find it very Interesting I I will say So when I was in high school I had a myspace and I would always like have to go to my friend's house to like update my myspace. Oh, yeah, and I will say that I do really miss like the MySpace days like it seemed so much better than having Facebook on your phone and like what Facebook has evolved into currently. Like I remember when everyone was switching to Facebook and I was like Facebook sucks. Like I want to just like continue using MySpace. So yeah. I do miss like the MySpace days. My only complaint about MySpace, my biggest complaint about MySpace was when I go to somebody's page and I wouldn't be expecting it. Like you'd load someone's page in and there would always be that like three or four second delay. And then all of a sudden you'd get blasted with some song that they had on their playlist right on their MySpace page. You're like, Oh my God, what

12:12 are you listening? Pause. No, stop it. And half the time I was like, what in God's name was that? Okay. Oh God. And some of them, some of y 'all went a little nuts with your HTML on your MySpace page and I couldn't read your page anymore. Like I was just like, I don't, the color scheme you've picked has made this completely unreadable. No idea what's happening here. Yeah. I don't know. I miss it. I do appreciate the fact that you could customize to that level. I think that's something that's missing from Facebook and Twitter and all those was that that personalization that you could do with MySpace. Because Facebook went all like hyper clean and like very white. So.

13:05 Yeah. It'll it'll be it'll be interesting to see what what the next one is. I keep we now have TikTok. Right. We've moved to tiktok now has become one of the dominant ones. I'm curious what the next really big one's gonna be after tiktok. That's That's the one um Yeah Yeah, i'm curious what's gonna come next um And we've talked about this before