That’s Me Now

I know I’m old because I remember Netscape Navigator. Remember cybernet as an actual word. Remember when downloading a single image took enough time to make coffee and come back. So when Teens React put some kids in front of a 90s internet video and watched them fail to parse what they were looking at—that hit different.

It’s funny, obviously. But there’s this moment where you realize you’re not in on the joke anymore. You’re the joke. You’re the guy explaining how the internet used to work, watching faces go completely blank. That’s me now.

The 90s web had real character. It was slow and ornate and kind of stupid and beautiful at once. You’d sit on one website for an hour because there was nowhere else to go. The internet felt like a place you visited, not something you owned. Kids now can’t even imagine that. It sounds completely insane to them.

Living through something that’s already becoming historical is its own weird feeling. Not a kids these days thing—more like I got to experience actual internet archaeology as it was happening. Got to be there before it turned into the artifact. And now I’m part of the artifact too.