There was a time when the internet was referred to as “The Information Super-Highway”. I doubt anyone would call it that anymore. For a few short years, you could actually go to a search engine (there were dozens to choose from) and search for something, anything, and actually get web pages, made by interested people, that actually contained information. It was a beautiful thing. In 1997, there were only 3 or 4 major ISPs available in the U.S. (I understand that the interenet is very much international, but I was 14 when this occurred. So please understand that at 14, the world is very small.). There was Compuserve, MSN, Prodigy, and the monster that was AOL. I dont know the actual percentages, but AOL was the only ISP in existence, at the time, that could claim its membership numbers in the millions. I am not a hacker, but at 14, I really wanted to be. So I hung out (online) with other people who were or also really wanted to be hackers (or what I thought were hackers, at 14). These people didnt really do much except cause the occasional mischief and mayhem amongst the AOL community. I only mention this to set the backdrop for the world-altering events that took place in this group of would-be's and wanna-be's. Now then, there were 2 events that occurred almost simultaneously in 1997 which would change the internet forever. These were the release of the movie Titanic, and the introduction of pay-per-click advertising. After the release of AOL 3.0 (which came out shortly after Windows 95), the AOL account allowed for up to 7 screen names to be created. Usually, the parents would have a screen name that wouldnt change and the kids got to customize their screen names to reflect whichever current fad or trend enveloped their existence at the time. For some extremely odd reason, most of the U.S. Went completely retarded over Titanic (hell, everyone knew the boat was gonna sink at the end, right?). Every little girl fell in love with Leo. And they all made Titanic themed screen names to reflect this. Of course, there were tens of thousands of Titanic themed screen names, but they all chose from about 10 different passwords (seriously, it was ridiculous. Half of them were “iluvleo”.). There was still spam before pay-per-click advertising, but it usually wasnt any sort of advertisement, it was just someone sending out a lot of messages (usually insults) for harassment purposes. Because of this, AOL had regulations in place that would ban your account for spamming excessively. So you never spammed on your own account. The sudden availability of thousands upon thousands of easilly phished accounts worked as a catalyst to bring us the spam we know and love today. When it first started, advertisers would pay up to 25 cents per click, and people actually clicked on blind links back then, we were so naive and trusting. I watched as this was happening, and kept waiting for it to die down. I'm still waiting. =/
LOL that made me smile, I must admit there is a lot of trash on the internet today, however there’s a lot of good stuff too! I hate adverts too, even though we do have them on Digiex there only shown for guests and on a good month pay the server bills. So basically Leonardo DiCaprio ruind the internet, classic lmao
I LOVE YOU LEO! For what, saving that cow's life (let him get on that big board, there's enough for two you fat bitch - Roger from American Dad) or for helping spammers? Either way that's an awesome realisation there Icharus .