Sunday, April 22, 2012

It's officially OK to be nostalgic about dial up

I am sick and tired of how fast the Internet is!

I would like to be reminded with a fun, 30-second array of crinkly sounds of how mystical the Internet is with the dial-up sound.

Yeah, maybe the additional time is a waste, and it might be annoying to hear that on smart phones. But most reasonable people would dig it. A lot of hipsters prefer the sound of vinyl records to anything digital, and I prefer the sound of dial-up Internet to the vapid silence of wireless.
We members of the Snooze Button Generation are in a curious spot when it comes to Internet technology. With dial-up Internet long gone, it is officially OK to be nostalgic about it. What does that dial-up sound make you think of?

A younger member of the Snooze Button Generation recently reminisced to me about how the sounds of dial-up immediately brought up memories of it being 2 a.m. at his parents' house and him preparing for a porno session. As I keep his name concealed, he reported that he preferred the longer loading time because it added an element of masturbatory romance.

My first dial-up experience came after I had moved out of parents' place, but the dial-up sound makes me think of when I lived in New York. Yeah, sure, a lot of people will say it's great that dial-up is dead and gone. But it would be pretty damn cool to see some dial-up routers appearing in vintage shops.