Emoticons were devised in 1982.
It’s hard to believe that 25 years ago the Internet was barely generating 4Mb of daily traffic.
There were approximately 500,000 users, mostly students and scientists or extremely well-off businessmen. Computers cost thousands of dollars, and DOS was the OS du jour.
Usenet, a hierarchy of organized discussion groups, existed early on, between 1986 – 1987 and by 1988 discussions on politics, science fiction, gardening, martial arts and other hobbies were attracting a lot of the early Internet traffic.
Twenty-five years ago, Internet users were referred to as “net-heads” and their range of emoticons was referred to as “punctuation cartoons.”
Discussion flame wars would erupt in a similar fashion as today, as moderators were non-existent; as long as commercial content wasn’t posted, other Internet users would leave you alone.
Good luck with that today!
The Washington Post republished an article from its printed edition in 1988, and you can read the full article here.
This post is 100% true!
Those were the days!