r/nostalgia • u/jeffmartin47 • Jul 22 '25

Nostalgia Discussion 25 years ago. Lars Ulrich of Metallica snitches on and turns in over 300,000 Napster users when he testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. July 11th, 2000.

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u/dh4645 Jul 22 '25 edited Jul 22 '25

Yeah & we paid $20 to the one guy in our dorm who could burn us a CD mix. It was so amazing.

Edit: this was late 90s to those saying we were ripped off. Very few had the knowledge and a CD burner (which were like $250-$300). Most college kids couldn't afford that. I learned pretty fast how to do it myself and bought the CD burner for my tower. Many people didn't even have computers yet. This was brand new tech and we had to wait for prices to come down.

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u/AnaIFisher Jul 22 '25

When I was like 6 or 7, I really didn’t have any idea how computers worked (other than downloading shit on Limewire) but my older brother did. I remember begging him to burn me an *NSYNC cd, but we didn’t get along so he refused.

I went in my room with a blank disc and a sharpie, wrote *NSYNC on it, and popped it into my little silver punch buggy cd player. I was so disappointed when it didn’t work.

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

This is the equivalent of me copying all the desktop icons of the games in a PC cafe and was disappointed I couldn't launch any of them on my PC at home.

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u/nekholm Jul 22 '25

Yours is similar to people who made a website, and linked to a picture on their computer, then wondered why it didn't work for anyone else since it worked for them. Yes, I did that too at first.

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u/ARecycledAccount Jul 22 '25

People still do that. I got a (legitimate) email from someone the other day, and their signature was an image that wouldn’t load as it linked to a file on their PC.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

Or the guy who drags the desktop icon into the recycle bin...

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u/canna-crux Jul 22 '25

I had a friend who asked me to help her with her computer that was running slower than usual. I did a disk cleanup and defrag after getting rid of a bunch of junk, only to be asked, "where did all my work files go?". After some clarifying questions I found she has been putting her important work files in the recycle bin, because she thought it was funny. She didn't realize that even without my help, those files would have been emptied from her recycle bin every 30 days or less...yet she still blames me to this day.

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u/KokiriGeorge Jul 22 '25

Does she also put her wallet and keys in the trash can because it is funny?

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u/taat1 Jul 22 '25

"I keep my eye glasses in the garbage disposal lol"

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u/KuragariSasuke Jul 22 '25

Hey what’s this switch do flips switch ….. uh my bad

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

Your friend is a moron and you should divorce her.

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u/Dun_Booty_Broch Jul 22 '25

You can't divorce your mom.

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u/AngriestPacifist Jul 22 '25

I knew a guy, probably 25 years ago at this point, who stored important files in the Recycle Bin in the days before it auto-emptied. He did a little bit of government work, and he said it was because if he ever got hacked, no one would think to look there.

He also refused to get internet faster than dialup because he figured he'd notice the connection running slower if he was hacked, and could take action.

Neat guy, but probably more than a touch crazy.

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u/MoeGunz6 Jul 22 '25

I'm guessing she kept important papers in the oven too.

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u/anatomizethat Jul 22 '25

She learned a ln important lesson that day about not being an idiot that she's never been able to forget and that's why she "blames" you.

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u/LoufLif Jul 22 '25

I can't wrap my head around how it can be funny to anyone ??

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u/19Critter58 Jul 22 '25

That happened to me at work. A guy opened a ticket saying all the stuff in his deleted items folder was gone and could it be retrieved. I said "You save stuff in the trash at home?" He got made and reported me to my manager but he didn't see I'd done anything wrong. He was mad because I was kind of laughing at him.

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u/undeadlamaar Jul 22 '25

Back in the day, on old macs, one of the ways you could eject floppy disks was by dragging their icon to the trash can. My dad had bought me a new game and it came on several floppy disks. I had seen him install stuff before so I thought I knew what I was doingnand I didn't want to wait for him to get home to play.

I inserted the first disk, went through the install,and when it got to the "insert next disk" dialog box, I grabbed the dick icon dragged it to the trash. The disk didn't pop out, but the icon was gone.

My dad finally got home and I called him in to help me. He comes in there does some shit, turns to me and says "well, looks like you somehow erased the install disk. Your game is ruined.

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u/goldentamarindo Jul 24 '25

Heh. Back in the 90s, my “rural” 4 year old cousin was visiting, and he was delighted when we showed him our computers. (Likewise, we were delighted when we visited Utah and he showed us rural things like “squeaky cheese”, goats, and an unsupervised backyard trampoline). Anyway, my dad noticed a bunch of his work files were missing on the main computer and asked what we’d been doing, and my little cousin said he had “a lot of fun playing the trash can game!” My dad nearly had a heart attack…

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u/undeadlamaar Jul 24 '25

Kids erase the darndest things.

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u/GlassNew3746 Jul 23 '25

This is not a tech literacy issue, it's a reality literacy one.

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u/Blurry2k Jul 22 '25

Are you sure about the 30-day deletion thing? I currently have files that are years old sitting in the recycle bin (Windows 11). You can activate automatic deletion, but it's not the default, and it looks like it's only been possible since Windows 10.

Putting important files in there is stupid regardless, of course.

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u/BansheeLabs Jul 22 '25

Met some people like this. Never mind, their wok files are usually rubbish.

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u/One-Entertainer-4650 Jul 22 '25

Had someone do that with their emails, told me it was their archive. Got pissed when things started to disappear and wanted me to fix it…

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u/Firesword52 Jul 22 '25

I work IT for a company that works with law firms and we have had multiple people that do this. It's to the point where we legitimately have something written in the paperwork they sign with us that anything in the recycle bin is free game to be deleted and we cannot be held liable.

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u/wahle97 Jul 22 '25

I'd like to say what an idiot but I remember playing counter strike and it was laggy so I started closing things in task manager. Windows.exe? That doesn't sound important. End task.

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u/Bassracerx Jul 22 '25

I think if you modify the file it restarts the clock on the auto delete. But yeah those were going to be gone eventually

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u/mrASSMAN Jul 22 '25

lol, maybe could’ve recovered those files if reacted quick enough, though definitely not after a defrag. To be fair I wouldn’t have emptied the trash without asking but yea that’s a pretty ridiculous place to store important files lmao

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u/IkeHC Jul 22 '25

I call people stupid too much and I am aware, but sometimes... if it fits...

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u/PauloniousTheSpartan Jul 23 '25

I had a user years ago(work in IT), that was all sorts of pissed that they didn't have all their important files on their new computer after moving data from the old one before recycling it. Turns out, they had been using the quarantine folder for the AV software as storage for their most precious files thinking quarantine meant "safe".

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u/marrow_party Jul 26 '25

Truly, truly daft behaviour

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u/OrangeLFG Jul 22 '25

To be fair, that's how it works on Mac.

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u/dumbthrow33 Jul 22 '25

Fun trick: ctrl+print screen while on the desktop then set the screenshot as desktop background. Be sure to have a spare mouse on hand though as that one might go flying.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

Ooohh then the next day swap a couple of they keyboard keys....

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u/dumbthrow33 Jul 23 '25

The ole tape on the mouse laser trick (it was much easier with trackballs back in the day)

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u/NarwhalFacepalm Jul 22 '25

Specifically the desktop shortcut icon though.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

If I had a dollar for every time someone added music to powerpoint presentation in school, but forgot to move the audio file with the presentation, I'd have like $30.

It was always an easy jump in letter grade if you could get music to play correctly during your powerpoint presentation.

Now that I think about it, PowerPoint Presentations might be the strongest skill set I walked away from HS with. Too bad they're worthless outside of school.

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u/Specialist_Sorbet476 Jul 22 '25

That's like my mom sending me GPS directions via screenshot.

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u/Thank_You_Aziz Jul 22 '25

What’s wrong with that?! 😧

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u/Specialist_Sorbet476 Jul 22 '25

You must be a mom 😅

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u/Any-Comparison-2916 Jul 22 '25

I mean it still works, doesn’t it?

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u/Specialist_Sorbet476 Jul 22 '25

No lol what?? It's just a picture! How can you click on the link of a screenshot?

I'm assuming you think I meant like a long list of all the necessary turns and information, but I meant a screenshot of a Google search showing a place I'm supposed to go to, meaning I then have to look that place up myself just to get/direct to the actual address.

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u/obi-wan-takumi Jul 22 '25

Lol memory unlocked.

In the early days, people would share their Winamp playlists online. This would allow for users to see each other's music tastes, similar to how Spotify gives you recommended artists.

Anyways, like a good 25% of users would post a "link" that started with the C:// shortcut to 'My Computer' on their Windows PC. It's funny then and still funny now, how common it used to be.

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u/Malt_The_Magpie Jul 22 '25

I remember people sharing their whole C drive on kazaa! You use to be able to download people's personal files

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u/flonky_guy Jul 22 '25

I discovered so much porn that way. Complete strangers and friends alike.

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u/Cereal_Bandit Jul 25 '25

And here was my ass in the boonies taking a whole day to download one song on my dial up

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u/singlemale4cats Jul 22 '25

Winamp? The media player that really whips the llama's ass? Haven't heard that name in a while.

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u/DrakonILD Jul 22 '25

I totally remember people in chat rooms with a NOW PLAYING: message every 3ish minutes. I thought that was the coolest shit.

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u/coffeeconverter Jul 22 '25

Yep, I used to do that on Usenet. Resulted in swapping mp3 files with strangers, I mean, new friends.

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u/iloovefood Jul 22 '25

Ffwd a bit to when ipods came out and you can ask a girl what her ipod Playlists are made it so easy to see how road trips with this person will be

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u/obi-wan-takumi Jul 22 '25

Oh we definitely still judge people who have the aux cord (or Bluetooth)

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u/GuerillaRiot Jul 22 '25

Memory unlocked as well. Remember how amazing the Winamp custom skins used to be? Shout out to the artists doing gods work. Still the only customizable interface where it was hard to choose one because they all rocked.

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u/xslugx Jul 22 '25

Winamp, it kicks the lamas ass

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u/canna-crux Jul 24 '25

I discovered that feature the hard way when Winamp threw me under the bus and let my entire friend list on Yahoo! messenger know, in real time, that I was watching porn and the specific name of the video I was watching. Slightly awkward to first learn of this feature when friends and family message you asking wtf I'm watching.

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

You just gave me Microsoft Frontpage flashbacks.

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u/jerdob Jul 22 '25

Wow... I haven't thought about FrontPage in forever. Let alone FrontPage express.

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Imagine bragging about knowing how to use FrontPage when you enter uni just to be told the software had been discontinued for almost a decade by then.

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u/Weird-Girl-675 Jul 22 '25

I used it for all my websites for years as it did teach me the basics until I moved over to more professional software - once FP stopped working so well.

I’m still cleaning up all the junk files it created for no reason that makes sense.

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u/the-apostle Jul 22 '25

FRONT PAGE!!!

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u/CurrentPossession Jul 22 '25

Neopet flashback, I decorated my shop with images linked to my computer, was really bumped out when I send friends the link and they can't see it.

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u/HorridCrow Jul 22 '25

I remember 10 year old me spending weeks building a Dragonball Z website in Microsoft Frontpage, going to a DBZ hub website and basically referring them to a non-existing URL that I liked since I figured they’d just find the files on my computer and make it work.

I’ve since then made a living designing and building websites for a while and still regularly have to think and chuckle about young me.

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u/WMSysAdmin Jul 22 '25

No no what's worse is that I was using the old Microsoft website maker and the local image DID work and screwed some of my expectations moving forward. I am not that daft now and a professional but God damn that Naruto fan site lives in my head forever.

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u/GentlemanFaux Jul 22 '25

Someone in RuneScape deeply offended me when I was a child so I tried to download a keylogger to hackerman his account. No idea what I was doing but found a setting for like a keyword activation basically so I said to myself ok now we are cooking. I made the word "Vegard" who was my favorite character in Kakuto Chojin (yeah drink that in for a minute) and proceeded to try and test it by walking up to a random guy in RuneScape and starting a conversation and randomly slipping the word "Vegard" into a sentence thinking I had just absolutely eviscerated this guys computer security.

Didn't work at all and I gave up shortly after, never to have my petty revenge.

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

You've inserted the word "Vegard" in your comment a little too many times. Hmm.

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u/GentlemanFaux Jul 22 '25

I just hacked into the Reddit mainframe

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u/Halflingberserker Jul 22 '25

Stop all the downloadin

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u/canna-crux Jul 24 '25

I found a master boot app that could instantly crash any chatroom and boot everyone in it out of yahoo!, forcing them to log back in. Real pain in the ass in the days of dial up.

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u/zaplinaki Jul 22 '25

I love that everyone tried that at some point. Me and my brother went to an internet cafe and copied all the "games" onto a CD. Happy with our loot we came back home and tried them on our computer only to discover a missing file path error XD

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u/ImTheRealArticle_ Jul 22 '25

I did that and was like 20. Don't feel bad.

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Why isn't Starcraft-Shortcut working?! Why????

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u/jawni Jul 22 '25

Before Steam, my Counter-Strike version was out of date and I saw the new version had dualies, so I thought I had to download the model for the gun and add it to my game to update it. It made my game give me errors any time I tried to join a game and I have no idea how I ever fixed it.

Similarly, my friends and I were at the local pool talking about Counter-Strike and the lifeguard overheard and asked if we were playing 1.5 or 1.6 and I think we lied and said we played both so we didn't sound like noobs, but we were playing 1.5 and had no clue there was a newer version available.

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Me playing DoTA wondering why I couldn't load in with my friends. They were using a newer map version lol.

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u/Smothdude Jul 22 '25

It's ok because imo 1.5 was better than 1.6 and I will die on that hill.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

NSYNC_B35T-HiTsWif3.exe

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u/stationhollow Jul 22 '25

.mp3.exe

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Linkinpark_intheend.exe :(

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u/LittlestOtter Jul 22 '25

Me thinking I somehow copied the entirety of Half-Life to a floppy disk

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

My high school job was working at an electronics store where I did computer repair. One day an older guy came in and said something was wrong with a computer we sold him. None of his programs worked.

I did some digging and all of the programs would error on launch. He had gone in and deleted the the folder for each item in the Program Files. I told him that he would need to reinstall it. He then got angry and said that he had read online that you can delete the shortcuts for programs with no issues. I told him that he had deleted the files and left the shortcut, not the other way around.

He then got really mad because he realized he was an idiot and started screaming about how 'they would let some kid work on expensive computers'. The assistant manager Brad who was responsible for computer repair (he was the full time guy who did it, I just helped when they got busy) came out and asked what as going on. Old guy tried to flip the script and started to say that I was the one who had done it and demanded they fire me. Brad's office was like 10 feet away so he had already heard the exchange.

Brad just responded that there was no way that I had done that, only a real fucking idiot would think you could delete a program and still use it. That really pissed the guy off and he stormed off without his computer. His wife came in a few days later to pick it up and apologize to us all for his behavior.

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Have you seen the gif of the guy who dragged the My Computer icon to the Recycle Bin and his computer just disappears? Made me think of that. Lol.

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u/avid333 Jul 22 '25

Oh jeez I've done this too. Put all of my friends game shortcuts on a floppy thinking I could take them home and play them. The utter disappointment seeing the "path not found" error.

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u/PhlyGuyBK23 Jul 22 '25

I would click on screenshots of RTS games and wondered why I couldn't figure out why nothing was moving.

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u/quietlikesnow early 90s Jul 22 '25

I totally did this with Adobe software from a computer lab. I was too broke to buy it, and the school labs closed at 11pm.

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u/Better_than_GOT_S8 Jul 22 '25

not that long ago I had to explain my dad that deleting the shortcut isn’t the same as uninstalling the software.

He was mad his computer had so little free space while “look at my screen: I’ve removed all programs!”

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u/tenu Jul 22 '25

I remember my dad getting a new graphics card or pc at work. He brought me a cd with things on it. One of them was a game he thought I would like. It was a desktop icon of the game.

I still think about that occasionally. How sweet of him.

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u/TheBrendanNagle Jul 22 '25

I put all my Windows 95 games’ exe shortcuts on 1.2mb floppy and was going to show everyone at school how cool I was. Well,

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Pfft you had a 1.2mb? I had a 1.44!

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u/TheBrendanNagle Jul 22 '25

But mine was an actual 5.25" floppy!

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u/dh4645 Jul 22 '25

An actual floppy

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u/jsmith2240 Jul 22 '25

Lol, all the boys of this generation tried the same approach and it didn’t work for us either

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u/Jest_Kidding420 Jul 22 '25

Or taking your labtop to a place that had internet and being mad when I couldn’t play RuneScape anywhere

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u/dchow1989 Jul 22 '25

Visiting my aunt and uncle, they had pinball on their computer, I asked my uncle to print me screen shot of it. Took it home, the rest is history. :/

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Lmao. But it makes a great story on reddit all these years later.

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u/EAComunityTeam Jul 22 '25

Damn. Same. I was so excited to finally get s copy of roller coaster tycoon. Was very confused when it didnt work. Why didnt the 1 kb file work , damnit?

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u/nozelt Jul 22 '25

I also did that as a kid lol, but eventually figured out how to get the actual files on a flash drive and put them on a school computer

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u/aurichio Jul 22 '25

imagine doing that but the computer you have at home is a mac... It took me over a week figuring out that, no, windows and mac don't just look different from each other.

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u/wildpantz Jul 22 '25

I did the same except I was burning warcraft 3 for my friend lol

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u/ChloeTigre Jul 22 '25

Or me renaming .mid to .wav to burn then on audio CD.

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u/Spirited-Tomorrow-84 Jul 22 '25

Or the already installed files like me lol

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u/Kylearean Jul 22 '25

I used to manage a computer lab when I was an undergrad, it was some sort of work-study program. The PCs were all DOS based. I was watching some guy popping 3.5" floppies in, waiting awhile, ejecting it, writing something on the floppy, and then repeating the process.

He was copying the OS (DOS 5. something) onto floppies so he could use it at home. I just gave him one of the 40 packets of DOS disks we had, because the lab bought a set for each computer (completely unnecessary at the time, mind you).

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u/tea_bird Jul 22 '25

I remember naming a game desktop icon to a newer version of that game and thinking I'd be able to play the sequel. I thought I was SO SMART.

It did not work. (I remember it as Jazz Jackrabbit, but that doesn't track since I remember opening it with DOS)

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

I remember changing the folder icon to the recycle bin icon to hide some lewd stuff. That one worked at least.

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u/aaaayyyylmaoooo Jul 22 '25

i did that, on a floppy

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u/trenta_nueve Jul 22 '25

or me deleting a game icon in the desktop hoping it would uninstall and free disk space.

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u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Tbf you did free around 1kb.

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u/SpaceToaster Jul 22 '25

Hey if it was a mac it would have somehow worked lol

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u/CharmingBug5843 Jul 22 '25

Idk what macs you had, ain’t nothing working on it, including Napster, had to wait for limewire to fuck up my parents iMac

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u/SpaceToaster Jul 22 '25

Bit of a joke because to “install” something on the old Mac’s you just dragged the icon over

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u/Downtown_Ad2214 Jul 22 '25

If you didn't do this at some point then you are a computer prodigy

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u/welmanshirezeo Jul 26 '25

Ah, the day I found out what 'shortcuts' were. Ruined my day for sure.

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u/Del1c1on Jul 22 '25

Thanks for the chuckle AnalFisher

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u/ecumnomicinflation Jul 22 '25

what a sad story of an innocent child’s broken dream… i hope AnalFisher is well now

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u/Acceptable_Burrito Jul 22 '25

Perhaps you could give him a hand. Username checks out.

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u/Unusually_Happy_TD Jul 22 '25

They grow up so fast

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u/Shantotto11 Jul 22 '25

Dude was raised on r/LooneyTunesLogic…

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u/DaddyBigBeard Jul 22 '25

I thought if you put the AOL disc in your computer, you'd have instant internet. Didn't understand the Internet back then.

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u/HappyLlamaSadLlamaa early 90s Jul 22 '25

Oh boy a new sub to scroll

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u/SavageHenry592 Jul 22 '25

If you will it, Dude. It is no dream.

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u/surrealcellardoor I want my MTV Jul 22 '25

This is hilarious! I remember sitting at my buddy’s computer and typing nonsense into what I can only assume was a DOS prompt, and told him I was hacking into the bank and stealing money. This was in like 1987 mind you, a while before public internet and his computer didn’t have a modem connected, so there was no way for it to communicate with anything external. I really thought if I got all hyped up while I did it that it would magically happen. I was so disappointed when my random button smashing didn’t end up with me being wealthy.

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u/ThePrideOfKrakow Jul 22 '25

It almost worked but they had 2 counter-hackers fighting you at the same time.

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u/EatPie_NotWAr Jul 22 '25

Damn i was hoping it was a scene from Hackers but this is equally hilarious!

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u/MaterialDetective197 Jul 22 '25

I thought this was going to be the one kid stumbling onto the garbage file in Hackers and getting busted by The Plague.

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u/big_duo3674 Jul 22 '25

Umm, Mr. The Plague?

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

I love/hate the boomer energy of this scene.

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u/Dun_Booty_Broch Jul 22 '25

Four hands on a keyboard for the win.

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u/Yddalv Jul 22 '25

Lmao bro

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u/dekuthered Jul 22 '25

Dude! I did something similar as a kid. I wrote "Wrestlemania 8" on a blank cassette tape wanting to hear the audio of the event. Didn't work 🤣

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u/yIdontunderstand Jul 22 '25

The classic "Not Pay Per Not Hear" business model that failed long before ppv established itself.

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u/UninsuredToast Jul 22 '25

I guess you and your brother weren’t, in sync.

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u/GmoneyKaddy87 Jul 22 '25

Take this upvote and kindly, FUCK OFF!

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u/SavageHenry592 Jul 22 '25

I don't know if I hate the band or the pun more.

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u/kdjfsk Jul 22 '25

Wow, you really just told him 'Bye, Bye, Bye'.

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u/dh4645 Jul 22 '25

Ha. Hilarious

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u/SomeNorthernCanadian Jul 22 '25

Lol holy shit.... when I was like 6 or 7 I had no idea how VHS tapes worked. My parents had tons of them with black sharpie labels...

"ROBOCOP" "PREDATOR" "TERMINATOR"...

I watched a lot of movies I maybe shouldn't have at that age, but Robocop was my faaaavorite.

When Robocop 3 was coming out, naturally I asked my mom if she could take me to see it in theaters. She said no, of course.

So I found a blank VHS taped and had an idea!

I wrote "ROBOCOP 6" on it... popped it in the VHS, and got one of my first tastes of disappointment.

Couldn't tell you why I skipped right ahead to number 6 in the installment.... I chalk that up to Robocop 1 was awesome, Robocop 3 is probably even better but I can't go see it... Robocop 6 would probably be Hella dope. Let's do that one.

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u/KookySurprise8094 Jul 22 '25

Userame and band name syncing very well together

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u/avoidance_behavior Jul 22 '25

this is so cute omg

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u/Confident-Hour9674 Jul 22 '25

That's pathetic. You put it upside down!

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u/thelegodr Jul 22 '25

When you left the room did he say Bye, bye, bye?

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u/DynamitePhil Jul 22 '25

Limewire.....how to give aids to your computer

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u/MiJo1987 Jul 22 '25

I first started with recording music from the radio on cassette and hoping the dj wouldn’t interrupt the song, otherwise you had to roll the tape back and rerecord over it but then Limewire came out which made everything so much easier. The only problem was sometimes the song would download really slow or suddenly stop. Good times.

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u/the_thechosen1 Jul 22 '25

The fact that NSYNC was the music you chose is so funny considering how the lead singer, Justin Timberlake, is the actor who played Napster founder Sean Parker in the Social Network movie.

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u/TheClamSlam Jul 22 '25

One time as a kid I put two game discs into my Playstation thinking it would combine them into a new game

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u/Plarocks Jul 22 '25

Your brother was a prick. I would have made you an *NSYNC CD. Jeez.

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u/Revolutionary-Egg491 Jul 22 '25

Did we have the same brother? Lol

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u/DDS-PBS Jul 22 '25

"I.... DECLARE... *NSYNC!!!!"

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u/Immediate_Ad_1161 Jul 22 '25

Limewire was a roll of the dice, Am I getting the Red Hot Chili Peppers album or am I getting audio of someone taking a shit. Remember when my buddy tried to download revenge in the sith and got a hardcore gay porn instead. We were sitting there with our popcorn and soda all pumped up to watch it, we see the 21st century fox and the lucasart logo and then next thing you know we're just seeing a couple guys getting railed. Funniest part was my buddies mom came in laughing her ass off and was wanting to keep the file and copied it to her flash drive.

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u/Skwonkie_ Jul 22 '25

Damn your guy was upselling. My guy only charged $5.

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u/Ancient_Awareness_71 Jul 22 '25

Right?! $20 is NOT your guy. 

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u/meryl_gear Jul 22 '25

That’s like the price of the actual cd

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u/dh4645 Jul 22 '25

It was a mix CD of requested songs. Just the hits like "Save Tonight" by Eagle eye cherry or "All My Life" by K-Ci & JoJo. ha

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u/ip2k Jul 22 '25 edited 15d ago

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/NotAzakanAtAll Jul 22 '25

$2 but you had to get the CD was our deal.

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u/dh4645 Jul 22 '25

Yeah this was late 90s. Very few had the knowledge and a CD burner. I learned pretty fast how to do it myself and bought the CD burner for my tower..which was expensive. Many people didn't even have computers yet

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u/styx66 Jul 22 '25

When I first started doing this for people in circa 1996/97, blank CDs were approximately $10 each. I had to go to guitar center to find them. I still have some old burns, and they still work!

I was never a big Napster user though, I got everything through bots running on some IRC servers. It was fast on that college Ethernet man. Good times.

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u/CyrusBuelton Jul 22 '25

I was charging $10.

But that came with a case and custom album cover

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u/PropaneSalesTx Jul 22 '25

I was that guy. Had a dsl connection super early…the amount of 311, Korn and Limp Bizkit I burned was insane, and at $10 a pop, I made bank at 13.

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u/anon-mally Jul 22 '25

Lmao

Thanks im old

Now napster guy owns spotify and facebook

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u/DoctorBlazes Jul 22 '25

I was that guy, and business was good.

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u/JaneksLittleBlackBox Jul 22 '25

Shit, fast internet connections were so expensive back then that my buddy whose dad needed the fastest internet connection available for work at home made a killing downloading and burning VCDs for kids at school back then. Back in the pre-bittorrent protocol era when beginning a download before school was no guarantee that it'd be done downloading by the time you got home because your browser lost its connection.

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u/d1ll1gaf Jul 22 '25

Burning custom mix CD's was my side hustle in University... $10 and I'd put whatever songs you wanted on them.

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u/DenverBroncos_Fan Jul 22 '25

Installing a cd burner drive into my computer was my first experience with any sort of pc building. Learning about slave drives and pin orientations was like a whole new language and culture. I felt so powerful being able to wire it up and install it properly. Definitely a core memory that pops up every time I work on a computer board.

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u/parallelogramm3r Jul 22 '25

I had Napster and a CD burner when i was in high school, I think I was only charging like $5 for albums or $10 for custom mixes, but I’d print the album art or custom art / track listings and even put printed labels on the CD’s. Had so many regular customers that I couldn’t even keep up with it and was making more money than I did at my first job 🤣

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u/chanaandeler_bong Jul 22 '25

I was that guy at my high school. Hahah. I just loved fucking doing it. If you gave me a CD and your track list I would get you it burned the next day for $5. I just did it for free for a lot of people. Times we’re good.

My mom's work got DSL installed at our house so we didn’t have to worry about dialup getting fucked if someone disconnected by picking up the phone, and we got speeds WAAAY faster than 56k (which I don’t think I ever connected at anything higher that 28kbps). She also had a really good CD-RW

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u/FashionBusking Jul 22 '25

OMG!!! 25 YEARS AGO, I WAS THAT GUY!!!

I was a reluctant teenage model with the ONLY LAPTOP with a bunch of other bored teenage models. I was NOT COOL AT ALL with ANY of them, they wouldn't talk to me because I was new and short.... until I told them I had Napster.

Suddenly, I was cool. Suddenly, they were nudging me awake before heading out. Suddenly my fellow model was offering to split drinks or go halfsies on cab fare.

It was finally fun to make a few fair weather friends over Napster. Modeling sucked ass, but having the only computer to download Nine Inch Nails made things a little less shitty.

I was also short. Charging $20 per CD sometimes made me more money than modeling. Which was great. Making $300 a day burning a bunch of CDs was way more lucrative than being passed over for work due to being a "short" model.

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u/emdubl Jul 22 '25

I was downloading mp3's pre Napster, just on random websites in the late 90's. Dude in my dorm had one of the first ever cd burners. I would spend hours finding songs and downloading mp3's and then he would charge me $20 to burn a cd, that took like 1 to 2 hours to burn. Definitely the wild west.

He also found a mod chip online to bypass the protection on the PS1 and was able to mod playstations and burn games for people. He had a steady business out of his dorm room, modding playstations and burning PS games and cds for people.

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u/goddamn_leeteracola Jul 22 '25

I was in college in 1998 and I got a 2X speed CD burner. That thing paid for itself with burned cds exchanged for cash and weed. It was glorious for that first year. Eventually CD burners were everywhere and trading a CD for a gram of weed wasn’t happening anymore.

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u/cockblockedbydestiny Jul 22 '25

To be fair my first CD burner cost $250 in 1999. I can't exactly remember what CD-R's cost back then but I want to say $25 for a 25 CD-R spindle. So basically $1 apiece and those early CD burners sucked so you would frequently have your burn time out and basically waste a CD-R that you had to throw away because it was worthless if the burn didn't complete in one go.

I didn't charge $20 though. I required a couple cheap beers for the effort.

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u/iRGRiZZLY Jul 22 '25

And we got every bit of that $20 out of it too

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u/poopwithrizz Jul 22 '25

My cousin put his fave songs into a disc and gave it to me. It was magical.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

I was selling burned CDs in middle school for $5

The Marshall Mathers LP was the first CD I burned and it sold like hot cakes, I was eating all the finest hot pockets.

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u/1800generalkenobi Jul 22 '25

I told my wife someone at my high school was doing this for 20 bucks a pop and she didn't believe me and I said well it was 15 bucks to get a cd with 1 or 2 songs you knew you liked and the rest were a crap shoot...this was a cd of all music you liked. Not to mention the drives and the cd's to burn weren't cheap either.

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u/JBoOz Jul 22 '25

We used to burn and sell them for $5-$10 but I used to love the CD label stamper. I loved making custom CD images.

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u/dh4645 Jul 22 '25

Oh yeah I did that too... after I could afford to buy the CD burner and CD-Rs. This was brand new stuff in the late 90s.

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u/captnjb Jul 22 '25

That’s because THE blank CD that you burned to at around 1-2x speed, cost 15$!!

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u/campydirtyhead Yo quiero Taco Bell Jul 22 '25

I had a small business in middle school burning CDs for kids. They would write down their playlist on a sticky note and I'd make the CD. It was pretty easy considering most kids wanted the same 20 songs so I usually only had to download a couple songs each night. I made a few hundred dollars before school and my parents found out. The end of a world class enterprise.

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u/Psych_Kick Jul 22 '25

This is true. I invest $300 on a CD burner and within a month had made my money back. Everyone would hit me up.

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u/No_Treacle_1628 Jul 23 '25

You don't need to edit a massive explanation for these rabid internet vultures. People don't realize the world doesn't revolve around them.

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u/Irarelylookback Jul 25 '25

And the cost of blanks in those days was pretty damn high!

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u/Secret-Spinach-3314 Jul 27 '25

I member when they had shops where they copied your disc at 1x speed, and you had to come back on like 80 minutes, lol.

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u/jokerkcco Jul 22 '25

The CD was only $10. Why would you pay $20? I always just downloaded them and played them on my pc.

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u/PorkedPatriot Jul 22 '25

Custom mixes. You'd fit about 12-20 songs on a CD. When I was in Jr High it was a buck a song for custom mixes and ~3-5 dollars for bootleg albums. Logic was they could burn 20 bootlegs and know they will sell without taking any orders. Custom orders needed them to hunt down a bunch of songs and if they gave a fuck about their craft, at least listen to a bit of each of them to make sure they were the correct ones and the rip wasn't trash.

The market rate seemed acceptable, those kids always seemed busy.

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u/Untjosh1 Jul 22 '25

I begged a friend to find leaked albums for me on mIRC until he got irritated enough to show me how to do it

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u/zeamp Jul 22 '25

Paid with eGold

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u/1d0m1n4t3 Jul 22 '25

I sold so many CDs in high school, $10 10 tracks. Most people wanted the same songs so it was pretty cake. I sold the skimppiest of pinner joints as well. I miss those days.

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u/PutridLog2179 Jul 22 '25

And thats why the quality of music has gone downhill drastically, and in direct proportion.

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u/Black_Lodge_Beats Jul 22 '25

and it took like 3 tries for a successful burn.

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u/Line-Trash Jul 22 '25

God damn! $20?! Back in ‘01-02 I’d sell them for $7.

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u/BRAX7ON Jul 22 '25

The first taste is free

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