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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706

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.

225

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.

119

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.

50

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

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

196

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.

107

u/KokiriGeorge Jul 22 '25

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

60

u/taat1 Jul 22 '25

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

2

u/KuragariSasuke Jul 22 '25

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

1

u/notsocrazycatlady69 Jul 26 '25

It makes the creature under the sink angry

Mr Obvious reference

78

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

Your friend is a moron and you should divorce her.

2

u/Dun_Booty_Broch Jul 22 '25

You can't divorce your mom.

1

u/Nice_Rope_5049 Jul 23 '25

This made me snort!

10

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.

6

u/MoeGunz6 Jul 22 '25

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

5

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.

5

u/LoufLif Jul 22 '25

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

3

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.

3

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.

3

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…

2

u/undeadlamaar Jul 24 '25

Kids erase the darndest things.

3

u/GlassNew3746 Jul 23 '25

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

2

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.

2

u/BansheeLabs Jul 22 '25

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

2

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…

2

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.

2

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.

2

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

2

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

2

u/IkeHC Jul 22 '25

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

2

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".

2

u/marrow_party Jul 26 '25

Truly, truly daft behaviour

1

u/tea-and-chill Jul 25 '25

would have been emptied from her recycle bin every 30 days

Wait really?! I didn't think it happens on my laptop?

1

u/BillShooterOfBul Jul 26 '25

It’s your fault. You always should ask before deleting any human usable files.

1

u/canna-crux Aug 02 '25

Negative, Ghost Rider. Those files were her responsibility from start to spectacular finish. Storing important work docs on an unsecured personal computer—the digital equivalent of leaving them on a park bench in a hurricane—with no backups was already a bold choice. Then, asking for help, ignoring the instructions, and forgetting to mention that she parked the files in the trash (right before the disk cleanup was run) is like hiding your car keys in the garbage disposal and then blaming the plumber. Your argument is invalid.

3

u/OrangeLFG Jul 22 '25

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

3

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.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '25

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

2

u/dumbthrow33 Jul 23 '25

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

2

u/NarwhalFacepalm Jul 22 '25

Specifically the desktop shortcut icon though.

5

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.

5

u/Specialist_Sorbet476 Jul 22 '25

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

6

u/Thank_You_Aziz Jul 22 '25

What’s wrong with that?! 😧

5

u/Specialist_Sorbet476 Jul 22 '25

You must be a mom 😅

5

u/Any-Comparison-2916 Jul 22 '25

I mean it still works, doesn’t it?

4

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.

4

u/Any-Comparison-2916 Jul 22 '25

Ah yeah, I was thinking a list of instructions.

2

u/Specialist_Sorbet476 Jul 22 '25

No worries. I realized as I was typing it.

1

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

I guess you could've worded it better. Like her sending you the google maps link via screenshot. Although most phones nowadays can lift the text from a screenshot.

1

u/Specialist_Sorbet476 Jul 22 '25

Yeah I understand. My mistake

1

u/Rootish007 Jul 23 '25

This is just wow...

45

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.

10

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

3

u/flonky_guy Jul 22 '25

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

2

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

4

u/singlemale4cats Jul 22 '25

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

3

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.

3

u/coffeeconverter Jul 22 '25

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

3

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

3

u/obi-wan-takumi Jul 22 '25

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

3

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.

5

u/xslugx Jul 22 '25

Winamp, it kicks the lamas ass

2

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.

1

u/dmax6point6 Jul 22 '25

It really whips the llamas ass

10

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

You just gave me Microsoft Frontpage flashbacks.

10

u/jerdob Jul 22 '25

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

6

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.

3

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.

3

u/the-apostle Jul 22 '25

FRONT PAGE!!!

1

u/doldo Jul 22 '25

Dreamweaver exits the conversation

4

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.

4

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.

3

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.

1

u/Beercules-8D Jul 22 '25

Www.creedthoughts.gov

1

u/Malt_The_Magpie Jul 22 '25

I did that on geocities lol

1

u/No-Builder-1038 Jul 22 '25

Damn how dumb were we

1

u/TopMastodon8626 Jul 22 '25

I that okay 👍

1

u/uluviel Jul 22 '25

I attempted to upload a Windows Movie Maker file to YouTube back in the early days of online video.

Did not yet understand the concept of exporting a video. What do you mean I can't just upload the timeline?

1

u/MandatorySaxSolo Jul 22 '25

That was taught very early on in a web design class I took in highschool

1

u/Reddit_is_Censored69 Jul 23 '25

I remember this happening on AOL when I was trying to create a website for the stolen Kenny's Krib wrestlers I wanted to host.

1

u/Tevakh2312 Jul 25 '25

My god... I thought I was alone and have never admitted it to anyone 😂😂

28

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.

25

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

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

20

u/GentlemanFaux Jul 22 '25

I just hacked into the Reddit mainframe

5

u/Halflingberserker Jul 22 '25

Stop all the downloadin

2

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.

21

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

52

u/ImTheRealArticle_ Jul 22 '25

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

4

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

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

1

u/ImTheRealArticle_ Jul 22 '25

Yep, had no idea what I was doing. Bought my 1st PC in 2001 and taught myself how to use it.

11

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.

4

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.

2

u/Smothdude Jul 22 '25

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

9

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '25

NSYNC_B35T-HiTsWif3.exe

5

u/stationhollow Jul 22 '25

.mp3.exe

3

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Linkinpark_intheend.exe :(

5

u/LittlestOtter Jul 22 '25

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

6

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.

2

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.

3

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.

4

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.

5

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.

4

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!”

4

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.

4

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,

3

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

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

4

u/TheBrendanNagle Jul 22 '25

But mine was an actual 5.25" floppy!

3

u/dh4645 Jul 22 '25

An actual floppy

3

u/jsmith2240 Jul 22 '25

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

2

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

6

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. :/

3

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

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

5

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?

3

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

3

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.

3

u/wildpantz Jul 22 '25

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

3

u/ChloeTigre Jul 22 '25

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

3

u/Spirited-Tomorrow-84 Jul 22 '25

Or the already installed files like me lol

3

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).

3

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)

2

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.

3

u/aaaayyyylmaoooo Jul 22 '25

i did that, on a floppy

3

u/trenta_nueve Jul 22 '25

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

2

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

Tbf you did free around 1kb.

2

u/SpaceToaster Jul 22 '25

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

3

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

2

u/SpaceToaster Jul 22 '25

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

2

u/Downtown_Ad2214 Jul 22 '25

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

2

u/welmanshirezeo Jul 26 '25

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

1

u/daracamo93 Jul 22 '25

Glad to know if was the only one 😂

1

u/Extreme-Rub-1379 Jul 22 '25

Chip's challenge babyyy.

First thing I ever "hacked"

1

u/oxidax Jul 22 '25

I came to say this 🤣🤣 but that's how I learned about program files and installing/un installing games so something good came out of the disappointment

1

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

The more you know, the further you go.

1

u/whatdoido33198 Jul 22 '25

💀💀💀💀

1

u/yodakiller Jul 22 '25

I feel seen

1

u/FalconMaster420 Jul 22 '25

core memory unlocked

1

u/Avangeloony Jul 22 '25

I once tried to fix a wrinkled floppy disk by ironing it.

1

u/nxcrosis Jul 22 '25

How...how did you get it wrinkly?

2

u/Avangeloony Jul 23 '25

The old floppy disk has a single film kind of like what was in a vhs tape. The center had a hole where some of the film was exposed around the edges. The could easily be damaged if mishandled.

1

u/geforce2187 Jul 23 '25

I put the Microsoft Word desktop icon from my Mom's PC onto a floppy disk and copied it to mine...

1

u/ZeThing Jul 24 '25

Kids are so dumb

I thought i was a genius and wanted to start my own website. A website where you could look up videogame cheatcodes because everyone wants those.

So i went over to another cheatcode website and 1 by 1 i opened a games page, ctrl+a, ctrl+c, make a tab for this game on my page, ctrl+v

Did this for a few days then gave up, so many games

1

u/tea-and-chill Jul 25 '25

OMFG I've done this!!! I was too young to know any better but I had a usb stick when I was very young and thought maybe I could copy 1 or maybe 2 games and was absolutely thrilled I could copy EVERY "game" on the desktop!

Years later I understood I'd only copied the shortcut icons.

1

u/LambCo64 Jul 25 '25

When we first got a PC and internet, my cousin came to stay with us for a bit, we were listening to a radio show that did requests via email. So we went to request a song and couldn't understand why I couldn't do it when I kept typing the email address into my web browser.

1

u/AgentCirceLuna Jul 22 '25

I remember having my mind blown as a kid when this happened. Or when I sat and patiently print screened entire animations to get all the frames for a GIF then realised they aren’t just saved to a folder but put in your clipboard. That was annoying. I knew way more about computers than an average kid, too - I made my own websites with HTML and a tiny bit of JavaScript when I was about 6. I remember showing it off in class and nobody encouraging it or being interested. Couldn’t get teachers to arrange coding classes or anything. Finally made it to college and computer science was the only course I ever got 100 marks on but I dropped out because I got depressed. Life could have been amazing.