I've heard people mocked for being "stuck in the 60s."

Just one open source free platform would be fine. IRC with modern protocols for pics and video that can be viewed in the chat app of your choosing. Keep it simple, or add backgrounds. Mini chat boxes, or transparancy. Basic low resource use, or heavy, you decide, same open cross app platform.

Yep, fighting for a cause today means posting on social media. Most people are all talk and no action, which makes it easier for the few who do act to get their way.

OLED. Can still use modern advances in practical tech. Can still have open source, modern kernel linux, modern ram and low power 3nm chips. Just keep all the tech simple and clean of marketing and addiction. All the good, less of the bad.

Dominos is the best national chain now, in the 90s not so much. But Pizza Hut has always been too oily.

Libraries are state run, unbranded, and mostly lend, Blonkboster's would be a company, just much less shitty.

But will it have LGBT Rights?

Not sure that will work, ubiquitous video is still possible.

Other way around. If there's an open system that attracts a sufficient amount of users, companies will come to use money and shiny stuff to pull users to their proprietary platforms. It'll always happen when you let them use their bells and whistles.

"Community" library. Like those stations where people store books to share with their neighbors for free.

websites you could only discover via a webring

sign me up

looks around

There’s not enough microbrew in the world to get me drunk enough to pretend everything isn’t a complete shit show.

i'm pointing at canada and europe mostly. places with legal weed.

We'll make it a gay blockbuster!

Because it sounds better in theory and people dont realize how spoiled technological advancements have made us.

Super agree with that. I was literally on AIM until the servers went down, not even kidding, and I love the cozy feel of N64 games rented at Blockbuster with Pizza Hut and so on... but I actually don't wanna go back to tank controls or AIM. I like Telegram and Signal a lot better. I like Summoning Salt videos on youtube. I don't really wanna go back.

The word "was" is doing a lot of work here. Those things all still exist, and I currently use all of them :)

IRC is still around and kicking. My friends and I use it all the time.

I think the problem is that all the other chat services that they used to connect to closed off their connection protocols. Can't serve a bunch of shitty advetisements if users aren't using your website or app.

I'm not USAian, but it was annoying to follow from Europe too

i mean, we were bathed in it. i don't know your media experience, but i imagine there were other channels besides the statesian ones.

Random chat made me some amazing friends that I kept in touch with for decades. Those friendships lasted longer than IQC did. Sadly, the Internet is a different place now.

I feel like we can grandfather that into the 90s, you've watched nightmare on elm street I'm assuming,

So um is this just millennial retirement? Boomers are getting their senior communities we need our own communities

2179????... For anonymity, I'm not posting the actual numbers here.

You were a very early adopter.

My GF was 1403????

I'm gonna run d&d 10 hours a day when I retire

I'm not. There were some awful parts of the 90s.

It'll never be the same anyway. Something that a lot of legacy gaming servers has taught me is that you can't replicate nostalgic memories.

I dream of a time in my life when I can sit around in my grandpa chair playing 80's and 90's video games on my 90inch PPMQ+LER/LED with macrovision and google-tone color rendering 3D/8D ultra-thin TV in a retro case to make it look like a giant version of those old floor model "piece of furniture in and of themselves" TVs like my grandpa had back in '84. Maybe my AI grandson can play along so I can relive the childlike wonder of playing through these games for the first time from the perspective of a kid AI.

Home of one of the best breweries too!

If someone is going to run with this idea, I very sincerely ask that you please do it in one of the locations marked on this map. Then my company will be able to operate a 1990s-technology cellular phone network in the proposed neo-Amish town, a network that will enable 1990s GSM cellphones to actually work! And I do mean it with full seriousness - the linked website is my actual company, with all attendant legal and contact info.

Out of the set of locations marked on the linked map, I strongly prefer the ones in Oregon. I and the rest of my founding team are based in California, and I am a trans woman - hence certain places are, quite sadly, simply unsafe for to me travel to, let alone the intricate tasks of building towers, installing equipment and then operating and maintaining it. There are no PCS spectrum vacancies in our home state of CA, but OR is close, has good spectrum available, and it is a lovely state with strong LGBTQ+ rights.

Would you be OK with shifting the location just a tiny bit eastward, from Bend OR to Prineville OR? Crook County (which hosts Prineville) has vacant/unclaimed PCS spectrum, so we can operate our own 1990s cellular phone network, while Deschutes County (which hosts Bend and Sisters) unfortunately lacks the same. And yes, I and my team did explore that area with actual boots on the ground in the fall of 2025, less than a year ago.

Whoa, Black Betty, Shyamalan

let's bring ICQ back.

You can keep the IMs. I would like MP3s, though. A library could have a computer that can be booked for research purposes.

I'm debating over on-demand video and better TVs. Maybe a compromise would be the community decides its own broadcast schedule so it's not as instant but still allows some modern media.

I’m down, I still remember my number!

There are at least two defenses against this.

1. Don't. That is, don't go use whatever the proprietary platform is and continue on with using the open, non-enshittified things.
2. AGPL

Ubiquiti p2p microwave links for gigabit speed backhaul. But that defeats the purpose of Blockbuster.

There's a reason Agent Smith said the 90s was the peak of humanity. He should know.

The 90s did a terrible job of that...

But I feel like we could import some of the modern improvements, and improve on them even more. Like #metoo, lgbtq rights, and generally acknowledging and attempting to reduce/solve subconscious and systemic bigotry (racism, sexism etc)

Also, tangentially, the plot of project zomboid. Basically the zombie apocalypse happens in the late 90s so the survivors are stuck there forever

Did you know there is a generation between boomers and millennials?

I feel both entirely seen and unseen at the same time.

Oh heck ya

I've been wondering what tech levels would be SELF SUSTAINABLE. Like the amish lifestyle is a circular economy, everything they need they can make themselves, grow themselves, and compost themselves. Like mostly.

But can you have something like electric motors or wind power in the same way? Can you have electronics? Can you have eReader? Like if you had a town the size of 50.000 people.

Theoretically advances in technology could allow for things like biological computing. Like a variety of seeds to produce plants making all sorts of medicine, or single cell cultures then organize into simple electronics. Not sure how sci-fi that is. But in a way that would be a "safe point" for civilization.

Because even after a limited nuclear exchange which is is getting more and more likely each year we're not going to have any global supply chain left.

Do you actually think someone can look you up this far after it was shut down? I'd accept that challenge if one could from my ICQ number alone.

If you want to bottle neck, just bottle neck the RAM. It doesn't even have to be an absolute limit, just mandate that off the shelf products can only have so much active memory, but people are free to buy more and install it themselves. That alone would enough of a barrier to entry that it keeps things reasonable for the vast majority of users, without inconveniencing those who have the inclination or professional necessity to go beyond.

The energy cost of replacing fiber optics with wireless... ugg, I shudder to imagine.

The last time I was in a discussion about the 90's it was a group of people agreeing that they needed to go back to the 90's because it was the best time, that it truly was the peak of human civilization... and I got downvoted for pointing out how homophobic the era was. I'm glad to see there's a different outcome this time.

Only if AIM is encrypted now. Else can we update it to Delta Chat and pretend it's AIM because Encryption?

It's really fucking sad that Pizza hut is seen and remembered in any positive way in the US, it really shows how fucking bad you have it.
A pizze hut opened in my city here in Sweden about two decades ago and it immediately became "ooh, this american thing everyone has heard of through movies is so bad that everyone has to go to it just to experience the unimaginable shit quality and taste."
Even the cheapest street corner pizzerias we have are in a whole other universe comparably.