[donatj]

I love this. I miss lighthearted things like this being more of the norm than the exception. Xeyes on 90s Linux, cowsay, whatever that was that made snow gather on top your windows (Xsnow?). Heck, I even have fond memories of Björks website having an animated bee that would follow you around. I think he was named Meesta Bee or something similar.

Everything is so dang serious all the time, I miss the sense of levity and wonder that used to follow tech around.

[BoxOfRain]

Until recently a must-have in my .bashrc was `fortune | cowsay` but this tripped me up when one of the spicier fortunes was output during a video call with my then-boss, no harm done but I decided to retire it to only personal machines.

I imagine there's many versions of that story contributing to why these things are less popular than they were.

[guappa]

So repressed :D Is your boss a minor? I doubt it.

[hammock]

This is peak 90s. Skifree, toasters, "under construction" gifs on your Geocities homepage, and random fun plugins and add-ons that you would download from Tucows.

Maximalist and absurdist digital culture that is all but gone now.

[donatj]

I would download sooo many random programs from the internet back then, and rarely were they viruses. I also didn't have online banking and my internet connection wasn't always on. The attack surface was just so much smaller. Like what, were they going to steal my collection of gifs?

I did once get a virus that made a long distance call to Japan with my modem before I realized what was happening and unplugged the phone cable.

[dghf]

Xroaches. Move a window, and cockroaches would scuttle out from underneath it and round the screen until they found another window to hide under.