Archived from groups: alt.games.everquest (
More info?)
<damon-nomad@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 20:44:09 GMT, Larry Laffer <private@aol.com>
> wrote:
>
> >When I stared out in the newsgroup scene in '92, AOLers were
> >concidered the low end of the totem pole.
>
> Yes, that's right - I remember those days well... For some reason,
> people accepted that AOL's subscribers were the dimmest of the dim.
> Why, I have no idea, as they were no worse than anyone else, really!
Actually, they were. There were people who used independent ISPs, who had
to configure slip/ppp (and none of this "Internet Connection Wizard" stuff
either, you were in the nitty gritty) and download the various un-integrated
bits of software needed, often starting off the process by discovering that
without having an ftp client it's actually fairly difficult to get an ftp
client.
And then there were people who installed AOL, picked a local access number,
and were online.
Ease of use for the people who weren't up to the task of getting on the net
via a local ISP was the reason AOL became so popular. The fact that it
enabled people to get online who otherwise would have been weeded out of the
Internet gene pool by the bar set by local ISPs is why it became the butt of
so many jokes.