• Folstar@lemmus.org
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    8 days ago

    If they mean 20 years ago in the Covid Timewarp sense that the 90s were twenty years ago, then yes.

    Literally 20 years ago the horror was already upon us. It was around that time that fear of the government chipping us to track our every movement was peaking, and hey, by the way, please buy and pay a monthly cost for this tracking device that has audio and video recording but also plays silly cat videos ANYWHERE!!!

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      20 years ago was 2006. I will point out that at that juncture the original iPhone wasn’t even out yet. It released the following year. Normal people who were not turbo-nerds or high powered businessmen did not own smartphones in any significant number at that point.

      If your device was even capable of downloading a cat video, we were still in the era when your cell phone carrier would have charged you $1.99 to do it.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          I remember them wanting me to pay for that, but I also remember getting a cable that allowed me to connect my PC to my phone and do whatever I wanted with the filesystem. The ringtones were in a different format but I got a converter and had the FF7 battle music for a ring tone.

          I also recall some phones supporting MP3s for listening to music (though storage space was tiny) but not supporting them as a ringtone once connecting to PCs to share files was more common.

          They also sold wallpapers, emoticon packs, and themes.

        • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          Yes, but I was fortunate enough to never actually get as far as ponying up the 99 cents. I got an MPX200 pretty early in my cell phone career which ran Windows CE and basically let the owner do whatever the fuck they wanted, including using .wav or .mp3 files as ringtones.

      • Clbull@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        If your device was even capable of downloading a cat video, we were still in the era when your cell phone carrier would have charged you $1.99 to do it.

        Or companies like Jamba/Jamster would have buried a clause in their T&Cs allowing them to send you periodic promotional texts and bill the fuck out of you for it.

        What you think is them selling a $1.99 video of an anthropomorphic frog with a visible schlong making car noises is actually a predatory subscription scam.