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(My other comment posted half way typing it so I deleted that one)
It was like 2010s when I first immigrated to the US. I never had internet before, neither did my parents or brother.
I think Mainland China probably had internet, but like... I lived in a part of the city that is sort of 50% resembling the "Favalas" of Brazil (no offense, I just can't find a better term to describe it). Its like this area of tall building that has little to no safety. No elevators, a staircase that ran from ground floor to like idk 7 or 8 floors? And the stairs were exposed to outside the building, meaning you could accidentally fall and die. It took a half an hour to get to the main road where you can actually take a bus and where the malls are at.
So you get the idea of where I was...
Basically, I doubt there even is an internet connection, at least not in my area of Guangzhou City. I assume some rich people probably would have access.
So I was a kid, and came with my parents and my brother to NYC on an immigration visa. And we got a used desktop computer setup that a relative no longer needed. They gave this wifi addon thing that scans for wifi in the area, and there was a free wifi, but the signal was too weak. So we later got a laptop on Black Friday (back then, people actually waited hours to get in), and use the laptop on a nearby mcdonalds to download stuff. Also we use the public library of Brooklyn for internet access.
Well I didn't really have my own computer, it was basically just sharing with my brother (who gotten more toxic as we got older)
Then later on we got home internet, it was like $30 for introductory 2 year price, but later it wne tup to like $50. I don't remember what speed, but I'm assuming it was like 30 or 50 mbps download. I never ran any speedtests, but youtube videos worked fine.
I mostly just used the internet for information. Like looking up info about space, science. I also played a lot of Flash games on webpages I find, that was essentially my main source of "gaming" at the time.
Some kids at my (elementary) school had facebooks, I made one, and added a few people I talked to, played some games on facebook that ran on the Unity Plugin. I eventually stopped using facebook. But still play Unity Games on websites
Then we moved cities and now have slightly better internet. Then I got my own laptop.
And I was like 13/14 I think, and I started to read a lot of wikipedia and a lot of Youtube educational videos, but my main "gaming" was still those web Unity Games. I mean, it was just a shitty laptop, not a gaming rig, not I wouldn't have been able to run any actual "real" games.
Then I learned about reddit and the "free" ๐ stuff you can download from the internet, but unfortunately, I could not find a car to download... ๐คทโโ๏ธ
As for my parents, once they got smartphones, they were just glued to Wechat like some rural US Fox news watchers... ๐คฆโโ๏ธ
I could go more in detail about early internet (well, "early" from my PoV), but I doubt people are gonna read this if I write a whole wall of text.
(Sorry if this was incoherent, I can't keep my words clear and concise)
Could you share a picture of this? I tried to find one myself on the internet but couldn't. That sounds really interesting... were there handrails?
There's no street view of the allyway where the entrances to the buildings are (a car can't fit in there).
So you go down the allyway, and there are entrances left and right. You have to open the door. Each building has a different key that everyone in the building has. You go in, it's the 1st floor, there's like this square area, and there like 2 units on the left 2 units on the right (I think). Then you turn your face 180ยฐ and there's are stairs right beside the tiny path you entered the building from, you go up, and like on this area, where I call the floor 1.5 (half way up to 2nd floor), you can see the outside...
Let me find a stock image...
So see that window thing? Imagine that whole window is gone, but replace with a barrier of cement as high as an adult's waist level. That's it! No safety nets or anything.
Like you can see a person standing in front of of the entrance of your building, you can jump over it and fall to your death. (I had intrusive thoughts abould falling out of the building, which is probably why I'm scared of heights)
They had nets over the windows in the apartment unit, but not on the stairs. Somebody getting drunk is definitely gonna leap over it and fall and die lol.