The Josh Innes Show - Rest In Power Dial Up

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

AOL has announced the end of dial up internet. I was shocked to find out the number of households still using it. Dial up is one of those things like Blockbuster, Red Box and DVD Netflix that was look back on fondly but really did suck. Man, I do miss the old days though... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yeah, I'm fairly certain allergies are kicking my ass here. I'm at that point in the year where I have to kind of keep my voice down a little bit because I think allergies have started to cause me to get hoarse. And I've only been here like two and a half weeks. And these Michigan allergies are beating the shit out of me. But that's kind of where we are right now with that. So if my voice sounds like shit, I'm sorry that my voice sounds like shit. I apologize for that. hopefully it is not impacting your enjoyment of the podcast.

But every now and then my voice will go, because I just have shit in my throat, like right there, my, oh, when it's time to change. So, see, there we go. And that's all that is. I just have a bunch of gunk in my throat, thanks to the allergies and everything else. So anyway, let's do this. Let's get the commercials out of the shoot right now on this one. And let's talk about the end of an era.

Impact site located Entering spacecraft We were safer FX's alien earth An original series now streaming on Disney Plus Sign up today 18 plus subscription required D&C's applause It is the end of the dial-up era as AOL is doing away with dial-up internet.

You want to hear a shocking number? There's a shocking number of people who still use dial-up. I don't know. I would imagine it's cheaper. I would think it's cheaper to use dial-up. But according to a story I read, over 163,000 people still use dial-up. internet and now those people have to find a new way to get online and some of those are people that for instance are kind of out in rural areas like i didn't think of that it didn't occur to me

that that would still be the case but 163,000 people still use dial-up over 163,000 people but man you know it's one of those things that you get nostalgic about but you don't really miss but you tell yourself that you do miss like blockbuster no one misses having to get in the car and go to a store and hope that the video you're looking to rent is there. And if not, go to another store and another store and another store. Nobody truly misses that. Nobody misses the inconvenience of early Netflix where you had to wait for a disc to arrive at your house. Nobody misses going to Red Box, right?

But we all wax poetic about these things because that's what we do. Us old-timers like to sit around and tell the young kids about the days of a Friday night where you'd get off a school. dad would give you some money to order a pizza you'd have a buddy come over for a sleepover you'd get into mischief go fuck around at the neighbor's house get a universal remote control

and change the channel go right around and some go carts maybe I don't know then you'd go to Blockbuster and you'd use the Blockbuster card you'd walk over because your dad's doing wherever the fuck he's doing but you're walking distance to Blockbuster so you go to Blockbuster and you seek out whatever the

hot title of the day is and we wax poetic about that. That's why there are like speakeas and bars that are blockbuster themed. And we read stories about how there's one remaining blockbuster. I don't know if there still is, but for a long time there was one like an Oregon or wherever it was. And we talk about these things like they were the greatest thing ever. Dialup, I think, is one of them because we just have so many stories about the early days of the Internet. That's also an interesting thing about being 39 years old.

is the internet is one of the things that we can say we were there for the beginning of. And like, we weren't there when the telephone was invented. We weren't there. Most of us weren't there when cable TV was invented. You know, there were a lot of inventions and innovations of this modern era that we benefited from, but we weren't there to test them as they were developing and becoming part of everyday life. Whereas the internet was. So when you'd hear that dial-up sound, like this just brings back a lot of memories.

And the first thing that comes to mind. And the first thing that comes to mind, like, if you played Word. association. I'm going to do that with you right now. When you hear this, what is the first thing you think of? Go. First word, first thought when you hear the dial-up sound. What is it? Mine was chat rooms. That was instantly where I went. Chat rooms. The second I heard that dial-up, the second I heard the peepa bo bo bo bo the second i heard that i thought about chat rooms and i know i've told you this story before but i think is simo dot net and i think of the chat rooms in southeast missouri dot net and i think of building the character where i was this buff football player

and that was the beauty is it's not like now where you can like you can go to a school's website and see the football roster for a high school or a middle school the beauty of the internet back then is that no one had any idea if you were telling the truth or not. They were truly going in blind, and they couldn't go search you. So if you wanted to try to hit on chicks on the Internet, all you had to do is create some sort of character like, yeah, I'm a football player at Poplar Bluff, and I'm buff, and I'm, like, 6'1, and I just got back from summer workouts, and I'm quarterback-slash-defensive back.

I go both ways, all that, shit. shit I got a girlfriend but she's kind of annoying me like you could build this whole character and there's no way for them to search you there's no way they'd search a rock because if you said your name which you try to keep your name a secret anyway but like in that area you could lie about a name because who's going to search it if you're in poplar bluff Missouri and some chick you're talking to is in donathan Missouri or Sykston Missouri or you know insert small town of Cape Girardo Missouri and any small town in southeast Missouri no one's going to go search because there's nowhere to go search it.

We're talking rudimentary websites. We're talking websites that have like that weird black background with the stars all over it. Like they don't know where to find information about you. They're just going on your word. And for whatever reason, they believed you when you told them your word. And your word was, I'm fucking hot. Now, the reason why they believe you is because they're lying to you too. And that was the game that we all played and we knew it and we loved it.

We knew we were never going to meet up with these people. We just knew that we were going to get really. turned on in our 14 and 15 year old mind and we chose to believe we accepted and chose to believe that the person we were talking to was actually a hot chick that was older than us. So if you're 14 year old Josh lying about being 18 year old Josh, you are of the belief that you are actually talking to 17 year old slut for daddy and you're like, yep, this is a totally real person and I will be retreating to the shower where I will masturbate. And you believe that and you tell yourself that And that made it okay.

You chose to believe that the people you were talking to were actually hot babes, that you're like, you're like a Kip and Napoleon Dynamite. You're online chatting with babes all day. And that's what you chose to believe. And you went with that. And no one could prove otherwise because we had no access to who these people were. We could look it up. But there wasn't anything. High schools didn't have websites in 2000.

High schools didn't have, you know, a nice website where someone who really wanted the truth would go and say, all right, I don't see a Chad Steadhofer. I don't see a Chad Steadhofer on the roster. What gives? That was the beauty of the early internet. And when you would go to chat rooms is you could just be full of shit. And it was a thing of beauty. You could just fucking lie to people.

And no one knew otherwise. You just fucking went with it. And really, it was so early in the game that you'd even, like 14-year-old Josh, the thought a lot of times didn't even cross my mind that it was probably some weird like fucking Strangeland pervert that was getting his jollies thinking he was talking to a teenage boy. Like, it didn't occur to me. It just occurred to me that I was the one that was doing the line

and that no one else would be doing the line because I created the concept of lying on the internet. I am a masturbatory genius. I am a sexual gratification beat-off mastermind who is like, you have never seen the likes of me. I have fucked this system so well that I have come up with the concept of lying about being 18 and on a high school football team and being jacked and looking like fucking Pacey from goddamn Dawson's Creek, but jacked. I came up with that concept in my mind in 2000 I created that I was an evil beat off mastermind who I'm like I can't believe people aren't doing this I like I should somehow like license this I should teach I should coach classes I should teach classes about the about the idea of lying to people on the internet about your age so you can get your rocks off in my mind that's what was going on in 2000. It never crossed my mind that the person I'm talking to is the South Park meme of the morbidly obese dude sitting there at the computer.

But it never occurred to me, whether it was arrogance or really, I'd say it was a combination of hubris and ignorance because we didn't know. We had no clue. But that was dial up internet, man. And then someone would pick up the phone and be like, but I'm on the internet. And then you get knocked off the internet. And then whoever picked up the phone would be super pissed. They're like, I got to call the bank.

And I'm like, well, I'm going to the spank bank. Stop. And then, of course, dial up internet. I associate it with my grandpa's house, but I also associated with the family room in our house in Louisiana. Like our main computer, I say our main computer, we had one computer. What were we rich? What do you have two television sets? So we had one computer.

And it was in kind of this common area. And if one was to masturbate on that computer, one had to be stealthy and hope that nobody, like, that nobody would come home. Like that was the key. That was the life, right? That was kind of like, all right, if you're going to, if you're going to yank it, no one could be home. And like, we had multiple entrances to the house. There was a back door. And if someone was sneaky enough in the back door, you maybe wouldn't hear them coming in.

Front door where the computer was, it was unavoidable because you'd see someone pull into the driveway. way. Also in the dial-up era was the fear, like when you get this message, I don't know if anybody ever got this message, but the one that was like, the FBI knows what you're doing and the FBI is going to raid your home in like 10 minutes. I'm like, holy shit, I'm going to jail. I'm going to federal prison. But that's dial-up, man. And we wax poetic about that. And we speak so highly of it and glowingly of of this now like because like we look back on it can you imagine telling you know some high school kid today that he can't just pick up his phone and beat off can you imagine telling some high school kid today like like and again every era's got

their evolution of this like a man like a kid that grew up in the 70s like can you imagine telling that kid that he could just go to the internet and talk to some rando and have you know in cyber sex with somebody they'd be what is this? the Jetsons? This is the Jetsons of jerking off? Like, no. Like, they would think that, like, you're talking about science fiction. And it's the same for, like, kids today. Can you imagine telling some kid? Well, we had one computer, and it was in the family room. And to get on the internet, you'd have to listen to this for about a minute. And then to jerk off, you'd have to hope that nobody entered the family room. And the jerking off you were doing was more than likely

to some morbidly obese dude pretending to be a high school chick that called herself a slut for daddy. 69. But that was the world. And again, I think kids have to deal with that now, too, with people being fake. I get that. But now you can literally just go to Pornhub on your phone and, you know, plop, plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a jizz it is, and you're done. But you couldn't do that back in the day. That's not how that existed.

That wasn't the world. but rest in peace dial up rest in peace rest in power rest in power king