From Dial Up to Downloads: The Evolution of The Internet

 What was the first thing you did on the internet? In this episode of Original Geek, Steve and Jeff take a nostalgia-loaded deep dive into the early days of geekdom—from Commodore 64s and hot-seating strategy games, to dial-up, AIM, and LimeWire piracy. But this isn’t just a trip down Amnesia Lane. The guys tackle how the internet reshaped geek culture, empowered awkward kids, and also let anonymous trolls run wild. They debate whether the web saved or wrecked the geek community, explore the rise of DIY content creation, and geek out over how AI tools are changing the game. Plus: a canon correction, a mixtape memory, and the haunting return of Salad Fingers. 

 geek culture, internet history, Gen X, online gaming, anonymity, AI, nostalgia, comic books, D&D, pop culture 

#OriginalGeekPodcast #GenXGeeks #InternetHistory #GeekCulture #ComicBookNerd #DungeonsAndDragons #AIcontent #OnlineGaming #SaladFingers #MixtapeLife #GeekFlashback #CanonCorrection #GeekCourt #CriticalHits #NostalgiaFeels #LimeWire #DialUpPain

Welcome to Original Geek—the podcast for anyone who rolled their first d20 on shag carpet, waited hours for a comic book JPEG to load on dial-up, and wore the label “geek” back when it got you mocked, not monetized.

Hosted by stand-up comic Steve Scarfo and Forever DM Jeff Shaw, we dive deep into what it meant to be a geek in the '70s and '80s—and how that underground culture became the mainstream multiverse we live in today.

🎙️ Subscribe for weekly episodes on Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, comic book chaos, geek court debates, and critical hits from your childhood basement.

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If you ever hid a Monster Manual like it was porn, you’re not alone. You’re an Original Geek. Welcome home.

Chapters

• 1:36 Canon Correction
• 6:16 Geek Flashback
• 16:44 Geek Court
• 21:57 Basement Treasures
• 28:37 Geek Evolution
• 34:32 Geek Rant
• 37:30 Geek News
• 41:58 Critical Hits & Epic Fails

Transcript

Jeff (00:00)
didn't trust Steam. didn't like, like, and then I came to realize, ⁓ my God, Steam's the way to go because I don't have to keep that DVD copy. It doesn't make sense for me to keep the DVD copy because

when I switch out computers and I just sign in again to Steam or anywhere, I got access to my entire content library. So yeah.

Steve Scarfo (00:24)
⁓ yeah,

that's a great point, because we didn't have the ability. If you lost the disks and you changed computers, you were done.

Jeff (00:31)
Right.

Steve Scarfo (00:53)
Hey, welcome to Original Geek. This is the podcast for anyone who rolled dice in the basement, waited hours to download comics on dial-up, and proudly wore that label of geek back when it was, you know, a target and not a trend. We're going to dig deep in what it meant to be a geek in the 70s and 80s, but also how it relates to today's mainstream world we live in today. We're two of the Gen X survivors who didn't just watch geek culture arrive.

We live through every awkward phase. Hi, I'm Steve Scarfo.

Jeff (01:24)
And I'm Jeff Shaw and normally we would move right to our daily topic. However, I need to make a Canon correction.

Steve Scarfo (01:43)
All right, for folks who might not know, Jeff, and hopefully if they're watching, do, what exactly is a Canon Correction?

Jeff (01:50)
All right, so we're gonna make mistakes. Like I said in episode one, this is a trip down Amnesia lane for us. It's decades, we forgot some stuff, I'm sorry. And I made a mistake during the epic fail. ⁓ and by the way, when we're doing a Canon correction, this is a serious correction. We'll make mistakes and we can call those out in our comments or post it on our website, but for this, this is big.

and I have to correct the canon. Huge.

Steve Scarfo (02:23)
Well, I mean, we talked about it before the show. It's not a small thing.

Jeff (02:29)
Yeah, no, this is big. I, in the epic fail, I called out Star Trek, the final frontier, and I made two big mistakes. The first one maybe could have been a comment and we could have posted it and just made an apology. Cause I said that, I said that Shatner said that he apologized for the final frontier, how it came out. And he said if he had the budget, it would have been better.

Steve Scarfo (02:46)
Sweet goof.

Jeff (02:57)
And I made an assumption that it wouldn't have been this God showing up at the end. That's really an alien. And I just thought that if he had the budget, it would have been better. But no, the premise, which was the horrible thing about all this was Shatner's. He wanted, he did want that ending. He just wanted it to look better. He just wanted more of a sci-fi budget. So we wanted to put lipstick on that pig. So still would have been bad. I just thought.

I always just thought Shatner would have not done that. Anyway.

Steve Scarfo (03:30)
because he still

wanted to meet God.

Jeff (03:34)
Yeah, exactly. That's true. So, but the really the reason I to do a correction here on our podcast and delay our topic of the day is because I also said it was the last time the original cast did a movie and they made one more and it was actually really good. It's called Undiscovered Country. As penance, I watched both number five again.

Actually, most of movie is good except for the ending, which I still contend is horrible and shitty. ⁓ But episode six, Undiscovered Country is actually really, really good and worth a rewatch for those of us who forgot. And I felt a little bit better that I forgot about the Undiscovered Country ⁓ because ⁓ my Star Trek super fan friend, she's got the Spock ears to prove it.

I asked her what was the last Star Trek movie, she said Final Frontier. So, I was not the only one to think that was the last original cast Star Trek movie. There we go. But I do apologize. Canon corrected.

Steve Scarfo (04:43)
All right.

Corrected now the question of the day is do you feel better now that you've you've corrected yourself are we good?

Jeff (04:54)
Yeah I do, and

I feel better having watched Star Trek 6. It was a redemption. It's actually pretty

Steve Scarfo (05:00)
I'll be honest, I don't think I've seen it in years, so I might have to go back. ⁓ And maybe future episodes we'll both watch the same and decide why we either both love it, it, or fight to the death. But.

Jeff (05:04)
Yeah, there we go.

Absolutely,

but today's topic, let's move in there because today Steve and I will be your trusted lifeguards as we surf the World Wide Web,

Steve Scarfo (05:31)
I think one of the biggest changes that's happened for us, amongst all of the big things that the Gen X ⁓ generation has seen happen, is the advent of the internet. what's gone on? What were we doing? How did we...

get together, how did we communicate ⁓ when mail was actually not E and just mail? know, you had to actually, birthday cards were for a reason because you had to send someone in the actual mail something to say, happy birthday. It wasn't just a money holder. I don't know if the kids today know that.

Jeff (05:57)
Yeah.

Yep.

That's true, 100%.

Steve Scarfo (06:23)
when we started getting the internet. All so let's go pre-internet, right? We've said it a bunch, Jeff and I have been friends for a decade. What are you doing? we're walking. We're gonna step down those steps if I could. ⁓ We're gonna swim down this one, because this is a bad one. ⁓

Jeff (06:27)
Okay, I'm walking down.

I'm walking down with you. We're walking down Amnesia Lane. Yeah, that's what I said. That's what we do.

Steve Scarfo (06:43)
We're doing it now. We are obviously in different places. We're using the internet to create content for y'all and having fun with it. We don't even live all that far apart. We could get together, but the internet lets us be lazy ⁓ and comfortable. It's later at night for us. And so ⁓ it's awesome. But when we grew up, There was no way. You had to pick up a phone, connect it to the wall and call someone. There was no texting.

When we started talking about these things with each other, and we collected comic books, when we went to the comic book store, when we played games, they were all, I mean, that's why D &D started in a basement for us, you know?

Jeff (07:27)
Yeah, yeah, the internet, yeah, although I admit when it first, when I first got the internet, my first memories were, I know this wasn't the first thing I did, but I think about online gaming, like when I think about it, because we had computers, so just, know, Gen X.

We were early adopters. We, in fact, ⁓ we had computers before the internet, just so you know. I had a Commodore 64, it's my first computer.

Steve Scarfo (08:00)
All right, hold on.

was gonna say before you go too far, let's talk about what those computers were because they were, there wasn't, yeah,

Commodore 64, same here. Our buddy Kevin we've talked about in the past. He had the Commodore, I don't know. I think you and I both had the floppy drive. ⁓ GenX guys, girls, you guys know what we're talking about. Yeah, it's like this big. And I wish I could say that was other stuff too, but it was just the disk that went in the drive.

Jeff (08:21)
I did, yeah. How dare you? It's still floppy.

Steve Scarfo (08:34)
Kevin actually had a tape drive. Do remember that? It looked like a music cassette and it was data on the tape and if you wanted to play the game up to a certain point you had to like either rewind it or flip it over. ⁓

Do you remember the first thing you did on the internet?

Jeff (08:52)
So I was trying to remember it for this episode and I honestly can't, I remember exactly getting on the internet for the first time. I remember the apartment I was in in Sanford, Maine. I remember that. I remember plugging my computer into that modem and hearing the squeal and squeak of the dial up, because it was all dial up then.

Steve Scarfo (09:20)
yeah?

Jeff (09:21)
I remember it, I remember that. I remember it super exciting seeing the Netscape icon come up and I remember all of that. But what was the first thing I did? That I do not record.

Steve Scarfo (09:28)
Netscape.

I remember the first time I actually got on.

And it's not anything, there's, you know, I want it to be this explosive memory, right? I want it to be this, holy shit, I was the first one to do that. But I think I just got on AOL Instant Messenger. I think one of the first ways I got on the internet was Netscape provided the internet, but the only software I knew how to use at the time was AOL, because they kept sending out those CD-ROMs. So CD-ROMs were a thing before the internet. So you got the CD in the mail.

and you'd have to run it and it would put the little square on the middle of your computer and you had to log in and I only knew how to get on the internet through AOL. I think actually Netscape was after AOL because I don't think there was any, was there a browser? Did you look it up?

Jeff (10:22)
Nope.

This I did look up, I like

once again, like I couldn't trust my memory. Like with Star Trek, ⁓ Netscape was first, AOL came out after, yeah.

Steve Scarfo (10:35)
Netscape was

first, I don't remember, that's funny. I remember the other way around, so obviously ⁓ I apparently need to carry more notes. ⁓ But yeah, so I got on, the first time I remember getting on would have been AOL Instant Messenger. It took me about a week to figure out that's what AIM meant, A-I-M, ⁓ was AOL Instant Messenger. like, what is AIM? You know, I've never been.

Jeff (10:44)
Ha

Okay.

Steve Scarfo (11:03)
On top of the the newest slang can ask my kids ⁓ Apparently I'm Scibidi So ⁓ But yeah, I remember that and then the next big memory I have I Was in I think I was in grad school in the 90s Was the next time I like truly remember spending time on the internet and they they had

Jeff (11:20)
yeah.

Steve Scarfo (11:26)
There were no graphics, it was all old CRT and there were internet relay chats, IRC rooms. And you would go into a room like D &D lovers or whatever. The same concept but you literally would type in a command, go to room 112 and you'd have to give yourself a name. Like all the same concepts were used today but it was literally just green screen, hi I'm Steve, who are you? And then it was just.

just chatting, was I guess the first texting. But I had to go to the ⁓ computer lab at the school. Because that was the only place they had internet. There was no wifi.

Jeff (12:04)
Yeah, and for me, the first online gaming experience that really struck me was Warcraft. Not World of Warcraft, some people might know, but the first Warcraft was more like the games you might play on your ⁓ phone with an army as real time and you form like armies and you go up against someone else's armies or castles or whatever. ⁓

the very first time that you play that kind of real time with someone else across the town. This other person was also in Wells. We're talking about like, we're not that far away from each other. could still like, we just do this in person together. But no, but like they were in the same town with me, but it still was wild. Like it blew my mind that we were playing this game together and not in.

Hot seat and hot seat for those of you who don't know what that is We used to Like I said, we have computers of the internet We had computer games before the internet and we would all be in the same room Someone to take their turn they get up the seats still warm hot and the other person sits down So it takes their turn And that's how he and so you waited your turn to play

Steve Scarfo (13:25)
Yeah, because you only had one keyboard or monitor.

Jeff (13:33)
And now it blew my mind because this was Warcraft. It was live and there were no turns. I actually found out I preferred turn based from that experience as I got my ass kicked in Warcraft time and time again. So I'm like, want to turn. But at the time it just blew my mind. Like, wow, we're playing this. It's real time. There's no turns.

Steve Scarfo (13:40)
You just kept going.

Jeff (14:00)
That person is playing at the same time I'm playing. There's no hot seat. Two people playing the same exact time. It was just blowing my mind.

Steve Scarfo (14:08)
Yeah, do you remember the games?

Do you remember the games we used to hot seat? There were two.

Jeff (14:14)
Well, there was not civilization. ⁓

Steve Scarfo (14:19)
We did hot seat civilization a few times, but there was one before that.

Jeff (14:21)
No, I know, but it was before

that it was the... ⁓

Steve Scarfo (14:25)
It's remember Kristen wanted to play. Oh no, oh God, I was even going to Lords of Conquest. I was talking about, we gotta talk about Lords of Conquest, because that's even before Heroes of Mine Magic, that's where I was going. Lords of Conquest was an Atari game, I think, but I don't remember if it was Atari that put, but it was on the Commodore 64, and

Jeff (14:27)
Conquest, right? Lord's a conquest.

are heroes of main magic. Yeah.

Love that game.

It was a console game, yeah.

Steve Scarfo (14:52)
And we each had to play.

Jeff (14:53)
And just see, so everyone

knows that the ⁓ like Pong type level of graphics, well, they might not even know what that is, the crudest graphics whatsoever. And we loved to hot seat this at Steve's house, where he was growing up on his giant TV screen. And it would not.

Steve Scarfo (15:09)
because we hooked it up to the TV.

It was probably, now granted, was

giant at the time. It was probably like a 38 inch TV.

Jeff (15:19)
No, no, was gigantic. was a giant, they converted their garage into like a playroom, living room kind of thing. And we attached the computer to it and we were hot seating it. And ⁓ we did not need a screen this size to play a game with this crappy level of graphics, but we did.

Steve Scarfo (15:22)
It was a good size TV. My dad was so happy to get that TV.

and living room.

Oh my God, no,

it was Atari. Was it Atari? We had controllers. I thought it was Commodore 64, but maybe it was Atari. Because we also used to play the Olympics game. I forget if it was just called Winter Olympics, but there was a series of them. There were Winter Games, Summer Games, but it was the 8-bit stick figure. You know what it's like? Minecraft today.

Jeff (15:54)
Yes. Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (16:11)
does it sort of ironically retro, and it's still better graphics than we ever had playing ⁓ these Atari games. And Lords of Conquest, it was risk. It was risk on TV or on the computer. But you could play six or seven players and we would sit around for hours just shitting on each other. ⁓

Jeff (16:29)
Alright.

All right, so our Geek flashback has taken us pre-internet. Let's get back to the internet. Maybe with Geek Court

Steve Scarfo (16:52)
So in geek court, ⁓ our case today, Mr. Shaw, did the anonymity of being online help geeks thrive or did it make us more toxic? I think I know which way you're going.

Jeff (17:10)
I'm taking toxic. It's the anonymity part of this question. If it was just saying the internet, I would say Geeks Thrive. They've been created Silicon Valley.

essentially social media, I mean, geeks, well, I Gen X, like Gen X geeks, like we did this, we did this, we built something, it was brilliant. But the anonymity part of this question, that's what we're talking about. When you can go anonymous, all that bullying that you experienced, maybe in real life, you ⁓ get online and you get to be just as cruel, if not more cruel.

Steve Scarfo (17:28)
I mean, look at Zuckerberg.

Jeff (17:54)
because you're behind the shield of being anonymous. No one knows who you are, so you can post what you want, be as cruel and mean as you want, and one of the easiest ways for someone to feel better about themselves is to put someone else down. So when you put someone else down, you suddenly put yourself above them and instantly, not me, but instantly people feel better about themselves. They put someone else down, they bully, they...

the abuse and I don't think this kind of a lot of this bullying would occur if your real name was there. If you really had to ⁓ stand by what you said and what you did or if you're face to face. Like if you wouldn't say that face to face with someone ⁓ then don't put it out there. That's what I'm saying is that the

anonymous nature of online has made things toxic and we need to behave better and get rid of this these anonymous ⁓ personas that we have out there. Steve, count them.

Steve Scarfo (19:07)
All right, so

I'm counter pointing. ⁓ We'll talk about the stuff I, yeah, I'm gonna get back to your side too, after I make my point, because ⁓ I don't disagree with everything you're saying, but I think it's sort of the yin with the yang, because being anonymous allows, especially the most socially awkward amongst us as geeks, ⁓ you and I happen to be extroverts, so.

We don't have a problem going out and socializing. And while we hid ourselves for years as geeks, we definitely didn't have a problem being around folks. But there were folks who were just introverted naturally, didn't have that outlet, maybe didn't have a large friend group. When the internet came along and they didn't have to be afraid of retaliation for putting themselves out there, they could say very proudly, I read the Dragonlance series and...

You know, I think that Tasloff Burfoot was the best character of the whole damn thing and they might get shit on by people, but they didn't have to worry about the kids in their schools knowing it was them because they were, you know, Tasbur37 online and they could hide behind the screen name in the sense of truly a shield protecting them and allowing them to... ⁓

feel the roads, if you will, like I'm going to go out, I'm going to say some stuff, I'm going have conversations with people, I'm going to voice my opinion in a way I might never have been able to. And I think along the way, too, folks created friendships that became real life friendships. People would get together online and be in those IRC chat rooms I was talking about before, and they would have these conversations and become friends in real life. The IRL's.

So I think it's sort of it's sort of a yin with the yang and it sucks that you have the yang, but you get the good part of it. So that anonymity, I do agree with you. So I'm coming back around. There's gotta be a line. You can't, you can't cross that line. Cause I agree people get shitty. It's not okay. But I think it was worth it. I really do. If you guys agree, let us know. And for everybody, by the way,

We're in week four for us. You guys just heard week one. ⁓ So where's the time delay for us right now? But thank you guys for everybody that's been downloading. Love having you with us. ⁓ Please reach out to us and tell us what you think about the stuff we're talking about. Like, subscribe, all that stuff. Share it. Watch the videos. All of it helps. ⁓ But now we're going to go to our next area.

Basement Treasure Time. All right, I'm gonna go first on this one. I told you earlier what it's gonna be and I can't believe it. So again, pre-internet, music was a thing that you had to, oh God, I have another story for this too. I don't know if I told this on the podcast before, but we used to have to record songs from the radio on a tape recorder. That was the only way. If you didn't go to the store to buy a tape or buy a vinyl,

you had to put your tape recorder up to a radio and record it. And you could only put songs on tape that you had access to. If there was a brand new song on the radio and you couldn't get to the mall to get a new single, you had to do it. So Jeff, Jeff was a master. Combination of vinyl and tapes he had recorded off the internet. And Jeff was great about adding in movie quotes, which will be another whole topic at some point in time.

Jeff (22:59)
That's That's

true.

Steve Scarfo (23:02)
And when we get out of college, did it. I think we even had one with us for that trip, that road trip with Bill. ⁓ But we had these, yeah, I had these tapes and I did a lot of driving during college because I drove back and forth from where, and so I always had this music and I always knew when the movie clips were coming. So my basement treasure is Spotify is great, Apple Music's awesome, I stream other podcasts and music all the time, but those tapes were the best, man.

Jeff (23:28)
Yeah, I forgot that we could download well I mean we did do the recording like you said recording off of the radio and just got to get the timing right or a movie quote, but ⁓ When the internet came made it so much easier lime wire Which I know is not around anymore sued the sued to to oblivion ⁓ for copyright but ⁓

Steve Scarfo (23:54)
Yes.

Jeff (23:57)
Piracy was encouraged on Limewire. You just, Napster, yeah. So, you you want the quote from Jaws? Just look it up on Limewire. You can get your quote from Jaws. Yeah, so that was good. Yeah, I did appreciate and use that to up my mixtape ante. And those of you who are thinking mixtape, ⁓ Guardians of the Galaxy. If you're a geek, you've watched it.

Steve Scarfo (24:01)
we're gonna talk about piracy and Napster, Napster too.

yeah.

Jeff (24:27)
And

⁓ the mixtape was ⁓ important for each and every, well, those three movies. There was like a new mixtape that ⁓ Star-Lord was listening to from his mom.

Steve Scarfo (24:39)
Yes, what

he has on his hip is called a Walkman.

Jeff (24:44)
Yep, that's it. That's the mixtape.

Steve Scarfo (24:46)
cassette

tape.

Jeff (24:47)
So my basement treasure ⁓ is one thing that another aspect of the internet that has been fantastic is the ability for content creators, like pre-internet, if you had an idea for ⁓ animation, for telling your story, you didn't have a lot of outlets.

You could create something and send your tape into a TV station. Hope they put it up, know, a studio, hope they buy into it, but chances were not great. And then YouTube came along and suddenly their crazy idea. You could put it out there. So for my basement treasure, it's salad fingers. I don't know you're familiar with salad fingers, but we can put a link.

Steve Scarfo (25:40)
Solid fingers.

Jeff (25:43)
Uh, in the, like the show notes or on the website. from this is 2004 and it's just bananas. It's this guy, weird looking guy with weird looking fingers and he likes spoons and he just touches the spoons and he's looking for the spoons and it's bananas, crazy, absurd, makes no sense. But yeah.

I thought I got a kick out of it. ⁓ And there's a lot of content out there like that. Like I think it was a little bit later, but Charlie the Unicorn, look this stuff up. There's some really like good, crazy, weird content out there. And of course, you're welcome to post some more stuff and comments. What's your weird on earth YouTube treasure? Like there's so much content.

Steve Scarfo (26:24)
I about you.

Jeff (26:39)
We're in a content rich environment and YouTube just, you know, was able in the internet in general was able to democratize and provide a voice for people that they could not have had otherwise and in content that may not exist and that we couldn't be enjoying without the internet, without things like YouTube. So that's my basement treasure. ⁓ There's salad fingers. Yes, it's.

Steve Scarfo (27:00)
All right, I'm gonna throw this up as a screen chair. They're salad fingers. This guy was

like, I forgot all about him.

Jeff (27:12)
Yeah, it's it's weird it I'm not It's creepy. It's weird But that's the kind of stuff I like so Yeah But the real point the real point is is that the internet is empowering, you know, and ⁓ and I think that was your point with the the court is that

Steve Scarfo (27:23)
That's awesome. ⁓

Jeff (27:38)
you with geek cord is your position is that it's empowering. And I think, you know, even though things are good, things are evil, it's just a tool, but, you know, like we just said, like we said in each episode so far, you know, power comes with great responsibility. You have a lot of power here because of the internet. And ⁓ yeah, so there's a lot of good stuff out there like solid fingers and Charlie the unicorn. All right. So there's a lot of good absurd stuff that would never exist.

Steve Scarfo (28:02)
Charlie the Unicorn. Charlie!

Jeff (28:07)
if we didn't have the internet.

Steve Scarfo (28:08)
Um,

no, agreed. Um, I like that. Those are great. And I agree. Obviously look at us, uh, even now in 2025 content creation at the tips of our fingers. Uh, one or a couple of the videos I've put out were AI generated and we'll talk a little bit more about AI, but yeah, there's so many easy ways to do it. Just be responsible, have fun with it. Um, all right. I think we dropped into this geek evolution.

Jeff (28:23)
Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (28:45)
You know, we talked a little bit about gaming and I think it's probably, I might hit this from two different levels. So one of the things about the internet for gaming is A, you could get games instantly. I remember having to go to Staples or Circuit City, you know, or

Kmart because before Walmart was around we'd have to go to a store Hope they still had a copy of the floppies and the discs in the store And that was how we got our our games right steam wasn't a thing ⁓ Nintendo wasn't a thing I mean it was but not in the way it is today You had to go buy a game if you couldn't get a copy you were screwed No matter how good the console you had in your house was there was a time when you needed a copy of it

⁓ So I love that the internet.

Jeff (29:44)
And

I have to admit that even when we didn't need to do that anymore, I was still getting the copy.

Steve Scarfo (29:49)
But we still did it.

Jeff (29:52)
didn't trust Steam. didn't like, like, and then I came to realize, ⁓ my God, Steam's the way to go because I don't have to keep that DVD copy. It doesn't make sense for me to keep the DVD copy because

when I switch out computers and I just sign in again to Steam or anywhere, I got access to my entire content library. So yeah.

Steve Scarfo (30:17)
⁓ yeah,

that's a great point, because we didn't have the ability. If you lost the disks and you changed computers, you were done. There was no way to move software from computer to computer. ⁓

Jeff (30:24)
Right. Right.

Steve Scarfo (30:30)
So yeah, the idea that we could just get a game, like I could just download, I mean, let's not even get into the phones yet, but I can download software and play it. I can share it with you. We play another game, an old board game turned digital, Talisman. ⁓ Simple, easy, Jeff says, hey, there's a digital version. We just downloaded it, we started playing. Great game if you've never played it, by the way. It's a very cool, yeah.

Jeff (30:48)
yeah.

Yeah, so talk about evolution.

Talisman is a good topic for this because when we first got, when Talisman first came out and I think it was late 80s, but maybe it was in the 90s. But what I do remember is it was a board game that had a single board and we all played it and loved it. And then they would come out with these expansions. But because there was no Amazon, there was no ⁓ online store for us to order things.

Steve Scarfo (31:02)
Perfect.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff (31:27)
I still remember in the middle of a blizzard, driving as fast as possible in your car, Steve, to get the latest edition from the closest Hoppy store, which we lived in Maine, we had to go to Massachusetts to get.

Steve Scarfo (31:41)
It was in downtown

Boston, right near South Station, right near the theater district.

Jeff (31:46)
like

keep a copy for us we're on the way

Steve Scarfo (31:50)
It

closed at six. We left Wells, Maine at 430 and it should have been an hour and 45 minute drive. So there should have been no way for us to get there. And we did call and my kids are gonna watch this at some point and I'll have to admit it, but we, I drove us, we got there 20 minutes before they closed to the point where I remember going.

We walked in the store, we were looking around and then I asked, hey, where's this? And they go, wait, are you those guys? We're like, yeah. They go, you can't hear from Maine already? Because we were so intense. 100%. my God. I forgot that ride.

Jeff (32:29)
Yes.

Yeah. To

today, where now instead of having, so the inconvenience of having to drive like Mach 10 to get that copy when you wanted it and to drive so far away in that expense, to today where we're just getting the latest expansion online and it's not taking up all these, all this space and we don't all have to get together, but that we can have friends playing from

Steve Scarfo (32:52)
Hmm

Jeff (33:01)
Idaho to Maine to New Hampshire to wherever playing the game altogether. It's fantastic.

Steve Scarfo (33:09)
Jeff, I don't even notice until after I log in again. I think Steam just downloads everything for me as it pops up. That's how awesome it is. I don't even have to look. And you know, we talked about this. So the other thing about having information, everything right at your fingertips, we were talking before we started, we've talked about Jeff was our dungeon master. I guess still is, we just haven't played in a bit.

We used to have the longest game stoppages ever because one of us or another would come up with this crazy rule and it would take Jeff, cause Jeff's very fastidious. He was not gonna let things happen that weren't part of the rule set. And so it would take time and not in a bad way. You were absolutely justified cause we tried to pull some shit and you were like, nope, you can't do that. It's like this, but it would take 20 minutes cause you'd have to go to the DM's guide. You'd have to look it up. And now...

Jeff (34:06)
Yes.

Steve Scarfo (34:08)
instant, you know, we play online with zoom. Um, we got to talk about some of that at some point in time. There's some very cool, um, pro, uh, platforms we don't use, but you could just go, Hey, look, I'm gonna, Google search, a little wiki search. Nope. Done. 32 seconds.

Jeff (34:25)
Yeah, that's true.

Yep.

Steve Scarfo (34:32)
that

Jeff (34:37)
100%.

Steve Scarfo (34:38)
So here's my rant for you. ⁓ Especially talking about internet and downloadable stuff, right? Jeff mentioned it before. ⁓ You guys don't know what pain is until you're halfway through a download of anything, a comic book cover, a new RPG module that you're downloading over the modem with the one phone line in your house.

and somebody picks up that phone to make a call, A, you hear your mom scream, what is that sound? And B, you lose everything because it didn't complete the download. That's ⁓ when you can pick up your phone and download everything in the world, ⁓ you guys don't know how good you have it. it's a...

I'd say cut the shit if you wait more than two seconds for a song to start on Spotify, freakin' relax, okay?

Jeff (35:34)
Yes, I know, they just don't understand when you first booted up your computer, you could go make a sandwich, it was finally on, and then you went on Netscape and you got on, and then you looked up maybe a racy photo.

Steve Scarfo (35:47)
you

Jeff (36:04)
you wanted to look at something? Well, you could then go back. You can then go back and watch Seinfeld. ⁓ And then after 30 minutes, come back and maybe, maybe that image downloaded and then you could see it. ⁓ Did we do that? Yes. We waited like an hour for our computer to boot up and to look at that one racy photo.

Steve Scarfo (36:04)
So Heather Locklear maybe?

yeah.

And by Racy, it was like a bikini photo. It wasn't even like, I know when we.

Jeff (36:33)
and...

Yeah, I mean, come on, no

one was using the internet for pornography. That never happened.

Steve Scarfo (36:40)
It was 2020, 2025. You say racy,

people think straight up porn. We're talking like, I remember there was one of Farrah Fawcett from Charlie's Angels when we were kids that was one of the first images I tried to dump. Huh?

Jeff (36:45)
Ha

Yeah, we kept it pure. Come on.

How dare they think naughty minds.

Steve Scarfo (37:01)
you know, they think we're naughty. ⁓ But it took forever to download that photo. Forever.

Jeff (37:09)
And we waited for it. And that was our uphill, both ways boomer moment right there.

Steve Scarfo (37:10)
This might be the geekiest thing we've ever said by the way in in the snow

Yeah, it was. So we're drop into a new segment today, I think. ⁓ A little bit of geek news. I

Jeff (37:24)
Ha ha.

Steve Scarfo (37:30)
a lot of people do geek news, but I wanna talk about stuff that's happening because it's something I do every day and deal with. ⁓ AI, we talked about it a little bit before. ⁓ It's changing how, I'm gonna focus on the geeky side of it. It's changing the geek side.

Jeff (37:31)
cutting edge, I like it.

Steve Scarfo (37:52)
of the world, but it's reshaping everything that we do. What do you think? Are we gonna be overrun by Terminators any day or is this just another tool in our tool chest?

Jeff (38:06)
It's just another tool, it's progress. we, ⁓ for our Gen Xers, we watched Terminator, we watched, ⁓ well, and before that, even though we were too young, so we watched it in a rerun, but man, Hal, what was the computer? ⁓

Steve Scarfo (38:30)
Oh,

2001, A Space Odyssey.

Jeff (38:33)
Yeah, like the computer's talking to you, it's thinking. mean, so AI has been in geekdom sci-fi for a long time. So I mean, we've been waiting for this moment. ⁓ It's here, ⁓ we got it, and we just need to be careful with it, just like with any tool. But I mean, it's gotten us already some seriously great stuff just in this podcast. That song that we have.

Steve Scarfo (39:00)
yeah.

Jeff (39:03)
I love it. It's a banger. AI.

Steve Scarfo (39:04)
Yeah,

our theme song came from an AI site called Refusion. ⁓ Not an affiliated, not getting sponsored, go check it out. Maybe could be. I will post the full song, so the clip you guys hear at the beginning and end of the show is just a small portion of the song. It's absolutely hysterical, I love it.

Jeff (39:13)
Maybe? Come on.

It's

only $10,000 to download. We might only get one or two downloads, but it's gonna pay dividends.

Steve Scarfo (39:29)
Hehehehe

He's talking $10,000 in 23.55 money, so about $1.99 today.

Jeff (39:38)
Can't you

set the rating?

Steve Scarfo (39:42)
Yeah, I don't know that we'll charge anything for it. We'll put it out there, we'll see. Yeah, I mean if you have to. We got you, it's all right. Yeah, the song, some of our graphics. ⁓ I play around a lot. One of the things we're talking about, stuff you can just download, you used to have discs for. I have the entire Adobe Creative Suite that I pay for.

Jeff (39:44)
⁓ shoot. Okay. I'll pirate it for now. Someday. Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (40:09)
That's a software as a service and I love it because I don't ever have to load a disk or update software. I just click a button and it's there. between AI and a little bit of Adobe magic, ⁓ a lot of our stuff is easy to create.

Jeff (40:23)
Yeah, so part of this AI news, we'll post it on the website, give credit to these AI development tools that Steve's using ⁓ for our podcast. Because that, and then eventually they'll pay us to...

Steve Scarfo (40:40)
Yeah, check them out. ⁓ Gemini, Google Gemini, the Veo creator will be putting out some content from them. ⁓ Not from them, but through them. ⁓ ChatGPT, everybody's using ChatGPT. Refusion we mentioned. Mid Journey AI. These are all great platforms. Netscape AI. It creates a sound effect that sounds like a dial-up modem.

Jeff (40:57)
I'm using Netscape AI.

Yep.

It's dial-up, yeah. So it's taking a while to get the content, but man, when it comes through, it's gotta...

Steve Scarfo (41:13)
Yeah, so to be more than just a topic, I'll post the link, but ⁓ OpenAI, ChatGPT parent company is gonna be merging with another AI company and they're talking about it being that next evolutionary step in what AI will be able to do. And if you've been playing with AI at all in the last 12 to 18 months, you know it's already gotten better from when it started.

So keep an eye out, keep an open mind, check out the sites we talked about, but AI is, it's here to stay people.

Jeff (41:50)
Nice. All right.

Steve Scarfo (41:52)
So.

This is one of our favorites.

Jeff (41:55)
Critical hits.

Steve Scarfo (41:56)
or epic fails.

What do you got? You want to go hits first?

Jeff (42:07)
Sure, yeah. So the critical hit I want to share, which you talked about earlier, Heroes of Might and Magic 3. So I have to admit, I love four, five, six, seven. I love all the Heroes of Might and Magic 1 and 2. I love them all. 3 is enduring. And so that's why I want to say that it's a critical hit because thousands of people are still playing a game that came out in 1999.

Steve Scarfo (42:13)
Yeah.

Jeff (42:35)
I don't know how many games can say that, maybe chess. Yeah, so I almost was gonna use it for a basement treasure, but I think it definitely comes under critical hit. So I admit I use Steam. So I have the Heroes 3 HD Steam Edition. If you look this up on the interwebs, they're gonna tell you, don't do that.

Steve Scarfo (42:37)
What is it 26 years ago?

Jeff (43:03)
Cause that one's locked down. It is an HD, so it looks nice. But apparently, and I don't know the name of the other platform, you can buy this on a different platform. And apparently there's, there are modders out there creating new content for this game from 1999. If you get it on Steam, you can't use any of that new content. ⁓ I have the Steam version. I'm not interested in all the new latest content. I just like the classic.

Steve Scarfo (43:32)
You

got a purity thing going on. You're a purist on it.

Jeff (43:33)
heroes three in HD.

Yeah. Purist. It's also convenience and laziness. so, but you know, even, even the, the, the steam version, which is more locked down and kind of frozen in time. ⁓ it's, ⁓ it has, I think 2000 people any, at any minute, any given day as playing it. ⁓ that's really amazing.

Steve Scarfo (43:39)
I was giving you the lift. Take the lift.

Jeff (44:03)
for a game 26 years old. So that's my critical hit. What about you?

Steve Scarfo (44:08)
I I don't think I have a hit. I was thinking of this like a geek court, so I went on the other side of it and jumped right into fails. ⁓ I did, and I don't know why, because I do love the internet. ⁓ I mean, I think...

Jeff (44:20)
Okay.

Steve Scarfo (44:27)
It's not a thing, but a moment. And I think it was that moment when it was in college, I talked about the IRC room. So to me, if I'm talking critical hit, it's that moment when I realized, and this is gonna sound cheesy, but how big of a world, how small it became.

how easy it was to connect with people in other places. ⁓ I'm a very outgoing, very social person. And the idea that I can socialize with somebody, I was in ⁓ Virginia, I went to Radford University, and I was talking to people in New York who I didn't know, you know what I mean? And the idea that I could just go in there at the same time every night and chat with the same people. ⁓

That's a critical hit. That's when I think I understood what the internet was capable of, at least a little bit. I didn't know, of course. I'm not, you know, I'm no prognosticator here, but ⁓ that's when I started to go, ⁓ wow, holy crap, this is pretty cool.

⁓ My fail was gonna just be jumping on the don't be a bully bandwagon a little bit. Like it's the worst part that, I mean, I don't think we're gonna, we're not starting any new fires here. People are already on this train. ⁓ So just don't be a dick, right? Go online, have fun. ⁓ You know, if it's your friend, you know, everybody gives their friend, torture your friends a little bit, because it shows them how much you love them, but don't be a dick to other people for no reason.

Jeff (45:46)
Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (46:10)
There's enough of that in the world anyway these days, so find a way to use your time and enjoy it, but don't, you To me, that's the biggest fail of the internet, is it's allowed people to just be assholes with no consequence.

Jeff (46:26)
Right. And so related for me for every fails is review bombing. So that's when a movie hasn't even come out and it's already got one zero reviews and a bunch of people ripping it. You haven't seen it yet. I know there must be something in there that triggered you. You know, it's you know that and you know, a recent example is Superman because he's pro immigrant. He

Steve Scarfo (46:53)
I

Jeff (46:54)
came from another planet.

Steve Scarfo (46:55)
I just watched some stuff about that today.

Jeff (46:59)
I mean, of course he's pro immigrant. Unlike some people who shut the door behind them. like geeks, we need to be pro all of this and support other geeks. That's what we need to do. We're in this space as Golden Age of Geekdom because of geeks that have come before us that have made this possible. They created the internet. They created great TV shows. They created great content. They created great games.

Steve Scarfo (47:12)
Yes.

Jeff (47:29)
It created all this stuff and now we need to reap the awards. so Superman, if he was anti-immigrant, would have been the person closing the door. sure, I got here as an immigrant and I got asylum and I got to grow up in an all-American family and learn to be a great person because of that experience. But the next guy that needs that, screw him. No, no, no.

Steve Scarfo (47:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'm okay, but those

other people from other planets...

Jeff (47:58)
It's fine if you

go and you watch a movie and then you put a review and if you didn't like it, okay, that's on you. And yeah, I do ask, let's not try to be destructive for the point of destruction, but this is specifically about the review bombing. So yeah, I didn't even watch it. And then you're posting negative reviews and opinions out there trying to destroy something before it's even come out.

doesn't make sense to me, ⁓ please, epic fail. No review bombing, something you didn't see.

Steve Scarfo (48:33)
Yeah, craziness. All right, well that brings us up. That's okay. Listen, some of this shit's gonna blend. And that's okay, we have our structure, but we will twist it up if we need to. ⁓ It does wrap us up for the night. We do have one last final segment, and that's Ask an OG.

Jeff (48:37)
Sorry, I ranted too.

Steve Scarfo (49:02)
And it doesn't have to be just about today's episode, be about any of the episodes, but if you wanna talk about the internet, there's actually another great podcast related to this question for me. If you've ever listened to it, it's called Wiki Hole. And Darcy Carden, I think is her name. ⁓ She hosts the show and they go on a Wikipedia rabbit hole. they, have you ever just been on a, the whole concept of her show is you get on the internet,

Jeff (49:18)
Gross.

Gotcha.

Steve Scarfo (49:31)
and you go, well, I wonder about this. And you look up one thing and then it leads you to click on something else. And before you know it, start looking up Talisman Online and you end up in a chat room about why Superman is too woke. Like you just rabbit through. So my question is, what was your first rabbit hole?

Jeff (49:49)
Yeah, I like that one. Nice, nice. Yeah, I'd like to hear your answers. Post them on in our comments, put them on our site. And yeah, thanks for bringing us along on this surf through the worldwide web and how it's evolved and made us geeks enter a golden age.

Steve Scarfo (50:13)
All right, So check us out, originalgeek.com, sorry, originalgeekpodcast.com. Check us out on TikTok, Instagram. We're Original Geek Podcast on every social media. Follow us, subscribe, like, watch the videos. Anything you can do.

Jeff (50:16)
Yeah.

Steve Scarfo (50:30)
A simple 30 seconds, 50 seconds hanging out with us online helps boost our numbers, helps get us out to more people. I wanna keep doing this and make sure we talk to as many of you as we can, just hanging out. And again, if you have questions, let us know. yeah, check us out, ⁓ SteveScarfo.com if you wanna come see me do something live. ⁓ Jeff, Jeff, you don't.

Jeff (50:53)
Nothing. I got nothing.

Steve Scarfo (50:54)
Just

come, you know, we're gonna post Jeff's home address on the website. So just go ahead, go by and say hi. ⁓ We're not gonna do that. Look at some of you guys were like, that's crazy. No, we're not.

Jeff (51:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, docks me Steve. Thanks buddy.

Steve Scarfo (51:07)
⁓

All right. Anyway, thanks for hanging out with us. Have a good night and we'll see you on the flip side.

Jeff (51:20)
Yeah, take care geeks