I can say I am 40+ and have been around since 2400 baud modems and 15 years ago which would have been 1999 the internet was NOT "basically this" as you say, as a matter of fact the Internet was graphical in late 1994 and maybe 1993 from what I recall...Win 3.1 was out and I had sites I was designing from 1994-1999 using basically text until tools came along...their was no WYSIWYG tools for making websites and everything was coded and took time.

Sites may not have been flashy or anything but their was alot of animations and tags being used and "Web Rings" but in no way was the internet all command line based and that my friend was more like 1993 and before so perhaps you need to do some research before commenting that because you do not have your facts straight, you are correct that Skype, Twitter and Facebook didn't exist however even in 1994 CU-See-me existed for videoconferencing and reflectors were all over and I know for fact because I was there...not sure where you were?

Any doubts about video conferencing before 1999 when you claim everything was command line? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe

Any doubts the Internet was not graphical before 1999? https://web.archive.org/

As for Altavista, your right it was the #1 search engine back then BUT it came out in 1995 and guess what? It wasn't command line based at all and could be used through the Netscape browser and better yet heres a list of browser release dates and by 1999 IE the shit browser was already at V5.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers

Its one thing to comment on another's knowledge of the Internet and how things were "back when I was young" but make sure you have your facts straight because others have indeed been using the Internet since before it was graphical and did use Usenet and BBS' and it was way before 1999 or before your 15 years ago when you claim the "Internet was basically this"....it basically wasn't like that and I know for fact as I was designing sites before 1999, doing video chats using Cu-see-me and using IRC clients well before 1999 and not through command prompt.

I recall using modems in the 80's using a phone placed on a cradle basically like you see in the movie "War Games" to login to BBS' so my knowledge of the Internet and time frames is clear and what I know about 1999 and what you know is quite different, I have receipts showing me paying over $10k per month for bandwidth to host a pay site with over 10000 members and if you doubt that I can provide evidence to any mod here :-)

Oh, and the people visiting my site in 1999 were not using command line or dial up, site back then ran UBB forums and around 2000-2001 switched to Vbulletin and the server at the time if I recall were running 800 MHz dual processors with maybe 256 or 512 mb of ram and commercial servers like that would cost 7-10k at the end of the 90's ;-)

My version of 1999 seems quite a bit different that your mention of it being like Usenet, you need to study this all a bit more next time.

Also note by 1999 Usenet could easily be used with multiple clients that had a gui, command line would have been a waste of time for downloading series or rar's or par's etc...why bother when graphical clients existed.