You might have had me with 56k or even 28.8kbps (V.92!), but 1200 baud. When 1200 baud was fast - yes, everywhere was simple text on the screen (maybe ANSI colors), but more along the lines of Compuserve or a BBS. And yes, you had to download images. The best were the progressive scan ones where you could view the incomplete images as they downloaded.
Ah, the memories...
But my internet connection was rural, and 1200 baud. It was possible.
But around 1980, 1200 baud was considered lightning fast! Imagine the jump from 300 to 1200 baud. But back then, HTML wasn't even a consideration and network connections were completely text-based sessions. If you were lucky, you had some control over colors. If you were lucky...