Your early days in the internet

[lonely tylenol]

Do you remember dial-up internet? Do you remember those days in which pictures of things took ages to load and Macromedia Flash was a *****? Geocities, alt.usenet, Napster and logo on fire? Of course you do! That Nirvana poster on your wall while you played Doom online! Those days when trolling was actually cool and ICQ was the popular instant messenger. The people that were old enough at the time had homepages and stuff like that

My time on the internet predated all of that (well except usenet).

And my first online time was back in the days of BBSes and 110baud modems you made yourself at home.

Get outta here!! Really?! That sounds old school. Like really old school.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Do you remember dial-up internet? Do you remember those days in which pictures of things took ages to load and Macromedia Flash was a *****? Geocities, alt.usenet, Napster and logo on fire? Of course you do! That Nirvana poster on your wall while you played Doom online! Those days when trolling was actually cool and ICQ was the popular instant messenger. The people that were old enough at the time had homepages and stuff like that

My time on the internet predated all of that (well except usenet).

And my first online time was back in the days of BBSes and 110baud modems you made yourself at home.

Get outta here!! Really?! That sounds old school. Like really old school.

Well, let's put it this way: baud means bits per second. Not kilobits, bits. I don't think modems have been measured in baud since the 80's.

Edit: Which means we should probably bow down before ravensheart. I don't think even my dad has been online that long, and he's a software engineer who was working in the industry around that time.

 

[Hitokiri_Gensai]

i remember 14.4 dialup i remember it being STATE OF THE FREAKING ART! Although the first computer we had in our house was an IBM that was in monochrome (yellow) and had to have a 5 inch floppy installed to do anything.

 

[Chalacachaca]

Well one of the first things I tried to do when I had internet access was trying to play Duke Nukem 3D online. Of course, I failed miserably because I couldn't understand the gibberish (english language) I was facing everytime I tried to get online.
Most of the time though, I spend it in Marvel.com trying in vain to read comics for free.
BUT NOW I CAN, but I don't do it because I'm not that interested in reading comic books.

Also, porn, lots and lots of porn, and traumatized faces everytime I got caught (the key was to confess the crime before you got caught, and cry a river while doing so).

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I remember dial-up...

I also remember a overload of advertisements, and lots of adware and shareware, and how it make your PC slower and such... I remember toolbars, low quality WMA's, Realplayer...

I'm nostalgic for many things, but they can keep the internet of yesteryears. It was simply bad...

Whoah, don't knock shareware; I wish the videogame industry would go back to the shareware era, actually. What is not to love about getting anywhere from three full levels to an entire third of the game as a demo?

 

[tthor]

my first internet experience was when i was like 9, (so about a decade ago) i was playing this old MMORPG called Kingdom Of Drakkar. we still had dialup back then, which sucked.

 

[BabyRaptor]

I remember playing WarCraft 3 ladders on dial-up.

I remember when AOL was what everybody used, and "You've got mail" wasn't just an annoying joke.

Hell, anybody remember Juno?

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I think this is relevant:


I still remember that sound like it was yesterday.

Ha, that sound will stay with me forever. I remember having to ask mum and dad if they were expecting any phonecalls before I went online, because if anyone called it knocked you off! And when Youtube had no copyright laws, so virtually every full movie and TV show in existence was on it in 9 minute 59 second segments, but it was all really crappy quality, and took forever to load. I think I just used the internet for looking up videogame cheats back then, particuarly Pokemon and Medal of Honor.
Oh, and I remember around 1998-99 being really worried about what Y2k would do to our home PC, but we didn't actually have internet back then.

 

[ace_of_something]

When I first had the internet i used it mostly for homework. You'd be surprised how shitty an internet connection in a place where there is statistically 1 person for every 2 square miles is. Especially in the mid 90's.

My family was one of the first (if not the first) in our town to have the internet it was very unimpressive and slow.

 

[DuskServent]

AOL

Just AOL, I had never ventured anywhere outside of AOL when it still existed, I was maybe what...6? 8?
Anyways, after my dad found out that AOL had something running in the background in the task manager, we got rid of it and fixed the computer and moved up to... PeoplePC I think, or whatever it was called. I mainly googled for games back then, and it took to see a thing on the news about a video on youtube about, I think it was about a video of a guy getting hit by a car, on purpose.

And then, I discovered the internet...

So yeah, this:

 

[Mafoobula]

It. Sucked. You know what I remember about those days? Everything that was more complex than text took 20 goddam minutes to load.
I have a pavlovian reaction to the sounds of dial-up. I cringe, then instinctively reach for something modern to remind me that technology doesn't blow anymore.

 

[keideki]

I remember playing Diablo II on netzero free dial-up. I remember having a few geo-cities pages. The web before social media was a much different place. I remember role playing in AOL chat rooms like Red Dragon Inn. Those were the days...

 

[AndyVale]

For some reason I got REALLY involved in the Linkin Park message board. There was a poetry corner that was full of wank, but I had conversations with girls so that was cool.

 

[chaosyoshimage]

It was 2003 and I was 12, we finally got a computer. I didn't do much online until I needed some help in a video game (A friend of mine had got it for me prior, I miss that guy). I found a site called GameTalk and made friends there. I trolled a bit as well, after while I got sick of trolling. Anyway, I made a few friends online, and had them on my AIM and such. However, when I was at my mom's a couple years later, my dad had left the computer plugged during a thunderstorm. My computer was killed.

By the time I got a new one, I couldn't get on my AIM since I lost my info. This really sucked since I lost some of my online friends (Mostly made through Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, ah it's just like in the anime) forever including this one girl who helped through some tough times in those early teenage years. She was gay and had been through a lot of the same shit I had as a kid. Knowing her helped me get through isolation and bullying in junior high and accept myself for who I am. Corny I know...

Anyway, got a new computer, but I found it hard to make online friends. Eventually, I found more people on that forum I mentioned earlier, GameTalk, and talked to them often. Then, GameTalk shut down. I found a few of my friends from there, but I've never really been able to make friends online again...

 

[lonely tylenol]

Back the I mainly just played games and watched flash movies. I hadn't discovered youtube or anything so popular. I think my first proper site I had an account on was Neopets and Lego.com
I have since meta-morphed from an internet caterpillar to a web browsing super butterfly, especially with my account on here.

I also had an account on Lego.com. It was one of my favorite websites as a child. I was never so high on Neopets tho.

 

[riverand]

I think this is relevant:


I still remember that sound like it was yesterday.

That is exactly what was screaming in my mind as I was reading through all of the comments!

What else do I remember?
-AOL and their chat rooms
-Getting disconnected because my mother did not understand the concept of NOT USING THE PHONE WHILE ON THE INTERNET.
-I remember e-tours. I LOVED e-tours.
-I remember ultimately investing in a second phone line and then consistently freezing my ass off (computer was in the basement) while falling asleep on the keyboard waiting for stuff to download and upload.

 

[Sectan]

Damn, I used to have my mom buy me Pokemon cards off the internet, but MY first real internet usage was a shitload of MSN messenger and playing CnC Renegade all day. Looking up cheats for my consoles and flash games. Ooooh the flash games.