Getting my dad's help to register on Neopets when I was about five. None of us understood how the internet worked so he put my full name in since all his usernames were from government stuff and had his full name so he assumed that was how it worked. I still remember my first pet's name, and actually recently found an old print-out of my pets page of my 3 other pets.
The dialup modem noises. Lots of text. Lots of in-line animated gifs.
My very first experience of the internet was when we got a modem at school. We were sent to the library in groups of threes to have a 'go' on the web using the one Acorn computer that had a modem. One of my group decided to try 'sex' as his first search.
Edit: Also, when we finally got a PC & modem at home (a little later than a lot of my friends) my sister and I were each allowed one hour online per weekend. That limit was slowly eroded.
Browsing MTV.com back in 1995. Downloading Tyrian and leaving the computer connected to the internet overnight and praying to god that the connection didn't drop. Trolling the Star Trek page on AOL.
I was first introduced to the internet because my dad works as a photoshop designer and I went to his work all the time to go on disney.com and then when I grew older I was introduced to Yahoo messenger and then I found out about my first ever multiplayer game neopets and then moved to RuneScape and then WoW.
Thinking how is this going to stack up against a BBS?, and then finding a web chat (where you had to constantly click refresh) with real girls on it, getting my mind blown.
Sitting at my grandparents house browsing the internet with a bunch of my cousins we went to boy.com or something like that. I forgot if we went to boy.com or boys.com so I tried going back and went to the wrong website and was left with endless popups of spinning wieners. I don't think it's possible for me to ever be that mortified again.
This was around 2000, although I believe I do have earlier memories, the memory of me buying a PS2 from Ebay with my mom's credit card definitely came up. I was so stupid to think that I could get away with that, but hey, little 3rd grader me really just wanted a PS2.
DeviantArt. It was the first social network I really got into. My angsty teenager poetry was a hit and it was the most attention I ever had. I made friends and had a lot of fun browsing art and reading stories. I'm not sure how it is now, but the community was very fun and supportive. I kind of miss those days!
First time I jumped on the web was from a library at school, it was fascinating and I remember it being explained to me as if it was some sort of secret club (this was in 1995). I was automatically consumed by it and would visit the library very often after school to beg the librarian to let me use her office computer (it was the fastest and with the best monitor). It would be another 2 years or so until my parents could afford to get me a Packard Bell 166 MHz MMX beast. What a glorious day! The very first thing I did was get dialup and setup a yahoo account. I still have thing somewhere, I didn't have the heart to recycle it.
I remember logging on to Juno to check my email and using that dial-up connection as a back door to open up my netscape browser and go to altavista and look up baseball scores. I may or may not have also searched for boobs and stuff. A few years later, I was playing fantasy baseball and figured out how to use napster back when 3-5kbps was a decent download speed. I saved up lawnmowing money to buy a 64MB MP3 player. Each song was about 3MB, so I could fit 20 songs on there! I traded my mp3 player to a friend for his Boston speakers after a few months and that trade worked out well for me. I still had the Boston speakers about 10 years later.
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Getting my dad's help to register on Neopets when I was about five. None of us understood how the internet worked so he put my full name in since all his usernames were from government stuff and had his full name so he assumed that was how it worked. I still remember my first pet's name, and actually recently found an old print-out of my pets page of my 3 other pets.
The nostalgia is flooding back. It looks like the website is still the same after all this time.
The dialup modem noises. Lots of text. Lots of in-line animated gifs.
My very first experience of the internet was when we got a modem at school. We were sent to the library in groups of threes to have a 'go' on the web using the one Acorn computer that had a modem. One of my group decided to try 'sex' as his first search.
Edit: Also, when we finally got a PC & modem at home (a little later than a lot of my friends) my sister and I were each allowed one hour online per weekend. That limit was slowly eroded.
love that comforting dial up sound (hated it at the time).
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep... ... ...Bah BUMM buh BUMM buh BUMM... ...
ssssshhhhhhhhhhh SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ...
...Altavista.
AOL. lol
Browsing MTV.com back in 1995. Downloading Tyrian and leaving the computer connected to the internet overnight and praying to god that the connection didn't drop. Trolling the Star Trek page on AOL.
For 5 years all the internet was to me was AOL Instant Messenger so I could talk to girls in my grade and try to finger bang them.
I was first introduced to the internet because my dad works as a photoshop designer and I went to his work all the time to go on disney.com and then when I grew older I was introduced to Yahoo messenger and then I found out about my first ever multiplayer game neopets and then moved to RuneScape and then WoW.
I remember dialup and Netscape, pages could take a minute to load, and most of the stuff I visited were personal pages with lots of links.
Logging on to my college network for the first time and connecting to discussion boards and games around the world. The web wasn't yet a reality.
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Thinking how is this going to stack up against a BBS?, and then finding a web chat (where you had to constantly click refresh) with real girls on it, getting my mind blown.
I was about seven and used to play games on ceebeebies (how ever you spell that!)
Sitting at my grandparents house browsing the internet with a bunch of my cousins we went to boy.com or something like that. I forgot if we went to boy.com or boys.com so I tried going back and went to the wrong website and was left with endless popups of spinning wieners. I don't think it's possible for me to ever be that mortified again.
This was around 2000, although I believe I do have earlier memories, the memory of me buying a PS2 from Ebay with my mom's credit card definitely came up. I was so stupid to think that I could get away with that, but hey, little 3rd grader me really just wanted a PS2.
DeviantArt. It was the first social network I really got into. My angsty teenager poetry was a hit and it was the most attention I ever had. I made friends and had a lot of fun browsing art and reading stories. I'm not sure how it is now, but the community was very fun and supportive. I kind of miss those days!
First time I jumped on the web was from a library at school, it was fascinating and I remember it being explained to me as if it was some sort of secret club (this was in 1995). I was automatically consumed by it and would visit the library very often after school to beg the librarian to let me use her office computer (it was the fastest and with the best monitor). It would be another 2 years or so until my parents could afford to get me a Packard Bell 166 MHz MMX beast. What a glorious day! The very first thing I did was get dialup and setup a yahoo account. I still have thing somewhere, I didn't have the heart to recycle it.
I remember logging on to Juno to check my email and using that dial-up connection as a back door to open up my netscape browser and go to altavista and look up baseball scores. I may or may not have also searched for boobs and stuff. A few years later, I was playing fantasy baseball and figured out how to use napster back when 3-5kbps was a decent download speed. I saved up lawnmowing money to buy a 64MB MP3 player. Each song was about 3MB, so I could fit 20 songs on there! I traded my mp3 player to a friend for his Boston speakers after a few months and that trade worked out well for me. I still had the Boston speakers about 10 years later.