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GoatLord
Senior Member

Posts: 1414
Registered: 07-02

This ought to be a lulzy thread. Do you remember the first time you used the Internet? What crappy websites or browsers did you use? The very first time I saw the Internet was in 1996, at my best friend's house. He was trying to find some stupid Java game where you punch Rush Limbaugh in the face, but he couldn't locate it. Instead, we played another stupid Java game, where you fill Barney the Dinosaur with bullet holes. I also remember about a year later, at a library, being amazed at it only taking 15 minutes to download a low resolution, 20 second clip of "Toy Story" that had no sound.

12-15-11 01:47 #

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Technician
Still no custom title

Posts: 5772
Registered: 08-04

I still have fond memories of the old personal/fan pages on free web domains such as Geocities. And waiting fifteen minutes to load a flash video. Or all the java based arcade ripoffs littered with lame ads.

Ah, such fun and simpler times.

12-15-11 01:49 #

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GoatLord
Senior Member

Posts: 1414
Registered: 07-02

I remember in the late 90s, when all the rage was to have an elaborate, supremely tacky website full of visual gimmicks. Your mouse pointer would change, there were alternate graphics for each menu items, animated backgrounds, flashing or scrolling text, pointless animated GIFS floating about, a MIDI playing in the background...

12-15-11 01:51 #

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Danarchy
YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

Posts: 15854
Registered: 01-01

I remember using Prodigy when I was 5-6. This was back in the late 80s. Being a small, stupid, child, I posted something on a BBS about Bart Simpson and Mohawks being cool (remember, this WAS the 80s). Some bitch responded with a vulgar, flame-ridden post wherein they suggested I should grow some pubes and then attempt self-procreation. My mom saw this and got the person kicked off the system. I thought it was hilarious. Thus it came to be that I learned the concept of trolling, and the rest is history.

12-15-11 01:53 #

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Technician
Still no custom title

Posts: 5772
Registered: 08-04

Danarchy said:
I remember using Prodigy when I was 5-6. This was back in the late 80s. Being a small, stupid, child, I posted something on a BBS about Bart Simpson and Mohawks being cool (remember, this WAS the 80s). Some bitch responded with a vulgar, flame-ridden post wherein they suggested I should grow some pubes and then attempt self-procreation. My mom saw this and got the person kicked off the system. I thought it was hilarious. Thus it came to be that I learned the concept of trolling, and the rest is history.

You need your mom to white-knight for you? Wuss.

12-15-11 01:56 #

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Danarchy
YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!

Posts: 15854
Registered: 01-01

Hey, I didn't ask her to. I could have come up with a witty stinger if given the chance.

12-15-11 01:58 #

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Grain of Salt
Member

Posts: 629
Registered: 12-10

2001. I don't remember all that well, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with Pokemon.

12-15-11 02:00 #

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Technician
Still no custom title

Posts: 5772
Registered: 08-04

This is making me wish I had saved my lame Doom fan-page from Geocities before it went down. The grammar was abysmal.

12-15-11 02:01 #

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Craigs
The only idiot here besides Csonicgo

Posts: 2438
Registered: 11-05

First real internet experience I had was playing Runescape. You know those little kids who will accidentally put like three 1s after like ten exclamation marks? Yeah, I was one of those.

12-15-11 02:03 #

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Technician
Still no custom title

Posts: 5772
Registered: 08-04

Grain of Salt said:
2001. I don't remember all that well, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with Pokemon.

I remember this was around the time they launched the Gorillaz interactive flash page that blew my mind. Waiting time was a bitch, though.

12-15-11 02:05 #

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GoatLord
Senior Member

Posts: 1414
Registered: 07-02

I remember seeing one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" type web pages back in 1998, themed around The Simpsons. Since anyone could add to it, it only took a few pages in before your choices were "Go back to the parking lot or fuck Marge's brown hole."

12-15-11 02:05 #

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Mr. T
Senior Member

Posts: 1270
Registered: 12-03

Technician said:
I remember this was around the time they launched the Gorillaz interactive flash page that blew my mind. Waiting time was a bitch, though.

That WAS cool, especially the 3d jeep driving game.

I miss all the lollerrific gifs that were all over the internet back then.

http://www.11points.com/images/animatedgifs/americanflag.gif

http://www.11points.com/images/animatedgifs/flamingline.gif

12-15-11 02:10 #

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Technician
Still no custom title

Posts: 5772
Registered: 08-04

The infamous "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" gifs.

12-15-11 02:14 #

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Membrain
Junior Member

Posts: 209
Registered: 09-10

I remember going to a bunch of pages for various video game characters. Revisiting them now, after a decade or so, revealed that said sites were the product of a number of fetish groups. Traumatizing shit, that.

12-15-11 02:17 #

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Planky
Senior Member

Posts: 1128
Registered: 12-02

Earliest memory was in 94-95, getting my dad to help me find picture of a mask I could replicate for a primary school project. Yahoo very slowly loaded up and we searched for tribal masks - the image search then would display one at a time and take 10-20 seconds to load.

12-15-11 02:30 #

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Bashe
Forum Staple

Posts: 2066
Registered: 11-03

Some of the earliest experiences I can remember would be from around 1997-1998. I was only 7 at the time, and my dad would let me use the Internet just for a little bit. I remember looking up stuff like cheats for Super Mario 64 and whatnot, but not a whole lot else. A few years later in around 1999-2000 I saw more regular use of the Internet at the age of 9, and again it was mostly just looking up glitches and codes for games I was into at the time, and reading about other things related to those games. I also remember going onto sites for my favorite shows, which included Powerpuff Girls at the time, and I got into a chat room and remember starting fights with people just randomly and not knowing what "lol" meant. I was impatient with the dial-up and was annoyed when someone needed to use the phone too, lol, and when we got DSL in around 2001-2002 it was like a godsend. Good times!

12-15-11 02:38 #

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Technician
Still no custom title

Posts: 5772
Registered: 08-04

Bashe said:
I was impatient with the dial-up and was annoyed when someone needed to use the phone too, lol, and when we got DSL in around 2001-2002 it was like a godsend.

Yeah, those were bad memories.

12-15-11 02:43 #

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yellowmadness54
Senior Member

Posts: 1149
Registered: 03-10

Youtube,conkerbase, and plastic army men. I was like 9 or 10. I also remember playing this game on miniclip, where your in a car, running from other cars, in a city. It was cool because it was 3D and all.

12-15-11 02:49 #

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Vordakk
Forum Regular

Posts: 862
Registered: 07-10

My parents didn't get a computer until about '92, and didn't get a modem until late '93 at the earliest. I used to be a total shithead; phishing people's AOL accounts, using AOHell to create fake credit card numbers that allowed limited access until AOL got wise and kicked you off after a few days, and lurking in warez chatrooms waiting for an "MM"(mass-mail) full of pirated software. This continued for a few years, until about 1997 when I cleaned up my act and bought all the games I had pirated and stopped phishing/doing shady shit.

I still remember getting my first virus at age 15. I was in a warez room and somebody did a mass-mail which claimed to include the full version of Duke Nukem 3D. I thought it was odd that the full version wasn't any bigger(in terms of MB) than the shareware, but I figured, "Hey, it must be some new kind of file compression." I downloaded the file and ran it and...BAM!!! The program took me to a black screen where it proudly proclaimed, "Your FAT(File Allocation Table) is no more." My stomach was in knots. What had I done?!?! I ended up formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows 3.1 and by the end of the day everything was basically back to normal, at least in the eyes of my parents(who couldn't tell the difference anyways). I also fried a hard drive once by formatting it on the wrong density setting, but that's another story. I'll just say my mom and dad were fucking pissed.

The DOOM websites they had back then were pretty cool for the time, at least as I remember them. You could tell how excited people were about DOOM by looking at how they laid out their pages. There were animated gifs and eye candy which at that time was relatively new and badass. There seemed to be something special about DOOM's presence on the 'net that I'd never excountered with any other video game, kinda like it was in a class all its own or something.

12-15-11 02:54 #

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Technician
Still no custom title

Posts: 5772
Registered: 08-04

This was also the time when the government thought there were ultra-super-cyber-hackers capable of taking down the government. So many geeks got thrown into jail. You didn't want that notoriety on the net.

Now we only have to worry about search engines and web-providers giving out your logs to the feds to fight ~~copyright infringement~~ terror.

12-15-11 03:01 #

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Marcaek
Forum Regular

Posts: 713
Registered: 12-10

Anyone remember 3web?

12-15-11 03:34 #

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Nomad
Senior Member

Posts: 1638
Registered: 04-04

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en...cMIPiiALaxZz2Aw

This basically sums up the early internet

12-15-11 03:49 #

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Quast
insert title here

Posts: 2201
Registered: 09-02

My first experiences with the internet were around 1996. My school had 3 power macs with access in the library. Roughly the same time a 'rich' friend of mine had parents that got AOL and we spend many many nights on aol chat rooms. It was certainly a wild era

I remember that there was no 'wow' factor though, not from anyone. Not from myself or the maybe dozen people in the entire highschool that frequented the 3 computers with WWW access. The internet was cool, but didn't become 'amazing' until 98-99 when I started to frequent message boards shortly after my family had gotten a computer, and hotmail accounts became commonplace... and the WWW began to mature a bit. It was just accepted at the time.

I also remember the first game I pirated, i think around 98 or so, age of empires and the rome expansion. Took me about 10 days or 2 weeks discreetly downloading over a dozen ~2mb rar files that took a couple hours each to download. Could only get a couple each night, but it was awesome nonetheless.

Last edited by Quast on 12-15-11 at 04:32

12-15-11 04:22 #

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hex11
Senior Member

Posts: 1481
Registered: 09-09

SunOS 4.x shell account with Lynx, Pine (for mail and Usenet), and other typical shell stuff (finger, ircII, etc.) At the time (spring 1995), the web wasn't ubiquitous and there were at least as many gopher and ftp URL links as http ones. The Lynx browser handled all that stuff nicely. It was just a plain old dialup, so couldn't use Mosaic, and anyway most pages were high on the text content (often even with ASCII art). The first Doom-related web page I found was probably Doomgate, which is now mirrored here:
http://doomgate.gamers.org/

12-15-11 04:26 #

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Aliotroph?
postCount++

Posts: 1809
Registered: 03-02

Marcaek said:
Anyone remember 3web?

3web went out of business because of bastards like me! For those who've never heard of it, 3web gave you (Canadians) free dial-up in exchange for viewing adware while you were online. I figured out one day that what it did was install the dialer from the CD and then download the adware. All you had to do was cancel after the dialer installed and you had a free service with no ads. I was able to do this for a surprisingly long time before the company folded.

Anyway, that was in 1998-99 -- years after first went on the net. When my dad first showed me Netscape in the early 90s the web wasn't infected with pictures yet. Finding something you wanted to read was key.

It seemed to take off in 1996. We had free service from one of the places where dad worked. we had a 28k modem, but they only supported 14k. When my bro and I downgrabbed the shareware version of Quake one Friday night it took hours. It was packed as six or seven zip files, each the size of a floppy disk. We took turns coming to check on them while we watched The X-Files and The Outer Limits, and then whatever movies came on with naked women. When mom and dad got home in the middle of the night we'd only just got Quake running.

12-15-11 04:58 #

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Technician
Still no custom title

Posts: 5772
Registered: 08-04

It was also difficult to find free porn back then. You had the option of viewing the free tour on porn sites, never knew about IRC exchanges and shit. Now, I don't know how paid sites make money when their content is available on loads of free sites.

If one industry that was hit hard by net piracy, it was the porn industry.

12-15-11 05:06 #

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Shaikoten
Senior Member

Posts: 1044
Registered: 05-04

Oh god. Not my first experience but one of my earlier interactive contributions, I recall a Star Fox roleplaying group on the official Nintendo message board. I also did medieval pub roleplay in the Delphi Forums chatroom. All kinds of sword fighting and buying drinks. Then of course the MUDs soon followed, a habit I have not yet kicked, and something visual games have not come close to touching in terms of freedom of creativity.

(This is all mid 90s or so.)

12-15-11 05:18 #

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Creaphis
I will deliberately take a contrary position just for the sake of writing incredibly long arguments

Posts: 3991
Registered: 10-05

I remember my dad bringing a Pentium 1 into the house for no clear reason, as he still stood by his IBM XT as the best possible PC for real work. It took until the late nineties before an ISP set up shop in this town, and we got dial-up with them almost as soon as we could. It was a shaky service that changed hands every few months.

I think it took me a long time to figure out that the internet could be used for things that you can't do off-line. I mostly spent my time online reading newspaper comics, patiently waiting twenty seconds for each one to come into focus.

12-15-11 05:22 #

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Csonicgo
This post is probably useless

Posts: 3960
Registered: 03-04

What they said the internet was:
http://i.imgur.com/GgHqi.jpg

What it really is.. well... we all know.

12-15-11 05:29 #

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GoatLord
Senior Member

Posts: 1414
Registered: 07-02

One thing I miss about the the Internet circa 1997: Doom 64 had just been released and I had stumbled upon a really cool fanpage. It had some high resolution images of nearly all the enemies; many times bigger than the actual sprites. I remember searching for that page a few years later and couldn't find it.

12-15-11 05:45 #

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