Your Life on the Internet
First, I'd like to say that I regret deeply that I did not post a review almost immediately after I saw Star Trek on its premiere night. I've seen it twice since then and plan to see it again very soon; it's amazing.
That aside, I was wondering how all of you spent your early years on the internet. It's not for anything important, I just found myself curious about it one day while thinking about my early experiences with the internet.
When did you first connect?
Were you connected in the age of dial-up or just recently? If you started with dial-up, how long until you switched to something faster? Did you ever switch at all?
What sort of sites did you visit and what sort of communities did you post in?
Did you ever talk to others online?
What sort of messaging system did you prefer?
For those of you who connected to the internet when you were rather young, when did you start to browse without parental supervision?
Did you have any content filters/site blocking/parental monitoring programs?
Did you ever post anything in your early years?
Any interesting stories from your time on the 'net?
How do you spend your time online now?
As for me, I connected back in 1997 with dial-up. I don't remember which carrier we began with, but I remember for a very long period of time we connected with NetZero back when it had a free service that took longer to connect. It was a strange connection screen that would bring up a video player and play NetZero ads while connecting, but the browser was kind of neat; better than AOL, at least. After NetZero, we bounced around various providers for dial-up until we got wireless back in... I'd say '04 or '05.
When I'd first begun online, I spent almost all of my time on Sailor Moon fansites
. It was awesome; I learned that there were senshi for Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn, and that Pluto was more than just a background character that watched out for Chibiusa; I learned the Japanese names and terminology; I learned that the show was censored! That was a big shock back then, let me tell you, learning that they trimmed episodes for content considered questionable and know that the senshi died during the battle with Queen Beryl. After I got over the shock, I began submitting fanart to fansites and downloading music from the dubs. I had tuxedomask.com email addresses for years. My parents stopped monitoring me a few weeks after we first got online because they got sick of seeing so much Sailor Moon.
A bit after all this, I began posting on penpal sites and connecting with people who shared my interests. I found large group anime sites and loyally followed weekly anime mesh installments that followed the vein of Big Brother. At some point, two friends and I made our own Homestead sites dedicated to our favourite Gundam Wing characters; I made a shrine for Quatre and my friends made a Trowa and Duo site. We'd hack into each other's accounts and post pictures of characters we didn't like and fake-gush about them, and we'd post nasty comments in each other's guestbooks. Homestead started charging, we packed up and moved on, and I found Fanfiction.net and signed up. Back in that day, Fictionpress didn't exist yet, so original stuff was allowed on ff.net. I joined Elfwood around that time as well. Other than that, the only really big events in my internet life was roleplaying on Lord of the Rings forums and finally joining dA in 2003. Some of you know the rest of this story.
So yeah, if you don't mind taking a few minutes to tell of your internet experiences, please do!
That aside, I was wondering how all of you spent your early years on the internet. It's not for anything important, I just found myself curious about it one day while thinking about my early experiences with the internet.
When did you first connect?
Were you connected in the age of dial-up or just recently? If you started with dial-up, how long until you switched to something faster? Did you ever switch at all?
What sort of sites did you visit and what sort of communities did you post in?
Did you ever talk to others online?
What sort of messaging system did you prefer?
For those of you who connected to the internet when you were rather young, when did you start to browse without parental supervision?
Did you have any content filters/site blocking/parental monitoring programs?
Did you ever post anything in your early years?
Any interesting stories from your time on the 'net?
How do you spend your time online now?
As for me, I connected back in 1997 with dial-up. I don't remember which carrier we began with, but I remember for a very long period of time we connected with NetZero back when it had a free service that took longer to connect. It was a strange connection screen that would bring up a video player and play NetZero ads while connecting, but the browser was kind of neat; better than AOL, at least. After NetZero, we bounced around various providers for dial-up until we got wireless back in... I'd say '04 or '05.
When I'd first begun online, I spent almost all of my time on Sailor Moon fansites
. It was awesome; I learned that there were senshi for Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn, and that Pluto was more than just a background character that watched out for Chibiusa; I learned the Japanese names and terminology; I learned that the show was censored! That was a big shock back then, let me tell you, learning that they trimmed episodes for content considered questionable and know that the senshi died during the battle with Queen Beryl. After I got over the shock, I began submitting fanart to fansites and downloading music from the dubs. I had tuxedomask.com email addresses for years. My parents stopped monitoring me a few weeks after we first got online because they got sick of seeing so much Sailor Moon.
A bit after all this, I began posting on penpal sites and connecting with people who shared my interests. I found large group anime sites and loyally followed weekly anime mesh installments that followed the vein of Big Brother. At some point, two friends and I made our own Homestead sites dedicated to our favourite Gundam Wing characters; I made a shrine for Quatre and my friends made a Trowa and Duo site. We'd hack into each other's accounts and post pictures of characters we didn't like and fake-gush about them, and we'd post nasty comments in each other's guestbooks. Homestead started charging, we packed up and moved on, and I found Fanfiction.net and signed up. Back in that day, Fictionpress didn't exist yet, so original stuff was allowed on ff.net. I joined Elfwood around that time as well. Other than that, the only really big events in my internet life was roleplaying on Lord of the Rings forums and finally joining dA in 2003. Some of you know the rest of this story.
So yeah, if you don't mind taking a few minutes to tell of your internet experiences, please do!