Early 2000's forum dwellers, how many are still around?

[CyberCubed]

Who else remembers the early days of the internet from the late 90's to like 2005 or so? We were like the original "forum dwellers" when the internet thrived with online forums before the days of social media, youtube, reddit, discord, etc.

I've been on online forums since the year 2000 with IGN boards and others since the early 2000's, how many of us, "ancient people" are still left? Who remember the days before youtube and twitter existed? It's hard to believe there are people online now who have no idea what the "old days" of the internet were actually like, back then even posting a picture or a media clip on forums took hours to load.

No n00bs allowed, only old school forum dwellers where we used emoticons like and used forum sigs all the time.

AIM a/s/l and myspace users also apply. No n00bs after 2006 allowed!

[neatoman]

[frank_one]

I first went online in 2000 or 2001. I remember learning html in a couple of days and creating my first little website. Forums were my favorite part of the web, of course. No youtube, no wikipedia, no social networks. Good times.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Originally Posted by frank_one

I first went online in 2000 or 2001. I remember learning html in a couple of days and creating my first little website. Forums were my favorite part of the web, of course. No youtube, no wikipedia, no social networks. Good times.

Wikipedia was launched on 15 January 2001, but it took some time for it to grow.

[Sumac]

I am in the web since 2003.
That was the year, when I visited this forum for the first time.

[sdp]

First "modern" forum was in 1999, I mean with post count and whatnot, before that I posted on some Pokemon bulletin boards which are like a previous version to message boards. Tons of time spent on Pokemon homestead and angelfire sites, I had my own homestead Pokemon site before I then switched to tripod.

vBulletin was not common, I'm guessing there was an extra cost for it because many sites implemented EZboards which sucked but I was on plenty of EZboards because so many sites used them. First real forum I was a real user for was for enix.com (before they merged with square) and a Nintendo forum full of ex-n-siders (the shut down 90s official Nintendo community), this was before the gamecube launched during the last years of the N64 and we had a NOA employee posting and leaking stuff to us.

I'd say forums started dying around 2009 or so give or take, by that point social media was just too big that forums kept becoming less and less impactful in fandoms. A shame, discord, reddit and social media isn't the same thing. Even I dislike forums now, I wish they were what they used to be.

[Wesley]

Not counting the few times I browsed a website or two at school in the late 90s, my first real experience of going online and browsing stuff was in 2000 with my Dreamcast?s Dreamkey internet browser (I was 13 at the time). I checked out websites like Dreamarena, TvTomes, Sonic HQ, GamesRadar, Pokemon Elite 2000, Team Rocket’s Rockin’ and GameFAQs over the years using the Excite search engine at first and later Yahoo.

First and only forum I tried registering with was GameFAQs, though the registration process wouldn?t work with Dreamkey for some reason. I didn?t get a computer until 2002 which was around the time I discovered this forum and ninjaturtles.com and was able to finally join GameFAQs using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. I didn’t join other forums until years later.

[MrPliggins]

Our first computer was a Windows 3.1 desktop. We joined America Online in 1994 or 1995. Yes, I remember...
...the days of constant busy signals for hours while trying to connect to the internet, then being immediately disconnected.
...being charged for the internet by the hour.
...NetZero and Compuserve.
...having to play my LucasArts games through DOS with multiple floppy disks.
...posting to newsgroups.

[Andrew NDB]

Well. I've been online since about 1996. Before that in BBSes. Here beginning 2007 largely bemoaning the 2007 movie... which I had some small stake in but nobody cared. Even got in legal trouble for spoiling minor stuff.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

I've been online since about 2002. Joined the Marvel boards in 03, and became a Mod there until 2008, when they removed the forums from their main site and moved them elsewhere, after which it quickly died off. That was a mistake, I think. I've been on various other forums off and on almost continuously since then, and first visited here in 2011. Joined not long after. I enjoy interacting with others from around the world, and have even made a few lifelong net friends on some forums I've joined.

[CyberCubed]

It's also kind of funny posting on message boards makes you anonymous (unless you use your real name on forums). When people make twitter, facebook, youtube accounts, etc...a lot of people use their real names and or post pics of themselves.

When you're on a message board, everyone just comes up with a random username, and unless you want to, most people don't always post pictures of themselves. It's kinda ironic the young kids of today won't know what it's like when people knew each other through, "usernames" and not their, "real names" on the internet.

[Leo656]

Doing Coola's podcast was kinda neat, in that I finally had voices to go with some people whose words I've been seeing on a screen for 15+ years. That was pretty cool.

I used to talk on the phone with GK once in a while, back when he still deigned to visit the mortal coil. Swell fella.

[sdp]

Is there a way for me to look up my first post here on the drome? This old forums software is too limiting, makes it too hard to do. I'm also trying to see if I can rescue old posts from other forums that I've made over the years.

[Coola Yagami]

I forgot what year (or even how) I found this forum, lmao. I think I got onto the internet in 1999 cause I remember I did have a computer at home during the whole Y2K scare.

[Prowler]

I'm one of those people, Cubed. Been posting on message boards since 2001. I used to be active on IGN around 2004-2006. That's where I first met you. We never spoke, that I remember. But I used to post sometimes on IGN's now defunct TMNT board. That board had a pretty active thread dedicated to the 2k3 cartoon series in the first few seasons, remember? I only remember you and some guy named LightSpeedDash who was also pretty active.

The Internet sure has changed in the last 20 years, lemme tell ya. I which the Internet had stagnated around 2004-2008 tbh. That was wmthr golden age of forums and places like Wikipedia and Youtube were already around. Social media were a bunch of different websites where people only added their school friends and posted pics of themselves. Facebook wasn't global yet. And Smartphones weren't standard either. You either had a computer with Internet access at home or you'd not be able to go online.

Honestly, it was better.