Does anyone else remember the early days of the internet?

[CyberCubed]

The internet started to become mainstream around 1995-1996, does anyone else remember those early days of the internet?

This is the days of dial-up modems, when it took 10 minutes to load a single page, when watching a 5 minute video took 1 hour to download. This is before youtube, facebook, myspace, twitter, tumblr existed...there was no social media.

The days of geocities and yahoo chat rooms, ebay was just starting up. Anyone else around from the very beginning? When the internet was slow as hell and everyone was trying to start up their first website? Its hard to believe many of us were able to survive those days.

The idea of it taking 1 hour or more just to download a 20 minute video sounds absurd now, but back in those days that's what it was. There was no streaming, you had to use quicktime or realplayer.

[Peanut]

Does anyone else remember

Yes. No matter what it is. Yes.

[IndigoErth]

Given my age, yes. Wish I had a screen shot of my old Geocities site. :lol: I don't even recall what I used it for now, I only remember Taurus symbol.

I can't express how weird it was last summer to realize I'd had my eBay account for 15 years.

[Mayhem]

Yes, there's still plenty of things I recall about those early days. I first used the internet on a regular basis towards the end of 1993, when I started university. Didn't get to experience the pain of dial-up until graduating though, as the speeds at university were pretty fast by comparison!

[IndigoErth]

Kids these days... if they had to deal with not having their own phone and you have to fight between who gets to use the phone line - the person who wants to use the phone or the person who wants to be on the computer - or the pressure put on you that someone isn't going to be able to call through because you're on the computer all the time... lol

With elderly grandparents at the time that were often a worry, my parents eventually got a second phone line for the computer for a while just in case something happened and someone needed to call.

[CyberCubed]

Man I forgot about that, when someone would call on the phone your internet would disconnect. I remember sitting there clicking a page and nothing would happen because the damn phone was ringing. That was nuts.

[IndigoErth]

Yeah, that too. Fun times.

Although what has it been replaced with now? The occasional outage of BOTH internet and digital cable.

Seriously, well now what do I do?? :lol: Has happened a couple times in the past week or so, but only late at night, forcing me to get off the computer and go to bed (ok, fair enough), but now I can't even put the tv on!

I put a DVD in (I'm not the sort that just lays in the dark and goes to sleep), but I had the realization that this is one big down side to people eventually getting rid of DVD/Blu-Ray and fully embracing movie ownership via digital purchase. Internet and digital cable out and want to watch a movie? Oh well, guess who can't access it? lol People may need to get back into reading more.

[senpai]

Yeah. The first website I ever went to was Furby.com, and going into aol's chatrooms. Guy's were always like a/s/l. lol!

[MsMarvelDuckie]

The internet started to become mainstream around 1995-1996, does anyone else remember those early days of the internet?

This is the days of dial-up modems, when it took 10 minutes to load a single page, when watching a 5 minute video took 1 hour to download. This is before youtube, facebook, myspace, twitter, tumblr existed...there was no social media.

The days of geocities and yahoo chat rooms, ebay was just starting up. Anyone else around from the very beginning? When the internet was slow as hell and everyone was trying to start up their first website? Its hard to believe many of us were able to survive those days.

The idea of it taking 1 hour or more just to download a 20 minute video sounds absurd now, but back in those days that's what it was. There was no streaming, you had to use quicktime or realplayer.


No, Cubed, I don't remember any of that. I'm ONLY 38, after all, LOL! :-P

[Leo656]

Ahhhh, so you had that there "Wind-Up" internet, before dial-up. Where you had to turn a crank and ask "Sally" to patch you through. :tgrin:

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Pshhaw, you kiddin? My family's first PC was a TI 994A. Slightly better than the old Commodore 64.

[CyberCubed]

Come to think of it I don't think I even had an e-mail address until the early 2000's. Then again I was just a kid at the time so I guess it didn't matter.

[IndigoErth]

Yeah, I'm not even sure when other email services started to pop up. For a while my family had one shared email address through our provider. I'm not even sure if it was so easy to get another.

Not even sure how old my Hotmail account is at this point, I've had it a long time.

Ahhhh, so you had that there "Wind-Up" internet, before dial-up. Where you had to turn a crank and ask "Sally" to patch you through. :tgrin:
:lol: Was it also party line internet?


Edit: Actually, I guess a party line version is closer to today with stealing wireless connections and public security issues. lol

[Leo656]

Every line I'm on is the "Party Line", guuuuuurl! :tgrin::tgrin::tgrin:

[Netkeeper]

Yes. No matter what it is. Yes.
http://i.imgur.com/dqp3D02.png

[Mayhem]

Not even sure how old my Hotmail account is at this point, I've had it a long time.
I knew I was graduating, and thus lose my university email address, so I had a search on Yahoo (yes, this is pre Google) for free email providers, and signed up to Hotmail. This is BEFORE Microsoft bought the company.

The big browser contest was between Mosiac and Netscape at the time, I tended to prefer the later. And what happened? Microsoft bought the former and turned it into Internet Explorer heh.

I had access to both Windows 3.1 PCs (even though W95 came out before I left, the PCs weren't updated by then) and Unix machines. I loved those mothers, so fast by comparison, especially for computational stuff, and I even got to learn a bit of Unix in the process. My IRC client for reaching out to all those strange speaking Americans was on that server too, wasn't Windows based :lol:

[Prowler]

Early days as in the mid-late 90s? No, I wasn't using the internet at the time and had no idea what it was. I didn't get the internet at home until the year 2000-2001. We had dial-up for like 2 months but hated it so we switched to broadband and it felt like heaven.

[BubblyShell22]

Oh hell yes, I remember. We had dial up, and I hated it because it was so slow and nobody could call you on the phone. My first e-mail account was a Hotmail one, but then I switched to Yahoo and have been on Yahoo ever since. Then I went to college and that's where I discovered this site as well as the other sites I go to. We never use the home computer anymore since Mom and I now have laptops. I actually love broadband for the most part except for the data plan, but not much I can do about that.

[IndigoErth]

Going back further than the internet for a second (or at least public knowledge of such a thing), does anyone old enough remember (appropriately for this site) the "Turtle"?

http://i.imgur.com/dqKCDJ1.gif

(Enlightenment! It's all so clear now, it's always been turtles, it's the natural order!)

Probably my earliest computer-use memory from around third grade. That little green triangle on a tiny Apple computer with a black and green screen and ran Turtle from a big floppy disk. :D

And what came in following school years, well that classic Oregon Trail game of course. :)

[Wesley]

Early days as in the mid-late 90s? No, I wasn't using the internet at the time and had no idea what it was. I didn't get the internet at home until the year 2000-2001. We had dial-up for like 2 months but hated it so we switched to broadband and it felt like heaven.

I had no idea what the Internet was either in the mid 90s, though it was mentioned in a few comics that I got at the time. I first browsed the Internet for a few minutes every now and then at school in the late 90s, but my first real experience with it was when I got a Sega Dreamcast and used its Dreamkey internet browser from 2000 to 2002. I switched to using a laptop in 2002.

We had dialup for years, but I thought it was good at the time, since I didn't know about broadband. It was much harder to discover new music, as there was no Facebook, YouTube or iTunes back then.

[Cryomancer]

Yeah. It sucked.

[CyberCubed]

Its actually hard to believe youtube didn't even start until 2005. The idea of a website entirely based on watching videos that load in seconds (instead of hours) was unheard of before that.

Kids today will never know what it was like to wait 1 hour to download a 15 minute video.

[Jephael]

I remember back in the day when we used AOL dial up at my parents' house. I had to be so patient waiting for images to load, especially animated gifs. Back in 2004 I would go on Mikey's TMNT forum, and people would have like images over an MB long, so I'd have to wait over 10 minutes for a single page to load. It was a pain in the butt, though I made it a habit of lurking around the forum until all the images were saved and memorized onto my web cache.

[Prowler]

Its actually hard to believe youtube didn't even start until 2005. The idea of a website entirely based on watching videos that load in seconds (instead of hours) was unheard of before that.

Kids today will never know what it was like to wait 1 hour to download a 15 minute video.
Or waiting 30 minutes or so to download an mp3 file.

[Netkeeper]

It's so weird seeing all these people saying "I had no idea the internet was a thing in the 90's" because I BEGGED my mom for internet access back in 97 probably, and I was only 6 years old.

We got our first internet service, AOL, probably in 1998 or 1999. I used it to look up stuff about Pokemon and Digimon and almost nothing else. I became obsessed with some little Digimon flash game thing for part of a summer when I got to use the internet every morning. I also used the AOL chatrooms and message boards a lot to talk about Digimon. Yeah, Adventure old guard over here. People still cared about shipping back then, let me tell you. :V

But I went digging for old sites/accounts and the oldest one that remained preserved was my fanfiction account which I made in 2003. Everything else I registered for either got deactivated or the site went under, but I did use a lot of forums, the most memorable of which were the old Chao Island forums and some Inuyasha forum full of elitist assholes.

I remember the few kids I knew that had internet access back then were obsessed with Neopets. I tried it, but never understood the appeal. I still don't. I've tried making a new account there six or seven times, and only once did I see any appeal in it [the Habitarium] but they ****ing shut it down. Only thing I liked on that stupid site, way to go. I preferred using the internet for fanfiction. Kinda feeling nostalgic for a few old Sonic and DBZ fics, I might have to go dig up my printed copies of them!

[IndigoErth]

I'm going to say my family probably got the internet around 1995. With my being in high school a bit of an encouragement to get it.

[Cryomancer]

Neopets never die. They are still there, alive, starving, waiting for you to log back in and feed them.

[Wesley]

Neopets never die. They are still there, alive, starving, waiting for you to log back in and feed them.

I didn't know Neopets even existed until they were mentioned in this thread. I remember the tamagotchi fad in the late 90s, though. I think they were similar except that they were physical devices. I was never interested in getting one, but I did get the GameBoy game.

[IndigoErth]

Tamagotchi... I remember those were big for a time with my sister's bunch. My mom sent me into Toys R Us with my sister to get one, she figured why don't I get one too if I want. Heck, why not.

Darn little non-color screen digital thing that tries to make you feel bad. lol Never messed with it for all that long, but it's still around someplace stored in it's packaging, maybe it'll be worth something someday. :trazz:

[plastroncafe]

The 90s weren't the early days of the internet.

[Mayhem]

The 90s weren't the early days of the internet.
I think in this instance, "internet" = WWW, and seeing as the first proper websites didn't emerge until 1991, that probably counts.

[Netkeeper]

Tamagotchi... I remember those were big for a time with my sister's bunch. My mom sent me into Toys R Us with my sister to get one, she figured why don't I get one too if I want. Heck, why not.

Darn little non-color screen digital thing that tries to make you feel bad. lol Never messed with it for all that long, but it's still around someplace stored in it's packaging, maybe it'll be worth something someday. :trazz:
I was one of "those kids" that had like six or seven of the little things. I only have one now, but my Digimon replaced them. [The original Digimon are basically Tamagotchi that fight.]
http://36.media.tumblr.com/a2b1c491d1d0ad71433b2db4eb8ab0fd/tumblr_n8x2utp4C11se6d4zo1_500.jpg

[CyberCubed]

The 90s weren't the early days of the internet.

The internet didn't become mainstream till like 1995/1996. Even later than that for many people.

[ProactiveMan]

Going back further than the internet for a second (or at least public knowledge of such a thing), does anyone old enough remember (appropriately for this site) the "Turtle"?

http://i.imgur.com/dqKCDJ1.gif

(Enlightenment! It's all so clear now, it's always been turtles, it's the natural order!)

Probably my earliest computer-use memory from around third grade. That little green triangle on a tiny Apple computer with a black and green screen and ran Turtle from a big floppy disk. :D

And what came in following school years, well that classic Oregon Trail game of course. :)

Yeah - we had that on Acorn Atom computers at school. I think the language is called Logo.

[lindz247]

Man I forgot about that, when someone would call on the phone your internet would disconnect. I remember sitting there clicking a page and nothing would happen because the damn phone was ringing. That was nuts.

That still happens to me! I hat it random people are always calling our house... :roll: Every 10 minutes feels like! We also had a white desktop (the really old kind!) computer when I was a kid. We still have it I think but I miss it! I don't think internet was wireless then either!

[Netkeeper]

That still happens to me! I hat it random people are always calling our house... :roll: Every 10 minutes feels like!
Wait.

What.

I must not have detected your sarcasm, yeah?

[lindz247]

Wait.

What.

I must not have detected your sarcasm, yeah?

About what the phone? Oh yea i was exaggerating a little but it does feel like someone is always calling us!

[IndigoErth]

About what the phone? Oh yea i was exaggerating a little but it does feel like someone is always calling us!
I feel your pain.

The kitchen phone with the answering machine is just outside the door of this room, and pretty much at least once or twice a day (in addition to other annoying 'junk' calls) we get some robo call that likes to hang up at a certain moment so that there is a loud dial tone heard over the answering machine for way too long until it cuts it off. Fun when I'm working on the computer and trying to concentrate on something. Heaven forbid I leave both doors open of this room (former den, door on either side) to get some air flow; it will surely call then.

There really is no real point in the (U.S.) "do not call list," is there.

[Metalwolf]

I didn't get the Internet until 2006 (I was 26) so that was the earliest for me. I remember hearing the TV commercials for it in 1995-1996 before it really came online in a major way, but I didn't really give it much thought beyond that.

[Netkeeper]

About what the phone? Oh yea i was exaggerating a little but it does feel like someone is always calling us!
...

The part about having DIAL-UP.

[lindz247]

...

The part about having DIAL-UP.
Um if you mean home phone then yes. I don't have a cell phone yet mom says i have to pay for my own.

[Netkeeper]

Um if you mean home phone then yes. I don't have a cell phone yet mom says i have to pay for my own.
...

No, I mean dial-up internet. Which you implied you had. Please tell me you don't. Nobody deserves that.

[lindz247]

I don't think so... We have Frontier

[Cryomancer]

The point you seem to be missing is that back in the 90s most people had dial-up internet, which was internet over your phone line. If someone called your house, your internet would break. You couldn't even really stay online all day without re-connecting fairly often. It wasn't an always-on kind of thing.

[pannoni1]

I first heard and saw about it in 1995, first used it in 1996, regularly in 1999, and got broadband/DSL in 2002. It clearly will turn out to be the biggest technological shift in our lifetime, more so than mobile communications. Prior to the Internet, the closest thing was HAM/CB radio which required a special code to dephicer, and in the VERY early days of the Internet before the Web even existed there was usenet (still around in archives) that tended to be used mostly by nerds and was basically all text (no colorful graphics until the Web came). In the early days of the Web's popuarity (mid-90s), most pages were in Times New Roman or Aria, had some rainbow text, cheesy clip art, scrolling text, buttons with a thick rectangular gradient, and before search engines were efficient, you needed to know/memorize key websites (I still do today) with relying on a search engine or an archived automatic device that brings up the site. I did enjoy going on webrings to get a more specialist look at what was happening, and it was strange seeing foreign languages/characters/regional variants more often that I felt like an enchanced training course would be needed.

And 1995 is a good starting point because on all of my commercial blocks on my YouTube channel, the first Internet addresses on programs/commercials don't appear until that year. I felt like that was the year that "the transition to the 21st century" was definitely upon us, becoming complete in 2006 when Twitter was launched and was also the year I first heard about Facebook and used YouTube. That 1995-2005 period coincidentally is my teenage years and in retrospective with each passing year looks more awkward than ever compared to modern adulthood and the quaintness of my childhood. I seems like this changed has made us more inate and less deep and romantic however with the rapid expansion of information. I hear that in an average day, more information is produced than the entire bank of information in an entire year 15 years prior!

[IndigoErth]

You couldn't even really stay online all day without re-connecting fairly often. It wasn't an always-on kind of thing.
Imagine if today's MMOs and other live in-real-time games existed back then. (And were somehow playable.) People would be going nuts with the amount of disconnects. :lol:

[MrPliggins]

Also back in those days AOL cost like $4 an hour. So leaving it on all day would be VERY expensive (and near impossible with the bad connection problems).

I remember the old days of bad AOL connections. You would set it to connect, then hear busy signals for an hour, then finally you heard the connection sound. Then you'd most likely get booted off within another hour.

In those days I hung out in chat rooms (mIRC), had a cool AOL Hometown page, used Napster and Newsgroups.

[pennydreadful]

I preferred using the internet for fanfiction. Kinda feeling nostalgic for a few old Sonic and DBZ fics, I might have to go dig up my printed copies of them!

That takes me back - I remember I used to have binders full of printed fanfic. :lol:

I remember that you had to search a lot harder for fanfic as well; not everybody automatically put their stories on the big fanfic sites... you'd have to go scouring through people's personal websites on Geocities with horrible layouts and like, dark blue italic font on a black background!

Sourcing fanfic is defs much easier these days.

[ZariusTwo]

I remember one perverse buddy of mine in college got booted out of the campus library for using the computers to look up lemon fanfics:lol:

[pennydreadful]

LOL ah the good old days of citrus-ratings on fanfic. Kids today don't know how good they've got it. :lol:

[lindz247]

The point you seem to be missing is that back in the 90s most people had dial-up internet, which was internet over your phone line. If someone called your house, your internet would break. You couldn't even really stay online all day without re-connecting fairly often. It wasn't an always-on kind of thing.

Idk! We have wireless but that still happens to us cuz our phone line is linked to our internet :-?

[Netkeeper]

LOL ah the good old days of citrus-ratings on fanfic. Kids today don't know how good they've got it. :lol:
I dunno, I found them sorta useful back when I was young, if only because I knew the distinctions. It wasn't hard to look them up or anything.

[BubblyShell22]

I remember Oregon Trail and another game I loved called Word Munchers. That game was fun!

I had a Giga Pet which is a lot like a Tamagotchi, but the dog kept dying on me. I just never bothered with it, but they were big at my school.

Back in the day, I'd use the Internet for my e-mail and to look up websites about my favorite singers and wrestling stuff.

[Netkeeper]

Man, who doesn't remember Oregon Trail. That game was ****ing hard.

[Leo656]

I just played it for the first time in 20 years like two months ago and got the best score I'd ever gotten. Even if "Douchebag" and "Sugar Tits" died of dysentery along the way. (What? What do YOU name them?)

Just be the banker. You can't lose. Granted, throwing assloads of money at every problem you face somewhat violates the spirit of the game, it's completely within the rules.

[IndigoErth]

:lol: Think I'll go look it up again and name them after the Turtles. lol



Ok, was bored so I really did... :P Since it's five people it was me and the Turtles, with Leo as wagon leader of course. We didn't do so well I'm afraid. lol

We started out April 1st - First up, Donnie broke an arm. Then I went and got dysentery, immediately followed by a snakebite and death June 18th. Then Donnie quickly got cholera and died the day after me. (Maybe he and I should have stayed home.)

Stopped to rest at yet another town in late July... Raph starts to suffer from exhaustion - while in town. (We were only trading!) Raph dies July 24th, while still resting in town. (Wtf, Raph?) Meanwhile Mikey soon after gets measles, in the same town. And dies (in town) July 29th. Leo suffers from exhaustion - still in town! - and dies there Aug. 1st.

Don't go to that town! :lol:

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Don't do that, Indigo- Leo will probably die of influenza or snake-bite.... And Mikey would eat him during the winter to prevent starvation. LOL! :tlol:

[IndigoErth]

Haaahahaha

Too late. But it was me with the snakes. Can't keep me out of trouble.


I forgot how to hunt on this thing though, might try again. I'm surprised we didn't all die by starvation.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

That's friggin' hilarious!! And why am I not surprised? I never played it myself, but my hubby said one of his settlers once got mauled by a DEER! :teek: And they look so peaceful and gentle.... :tconfuse:

[Netkeeper]

Now you guys are making me want to try. I played ORGAN Trail a few weeks ago and I'm god awful at it, but to make the experience authentic I need to play actual Oregon Trail.

Who thinks I should do a screencap liveblog of Organ Trail and name everyone after forum members here?

[IndigoErth]

Mauled by a deer? :lol:

It's right here online via archive.org if you ever want to play around with it.
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990


Tried it a second time, taking the banker suggestion and found the hunting. ;) I of course got measles and died after the first two months. Six months without me, the guys all made it to Oregon! Yay! lol Although Mikey had it rough - Cholera, dysentery, broken arm, measles. Donnie only broke a leg. And Raph got lost, apparently for five days. :tlol: Leo was fine.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Mauled by a deer? :lol:

It's right here online via archive.org if you ever want to play around with it.
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990


Tried it a second time, taking the banker suggestion and found the hunting. ;) I of course got measles and died after the first two months. Six months without me, the guys all made it to Oregon! Yay! lol Although Mikey had it rough - Cholera, dysentery, broken arm, measles. Donnie only broke a leg. And Raph got lost, apparently for five days. :tlol: Leo was fine.


Heh, I just might. And Raph, again, doesn't surprise me. Doesn't he go off on his own a lot anyway? Of course he'd get lost, LOL!!! (Why does poor Mikey always seem to end up with the most crap? Just sayin....)

[Leo656]

Are you guys remembering to adjust your pace? If you always plow ahead, or go at a snail's crawl, you'll screw up. Keep switching it up, and don't rest at towns longer than necessary. If someone's sick or exhausted, though, stay an extra day or two. Make sure everyone's got two sets of clothes, and you HAVE to get good at hunting bear. Just one of those will set you up for a good while, you should never have to pay for food in towns.

Love me some OT, son. :tgrin:

[IndigoErth]

Actually that second try I'd left it at a steady pace and filling food rations, rested here and there enough, and had fairly decent score in the end as well. Of course I'm sure it helped that I died after only two months, leaving them with spare food and clothing. :tlol: A third similar attempt went much worse.

(Made into top ten now, but it doesn't keep it, darn. lol)

[Leo656]

Sometimes you just gotta go slow, especially when it's hot and/or someone is sick. You might lose a day but it can save someone. Y'know, when the game decides to let you. OT cheats. I said it.

[CyberCubed]

I honestly wonder what it would be like if the internet was common in the 80's and 90's like it is now. Can you imagine discussing 80's and 90's era shows as they were happening on the internet?

Talking about now classic stuff like Batman: TAS, Star Trek Next Generation, TMNT, classic Simpsons episodes...but as they were airing? I wonder what the general opinion would have been then before we knew they would become "classics."

[Leo656]

They wouldn't be, they'd be cancelled after two seasons max due to constant nerd-rage over pretty much Nothing.

[DarthRaphael]

I was introduced to the internet when I started college in 95.
Netscape on a Mac using Webcrawler as a search engine.
I also used the SUN Solaris (unix) workstations since I was in engineering. Still used Netscape.
I had my own website hosted from my student account. Written in notepad. Basic html.
A lot of websites were hosted from student accounts back then.
I bought my first desktop PC, a 486DX2 with a 14.4 modem. Web browsing was painful.
A friend in school was given a 386 and we used it to visit dial-up BBS boards. Saw my first 'web' porn that way.
I got cable modem based broadband when I moved out of my parent's house I think in 99.

[JayDubs]

I remember when to have Facebook you needed a university email address. Once they opened it up to anyone and everyone and my parents signed up I dropped it.

[billbot85]

I remember when to have Facebook you needed a university email address. Once they opened it up to anyone and everyone and my parents signed up I dropped it.

Ha, I remember that! You could only upload one photo, too.

I remember the early days of the internet, and the pains of dial-up. Although I don't think my family got internet until around 1999/2000. We had a Dell PC with Windows ME (lol, Mistake Edition) up until 2005 when the hard drive finally fried. Then we finally switched over to Comcrap.

When we had dial-up, we installed this cool program called Call Wave, which basically served an an answering machine for anyone who tried to call us while we were online. Does anyone else here remember having something like that? :tlol:

[BubblyShell22]

When I did Oregon Trail, I'd often name my settlers after Disney characters mostly the 101 Dalmatians cast because I was obsessed with that movie. Either that, or I'd name them after my friends. Man, I miss that game!

[Prowler]

I think one of the things that immediately fascinated me about the Internet was being able to talk to people from all over the globe. Remember when you had to travel to actually talk to people from other countries or hell, other regions? And yes, I know people had penpals back in the 80s/90s, but you had to fins them in magazines or something and had to send them letters...which costed money and would take a while to reach their destination.

Another thing that immediately caught my attention was all the different communities out there and how easy it was to find people who were into the same cartoons and video games as I was. No matter how niche a movie/tv show/video game/book/etc. is, you'll always find some people out there who are into it with a quick google search.

I know I'm stating very obvious things, but think how much we take all of this for granted nowadays.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Yeah, I was pretty amazed the first time I got online and discovered that there were so many different site for anything and everything. I was so excited when I first found the Marvel site and joined. That was the first forum I ever joined, back in 2002.

[CyberCubed]

As a kid the first websites I visited regularly was ninjaturtles.com (Mirage's official site), and N64.com which was IGN's N64 site.

Here I am over 15 years later...and I still visit ninja turtles and videogame websites.

[Prowler]

As a kid the first websites I visited regularly was ninjaturtles.com (Mirage's official site), and N64.com which was IGN's N64 site.

Here I am over 15 years later...and I still visit ninja turtles and videogame websites.
I don't even remember what were the first websites I visited. It was 15 years ago, after all. I believe yahoo was the first search engine I've ever used, though. Didn't hear of google until 2003 and me and many others disliked it because we found that it didn't give very specific results. Remember when search engines actually only searched solely for what you typed in the search bar?

As for Ninjaturtles.com... I discovered it back in 2001 or 2002, not sure. I kinda miss that place. Learnt a lot about Mirage turtles there. And it was also there where I found out all the Turtle action figures that had been released and when the 2k3 show was gonna air in my country. Also, I read the first 7 mirage issues there and remember being shocked at the first issue of TMNT.

And btw, remember the comic strip? i used to read it all the time and there was a point where I even saved 90% of those strips, but then I ended up losing/deleting them. Is there any collection with all those strips or something?

[Wesley]

I don't even remember what were the first websites I visited. It was 15 years ago, after all. I believe yahoo was the first search engine I've ever used, though. Didn't hear of google until 2003 and me and many others disliked it because we found that it didn't give very specific results. Remember when search engines actually only searched solely for what you typed in the search bar?

As for Ninjaturtles.com... I discovered it back in 2001 or 2002, not sure. I kinda miss that place. Learnt a lot about Mirage turtles there. And it was also there where I found out all the Turtle action figures that had been released and when the 2k3 show was gonna air in my country. Also, I read the first 7 mirage issues there and remember being shocked at the first issue of TMNT.


It was 15 years ago as well when I had my first real experience of the Internet (I was 13 at the time). The first websites I visited were Gamefaqs, The Technodrome and Sonic HQ I think. Yahoo was the first search engine I used too. I didn't hear of Google until around 2005 and didn't switch to it until a few years after that.

I discovered ninjaturtles.com and tv.com in 2005 and thought that they were good websites. I liked the episode guides and trivia on both websites. I didn't browse ninjaturtles much, but I liked the interview with Jeffrey Scott regarding season 10 of the OT.

[Prowler]

It was 15 years ago as well when I had my first real experience of the Internet (I was 13 at the time). The first websites I visited were Gamefaqs, The Technodrome and Sonic HQ I think. Yahoo was the first search engine I used too. I didn't hear of Google until around 2005 and didn't switch to it until a few years after that.

I discovered ninjaturtles.com and tv.com in 2005 and thought that they were good websites. I liked the episode guides and trivia on both websites. I didn't browse ninjaturtles much, but I liked the interview with Jeffrey Scott regarding season 10 of the OT.
Oh Tv.com! That place was a pretty great database for tv shows and cartoons back in the mid-00s.

Back in 2001-2002 I was messing around a lot in geocities and made several crappy pages on it. But hey, it was the closest thing a kid like me could get to having his own "website" :lol:. Also anyone remember all those websites offering hit counters and guestbooks for your own websites and webpages? :lol:

I've been visiting a few media websites for several years now, and it's interesting noticing how often they've changed layout in the past decade. When it comes to videogames, i still remember when people actually valued IGN ratings.

I must have discovered fanfiction around 2003-2004. Obviously I knew people wrote stories involving their favorite characters, I mean how didn't do that at least once in their lifetime? So when i first discovered FF.net I was pretty excited. too bad most fics sucked or were full of odd character pairings and stuff like that. I did upload a few short stories there back then, though, but they were pretty bad :P

YouTube... discovered it in mid-2006 and was instantly hooked. Also, is dailymotion still around? that place was GREAT for older wrestling matches since DM never deleted them unlike Youtube after google bought it. And speaking of youtube, so many updates it's had.I believe my favorite layout was back in 2007 or so. I also remember when I got into AVGN. Watched his first video back in late 2006 when his latest one was Friday the 13th(I think). Hard to believe he's still around and has had a movie even.

I also used to browse tv tropes a lot back in 2007.

[Wesley]

Oh Tv.com! That place was a pretty great database for tv shows and cartoons back in the mid-00s.

I've been visiting a few media websites for several years now, and it's interesting noticing how often they've changed layout in the past decade. When it comes to videogames, i still remember when people actually valued IGN ratings.

I must have discovered fanfiction around 2003-2004. Obviously I knew people wrote stories involving their favorite characters, I mean how didn't do that at least once in their lifetime? So when i first discovered FF.net I was pretty excited. too bad most fics sucked or were full of odd character pairings and stuff like that. I did upload a few short stories there back then, though, but they were pretty bad :P

YouTube... discovered it in mid-2006 and was instantly hooked. Also, is dailymotion still around? that place was GREAT for older wrestling matches since DM never deleted them unlike Youtube after google bought it. And speaking of youtube, so many updates it's had.I believe my favorite layout was back in 2007 or so. I also remember when I got into AVGN. Watched his first video back in late 2006 when his latest one was Friday the 13th(I think). Hard to believe he's still around and has had a movie even.

I also used to browse tv tropes a lot back in 2007.

I used to go to a lot of video game websites such as gamesradar and ign in the early 00s. I discovered fanfiction.net in 2005, but didn't think much of it. I liked some of the Beyblade fan fiction, though. I was never interested in writing fanfic toon myself.

I discovered Wikipedia in 2005 and thought it was a great website with a lot of detailed info on stuff. I never heard of TV tropes until a few years ago and I think it's also great.

[Prowler]

I used to go to a lot of video game websites such as gamesradar and ign in the early 00s. I discovered fanfiction.net in 2005, but didn't think much of it. I liked some of the Beyblade fan fiction, though. I was never interested in writing fanfic toon myself.

I discovered Wikipedia in 2005 and thought it was a great website with a lot of detailed info on stuff. I never heard of TV tropes until a few years ago and I think it's also great.
I don't remember when I discovered wikipedia... 2007 maybe?

Btw, anyone remember a big TMNT fansite called Ninja Turtles Network?

[BubblyShell22]

I remember Ninja Turtles Network, though it wasn't as notable as this one was. I discovered FF.Net in 2004 and joined up to write my own stories. Man, I feel old, but I've never looked back and loved it. Also discovered Stealthy Stories a bit later and signed up there, too as well as this site, though I was a lurker here before I became a member.