ravinlunachick Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 online? :D I chatted with some guys from the Air Force Academy on a BBS back in...oh...1994 or 1995. I didn't get on the World Wide Web until 1997. I remember walking into the computer lab at the university, all nervous and sure that everyone ELSE knew what they were doing! ROFL I was curious, but I only knew of one website--a local TV channel--because they used to spell out their address all the time. So, I clicked on Netscape Navigator and carefully typed it out. I was amazed! Shortly thereafter, I learned to use Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. My world was never the same again. :tongue_smilie: This afternoon, I realized that the very first thing I ever watched on YouTube was Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." What about you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChristusG Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 My parents got the internet in 1997, when I was 17. We had AOL so pretty much all I did was hang out in the chat rooms. I liked looking up people's profiles to see if we had anything in common. I did a search for guys in my city, near my age, with the word "God" in their profiles. Some guys came up. I chose one in particular because I liked what his profile said. I IM'ed him and he blew me off. Said he was chatting with some other girls. :glare: He's now my DH. :D I don't easily give up. I bet my parents never knew that when they got the internet, a few months later I'd meet my future DH. We've been married nearly 12 years now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annie G Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Dd was born in July 1992 and Prodigy had a board for babies born July 92- we hung out for years there, and several came to visit us and we visited others. We traded holiday ornaments, talked birthday parties, and just had a fabulous time. It was a great introduction to the internet, at a time when I really needed some friends, because a week after dd was born we moved 800 miles away from our families. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kathryn Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Oh, geez, I don't really even remember. Mid-90s, something about gopher? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tntgoodwin Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 1995ish, 5th grade or so, using Altavista, Lycos, and Dogpile to research Josef Mengele for a Holocaust project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hypatia. Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 I went to college in 93 and was hanging out one evening with a group from my old high school. One guy was visiting from a different university and mentioned that everyone had written him back but me, then I said that I never got a letter from him. They realized that I hadn't learned how to access my email account and promptly took me down to the computer lab! That was the beginning of the end, and many many skipped classes quickly followed. :D I would chat with my other friends (usually we were skipping class and hanging out in the computer lab together) and playing text-based online games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ravinlunachick Posted January 18, 2012 Author Share Posted January 18, 2012 Oh, geez, I don't really even remember. Mid-90s, something about gopher? Oh yes, I used GOPHER! I worked in a college library, and had access to GOPHER and USEnet. I remember the Technical Services Librarian was so happy with himself for getting cards printed up with the library's number-address for the rare patron who asked. Our kids are going to think we're so weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milovany Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 I was a journalism major in college, graduating in 1991. This was before the world wide web, but in my last quarter or two while I was the editor of the campus paper, we got this new, wild service where we could dial into a place across the country from our computers and have them send a comic strip to our printer! We didn't have to just use our in-house comic guy anymore (who created pretty weirdee comic strips). We were all like --> :001_huh: that technology allowed for such crazy, crazy things. :tongue_smilie::lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy in NH Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 In 1991 I used Prodigy to email back and forth with my father (in CA) while I was in college (in NH). Does that count? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SKL Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 I don't remember either. My guess is that I first had to use the internet for work and at some point got curious enough to venture onto the Web. Probably sometme around 2005-ish I started to go online about once a day to check news and Hotmail and such. I started using it more recreationally around 2007 or 2008. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sputterduck Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 91 or 92 we had Prodigy. I was 11 or 12. I can't remember what I did so much other than play Gemstone III a text based game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belacqua Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 I still remember the first e-mail I ever received (on CompuServe, no less): "Nude + Cute = Newt" It was from a friend who had, as far as I know, no particular fondness for Mr. Gingrich or unclothed amphibians, so I never did figure out what the heck it meant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustybug Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 My parents got the internet in 1997, when I was 17. We had AOL so pretty much all I did was hang out in the chat rooms. I liked looking up people's profiles to see if we had anything in common. I did a search for guys in my city, near my age, with the word "God" in their profiles. Some guys came up. I chose one in particular because I liked what his profile said. I IM'ed him and he blew me off. Said he was chatting with some other girls. :glare: He's now my DH. :D I don't easily give up. I bet my parents never knew that when they got the internet, a few months later I'd meet my future DH. We've been married nearly 12 years now. That's a neat story! The first time I used the internet was in middle school. We had a WebTV (do they still make those?). I used to chat in chat rooms until pervy dudes tried to make moves on me. ( I was 13!) I also made my own Buffy the Vampire Slayer fansite on geocities. lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GailV Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Oh yes, I used GOPHER! I worked in a college library, and had access to GOPHER and USEnet. I remember the Technical Services Librarian was so happy with himself for getting cards printed up with the library's number-address for the rare patron who asked. Our kids are going to think we're so weird. Usenet -- yes! I couldn't even remember what it was called! But I don't remember Gopher. I, too, was working at a college library back in the early 90s, and remember Usenet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ravinlunachick Posted January 18, 2012 Author Share Posted January 18, 2012 I remember getting a gazillionty AOL discs in the mail, but no one I knew had it because the only numbers available were all long distance. Ha! That will be yet another term we have to explain to our kids! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NanceXToo Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 It was pretty cool. I was a total AOL addict for a while. I was a "regular" in a particular chatroom where I met a lot of totally cool people including a girl who lived a half hour away from me and became my best friend for a long time. She and I did quite a few road trips for some "bashes" where we'd get together with a bunch of other "regs" from the room and got to see new places and meet the people we chatted with for probably a four year period or so all the time. We both became chat room hosts, and I was a message board moderator for a while, too. I had a lot of great experiences there. I ended up moving from NY to PA and she ended up moving from NY to FL but we're still Facebook friends with each other and some of the other people we knew back in our AOL days. That was probably like 15 years ago now that that all started! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elegantlion Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 I don't remember, early 90s. I worked in an office when we all got computers, no internet access though. I think by that time e-mail was more common, you'd get a AOL disc in the mail every week. We had internet at home by then, with some giant monitor that took up more space than the TV. Btw: reading this makes me feel old, some of y'all are really just babes. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
higginszoo Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 1990 ... in college. I got email, and then about this time in '91, I started working for the computer center and had to learn how to use Usenet, which allowed me to talk to other college kids across the country while working in the computer labs, they were my company on those 10 pm -1 am shifts in the basement of the engineering building. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KidsHappen Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Definitely by 1993, maybe as early as 1992. We had AOL and my hubby and brother used to play one of the very first MMOGs called Yserbius. My brother's email address is still the same as his old player name. I belonged to a board that had the same format as our old board that was for trading McDonald's Happy Meal Toys which was a big hobby of mine at the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tap Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 I was first online in 1995-6. I worked for a computer software company. We had internet in our home shortly after that. I used it some, but didn't use it extensively until I started homeschooling around 2004 or so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awisha. Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 These stories are so interesting. I first encountered the internet around 96 when I was in Grade 5 at school. I remember it taking such. a. loooooooong. time for the webpage the teacher wanted to show us to load. I didn't start getting into the net fulltime/become addicted until 2001/2002 when my b/f at the time was a complete and utter computer geek. I still have my hotmail account from '02 and I have FB friends who are from my first forum back in '02 too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thescrappyhomeschooler Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 It was probably 93 or 94 and I was dating this guy I worked with. One night his roommate started telling us all about AOL. I didn't really get what he was talking about. Then somehow he showed it to us, but I don't exactly remember it. We must have gone with him somewhere. I mostly remember the conversation about it at their apartment and thinking it was kind of cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThisIsTheDay Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 <<<blush>>> I was a little nervous to open this post, so I waited until my kid couldn't see the screen. 1996? at the library. I used Alta Vista to search for real estate and found realtor.com. I grew up in Silicon Valley, and my stepdad was really big on personal computers even back in the 80s. My sister has worked for a dozen or more internet startups (Mozilla, anyone?), and she used to walk me through a lot of things and encourage me to be brave! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amyable Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Btw: reading this makes me feel old, some of y'all are really just babes. :) :iagree: I went to one of the first universities to give computers to every incoming freshman (back in the dinosaur ages of 1987 :lol: ) I think I've been addicted ever since. :tongue_smilie: My friends didn't understand most of what they needed to do for class, etc, with the computers so I was always their resident geek. :D I even traded up to a (huge - text only bluescreen) laptop when I was a senior and the current freshman were getting them. I remember BBSs and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember the name of. I think computers were instrumental in having a long distance relationship with my dh. We didn't meet online, but did email each other most days through senior year of college and grad school. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nukeswife Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I had moved back in with my parents because I needed back surgery the year before they put in a second phone line for Dial up. They finally got it in late Feb 1997. I met my dh in and AOL chat room March 3rd 1997, it was within a week of me first getting on the net. I met him in person in April 1997, got my engagement ring via certified US mail in May 1997 and we were married on Friday, June 13th 1997. I guess you could say that almost 15 years ago the internet changed my life. Now the real question is, should I have invited Al Gore to the wedding since he "invented" the net? :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DawnM Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I got internet in 1994 right before we got married. Does AOL still have chat rooms? I remember those. Dawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kalanamak Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 USENET foodie groups. Alt.gourmand which got sealed up and many moved over to rec.food.cooking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I went and found all kinds of alt. newsgroups for all the crazy geek stuff I was into. It was lovely. Probably '93ish when we got internet at home when I was a teen. I remember around 91 or 92, there was a teacher at my high school who was infamous for giving these bizarre trivia questions for INSANE extra credit. A friend was in his class and desperately trying to figure out the answer to one of these and I was like, you have that Prodigy thing, you should ask on there. She did, got the answer almost immediately, and then got the extra credit and the teacher was shocked. You couldn't do that sort of thing today. I remember it as a sort of sea change moment to me that the future and information was going to be really different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jenny in Atl Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 USENET foodie groups. Alt.gourmand which got sealed up and many moved over to rec.food.cooking. Ah, brings back memories... my first desktop, a Gateway. I still remember the cow patterned box. 93'ish, linked in through GSU servers. There were lots of very interesting Alt. groups out there. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 online? :D I chatted with some guys from the Air Force Academy on a BBS back in...oh...1994 or 1995. I didn't get on the World Wide Web until 1997. I remember walking into the computer lab at the university, all nervous and sure that everyone ELSE knew what they were doing! ROFL I was curious, but I only knew of one website--a local TV channel--because they used to spell out their address all the time. So, I clicked on Netscape Navigator and carefully typed it out. I was amazed! Shortly thereafter, I learned to use Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. My world was never the same again. :tongue_smilie: This afternoon, I realized that the very first thing I ever watched on YouTube was Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." What about you? The very first thing I found to do on the web was the forum called "Parent Soup" at iVillage. So, I guess you could say it was a gateway drug and now I've moved up to WTM forums. :tongue_smilie: That was 1997, when my first child was a baby. Does anyone remember Parent Soup? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ottakee Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I remember when I was in college that my younger brother at home got the internet (or whatever form it was called then) and went to WHITE HOUSE . COM (instead of GOV) and showed my mother how "neat" the internet was.......until the website actually came up and there was a horrified teenage boy sitting there with his mother watching the website come up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myeightkiddies Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 The very first thing I found to do on the web was the forum called "Parent Soup" at iVillage. So, I guess you could say it was a gateway drug and now I've moved up to WTM forums. :tongue_smilie: That was 1997, when my first child was a baby. Does anyone remember Parent Soup? I do! It was my first "chat" experience. I remember refreshing the page waiting for the new posts. Oops! Actually it was Parent's Place that I went to first then I found Parent Soup. I loved those two sites. Dial-up was so slow too. My first experience was BBS games way back when. I did a couple months of AOL. After that it was dial-up then cable when it became available in my area. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SheilaZ Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 For personalmentertainment? Mid i90's. DH was working Internet stuff for the army. I was on the parenting boards in ivillage and using ICQ. Does anyone use that anymore. I remember when DH was so proud of his 56k-flex modem. (sigh) In college, our lab shared research in the baby Internet but that wasn't open to all people. You had to log in from the college. When I was teaching in the early 90's we'd use gopher to find lesson ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SheilaZ Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Ah, brings back memories... my first desktop, a Gateway. I still remember the cow patterned box. 93'ish, linked in through GSU servers. There were lots of very interesting Alt. groups out there. ;) When DH and I moved from our apartment to a house, his office had just gotten new Gateways...which he took for our packing. We had cowspot boxes around the house for years. I think there are still a couple in my MIL's basement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs Mungo Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 My uncle is a computer programmer. So, I was posting on BBs back when you had to put the handset for your rotary phone on a receiver. But, on the Internet as we know it now? It was 1995 when dh and I got internet and home and I started posting on an AP email list (which was ready for a flamewar over anything at any time) and after my dd was born started posting on a baby board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twoxcell Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 My first experience online was at a sleep over with my SIL's sister. I was a young teenager and we got online with her older brother and tried to annoy people in a chat room. It was fairly innocent but I'm sure it wasn't the best idea.;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 1970, got to use the almost brand-new ARAPANET at an Engineering school open house at UCLA. I was 12. Using a terminal I was able to chat with someone at Stanford University, and to play chess over what would become "the Internet." It was way cool. I knew this was the future. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elinnea Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 1997 in Germany. Not many people had internet access at home back then but dh was finishing his grad degree at the Uni and I could use his pass to access the computers in the library. It was almost like a date night because once a week we'd take the tram across town and go "surfing" at the Uni library. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolphin Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 The internet was in 1994, sophomore year of college. One of my best friends went to England for a year and we found out about the whole e-mail thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ereks mom Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I visited the computer lab with dh when we were in college (sometime between 1980-1982) and he was taking a computer class. Dh had to write a program in BASIC and then go to the computer lab to run it. Nobody I knew had ever heard of a personal computer before; computers were something that only NASA had. LOL There were some advanced computer students in the lab that day working on a project. They were using a modem--they kind that you had to insert the telephone receiver into--in order to communicate with another university about 150 miles away. Our first personal computer was an Apple IIGS, bought in 1987 or 1988. We used it for word processing--no Internet. Dh was in seminary and had to write papers, and I was working as a teacher. About 9 or 10 years later, when dh was serving as associate pastor of a local church, there was a computer in the church office, and that was my first introduction to the Internet. We bought a an Internet-capable computer for our home sometime in 1998. We used it mainly for e-mail. Dial-up was so-o-o-o-o s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pamela H in Texas Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 (edited) Well, in about 1988/9, we had a videotel which was a box you used to connect online. There were bulletin boards, chat, games, and a number of other things. Of course, I was a teen so I used it to play. My parents told me not to give out my personal information, but...ummm....well, I did. Anyway, one of those guys ended up a good friend. Another ended up a boyfriend (including my prom date!). Later (like by 1996?), I was absolutely addicted to the AOL boards and chats. There were a couple homeschool ones back then. There were some parenting boards also, MomsOnline and ParentSoup (and I want to say another too). Edited January 19, 2012 by 2J5M9K Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeaganS Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I was first online around 1995 or so when I was in 4th or 5th grade. My family had a family-wide (aunts, uncles, etc.) chatroom thing that they set up. All I remember is that one of them discovered that this particular chatroom service would bleep out any swear word and kick the person out. They had fun trying to see what would happen. Being a non-swearing family, I thought it was hilarious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paige Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I was in 5 or 6thth grade and at my friend's house. I think it was 1991. She had this super cool new computer where she could actually type back and forth with a boy on the other side of the world. I think it was with Prodigy but I'm not sure. It was so cool to 2 preteen girls. We had to wait for a special time of day and we only sent or received a few lines but it was exciting. I went home and asked my Dad, who was a computer network guy, why we didn't have anything like it, and he said it was too expensive for us to do at home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandamom Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 I remember using Prodigy back around 1990 or so -- maybe 1991. I remember learning Basic or DOS (or something?!) when i was around 10 or so in the early 80's because my dad brought home a computer. So I've always been on the computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milovany Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 1970, got to use the almost brand-new ARAPANET at an Engineering school open house at UCLA. I was 12. Using a terminal I was able to chat with someone at Stanford University, and to play chess over what would become "the Internet." It was way cool. I knew this was the future. Bill Showoff!! :coolgleamA: :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindyg Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 It must have been around 1987. My husband told me about this new thing. You paid a monthly fee, and you could type up discussions with people all over the world who were interested in the same things you were. Did I think that was a good idea? I thought about it for a moment, then answered, "No." Crestfallen, he asked, "Why not?" "Well," I answered, "First of all, there's the monthly fee. Then, you're going to spend all this time answering other people's questions, for free. And it's going to take away from your work on your own studies and your own projects. You're going to get sucked into it. I just think it's a terrible idea." Dead silence. "Oh. Well. I already signed up for it," he admitted guiltily. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Showoff!! :coolgleamA: :lol: Then in 1979-80 when I was at Berkeley a friend loaned me an acoustic modem and a null terminal so I could log-on to the UNIX main-frame on campus from my flat in the Berkeley Hills. That was so cool! I had been spending too many nights (into wee hours) coding PASCAL (slowly) in the computer lab. Much better to burn the mid-night oil at home. That year USENET came on board and I must have been among the earliest users via the Berkeley main-frame. I had not thought about this in a long time. Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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