Earliest Internet Memory
Posted by Imaginary-Bunch-460@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 71 comments
My earliest Internet memory was going to the computer lab at school with a row of new iMacs. The assignment for the day was to set up an email address. The teacher misremembered the name of the email site, so they directed us all to “Hotpoint dot com” rather than Hotmail. She was close, at least. Classroom full of confused kids looking at budget-friendly cooktops and ovens rather than an email provider. That was my first time being online.
Quirky_Dog5869@reddit
Weirdly enough I can't really much else than using Napster. When I got to Uni I got my first mail adress and we actually had a test where we needed to search for dome answers online using Alta Vista.
Sweet-Sale-7303@reddit
My first intro to the internet was compuserve in the early 90's. Right after that we got dial up Aol at home. I actually used a Green and Black screen Apple IIe in first grade.
Logical-Cherry9395@reddit
Mine was the EIGHTIES, man. Tandy 1000 and Compuserv.
Moxie_Stardust@reddit
We actually had an Apple IIc at home, I think we got it in 83 or 84, it had the small monochrome monitor, but sometimes we got to hook it up to the TV to play games in color.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Compuserve usernames used to be all numbers
Yikes0nBikez@reddit
What if I told you ALL user names are just numbers?
aravarth@reddit
Ones and zeroes, specifically!
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
bcentsale@reddit
My elementary school got a single, color screen, multimedia computer in the library when I was in 5th or 6th grade. Up until then it was all Apple IIe's. Middle school had 2 separate, fully networked, Mac ll labs. It was my first time ever using more than a command line.
Damn_you_taco@reddit
Prodigy dams
LockPleasant8026@reddit
Those Imac PCs were released in 1998
Confident-Cellist-25@reddit
Yeah, this computer was freshman year of college for me
Taanistat@reddit
My High School has a computer lab full of brand new Powermac 6100s freshman year. I would have went online for the first time sometime around September of 1995, learning the basics in computer science class. Then the drafting lab had a handful of IBMs running Windows 3.11. We used those for blueprinting and rudimentary 3d modeling...I made a sweet Scandinavian style minimalist house for my final project that year.
Prior to that we had various Macintosh models in school from Apple II's to Mac 2's and Quadras. Apple had the contract for my school district. No internet.
Christmas of 1995 I got my first computer. It was an IBM Aptiva with a Pentium 100mhz processor, 8mb ram and I think a 600mb hdd. This was the machine I used to get online through a local ISP.
Kellzy1212@reddit
We had it on a Commodore 64. It was for parents work and kids games. I had a design program for it, so i made signs and banners and such. Then it was upgraded to a windows 95 Compaq, and we used the AOL disks to chat or look at very basic storefronts. I created a Geocities page at school around the same time.
Grammarhead-Shark@reddit
I was aware that internet existed from as early as... 1994? My hometown was an early adopter and the local paper would actually talk about it a lot.
But the first time I got on it was... 1996.
School library, teacher giving us 'how to use the internet' lessons. Took us to a couple of random sites. Have us send an email then let us loose. The first thing I did was look up Melrose Place Spoilers. (Because it was freaking 1996!)
SevereDeparture739@reddit
Maybe 1996-ish. Using the AOL free minute discs. Chat rooms. AOL progz... Punters. Band fan pages. Listening to sound clips of albums on CDNow to find new music. Using Audiogalaxy to download mp3s before Napster.
HostilePile@reddit
iMacs were college for me. I actually got that bondi blue one for myself when I went away my 2nd year. High school was filled with dells and Microsoft 😩
Roland-Of-Eld-19@reddit
Playing MUDs in 1993 was my first online experience
https://i.redd.it/es4ycj1k71yg1.gif
VVrayth@reddit
One of my earliest ones is logging onto my hour-a-day account on a 2400 baud modem, and taking like half that time to download a single JPG of Anna Nicole Smith from Playboy. I can still see that picture in my mind's eye.
NoItsNotIronic@reddit
My first internet memory is AOL keyword NICK back in 1996 or so. Ah the chiptunes version of the Hey Arnold theme just popped back into my head.
Yikes0nBikez@reddit
Oh. Your modem was inside the computer and didn't have little red lights flickering?... fuck, I'm in the wrong sub.
Combat__Crayon@reddit
Your modem didn’t require putting the phone handset on it?
Just kidding I’m not that old.
ST_Lawson@reddit
I do have one of those (for a C64), but I aquired it later for retro-nostalgia. My first one was one of those little beige boxes that were either 14.4 or 28k...can't remember which. I do remember that stepping up to 56k felt like a huge increase in speed.
FiveCrappedPee@reddit
Oh you silly youngin. If you only knew what a 1200 baud modem was, and then to upgrade to a 2400 like a boss.
Now excuse me I have to watch murder she wrote and my other programs.
LazarusDark@reddit
My dad kept his C64 on a desk in my room from the time I was about 5/6 to about 11/12, he worked in the IT for a small regional bank, and sometimes he'd have to come in in the middle of the night and get on and remote into the bank server to do something, it was super annoying as I was a light sleeper. A very atypical experience in the mid-80s I'm quite sure. I couldn't get online with it myself though, just play the games. Then we got a DOS/Win 3.11 PC when I was about 11 or 12 and had Compuserve on it and I could get on any time (if my stepmom didn't kick me off the phone line), but the hours were limited of course. Then AOL on a Win95 Packard Hell in 95, about 14yo I guess. I remember having a 14.4 modem first and then remember dad upgrading to 28.8 and much later 56k but don't recall the exact timeline when all that happened.
fromthedarqwaves@reddit
I had a built in modem on my laptop in the mid 90s but it was too slow to work. Im not sure if it was even meant for the internet. So i bought a 56k external modem. It was the future.
purpleteenageghost@reddit
massunderestmated@reddit
I had one that plugged into the cartridge slot of my commodore.
PoolRamen@reddit
modems? in my day it was struggling to align the cassette tape head
DustedGorilla82@reddit
Damn. I was rocking prodigy with a 14.4 kbs modem in 1993.
HomelessKitchenCat@reddit
I was rocking Prodigy in 1993 too, but it was Fat of the land on my CD player
misonotso@reddit
I still remember my prodigy email 😂
B_Williams_4010@reddit
Looking up Mystery Science Theater 3000 and finding an image of Crow T Robot sporting a 16-inch dong.
KBO_Winston@reddit
I asked the teacher running study hall if I could go to the library instead to research red dwarf on the new internet-connected computers they'd set up.
Not my fault they assumed I meant the type of star and not the British sitcom I'd just started watching on PBS.
Fickle_Cranberry1014@reddit
Our school librarian would open up the dial up internet so she could show us her CD-ROM Encarta..
herozero@reddit
My mom was put in charge of the computer labs at the local community college and my first day playing on the internet I found an X-Men BBS and got into an argument with a guy over if Star Trek or X-Men was better. Pretty good first exposure for what was to come honestly. Also, if that person is here, you made a lot of cognizant points in favor of Star Trek which I’ve since come to share. I was definitely the problem that day.
Slinkwyde@reddit
A Starfleet captain mind melding with Charles Xavier? Make it so.
Crans10@reddit
I was at a cousins durning Thanksgiving and they showed me the internet. We used Gopher. It was a small older mac all in one like a Macintosh Plus. This was before the World Wide Web.
drfinale@reddit
In 10th grade we purchased a friend's old Packard Bell 386. We bought a 56K modem card and installed it. We had AOL for about a week but only ever got busy signals from our local exchange so we canceled it. After that, we got Juno email and had that alone for a solid year before getting Bell Atlantic (now Verizon)
CSWorldChamp@reddit
lol my dad was a computer programmer, so we were using 1600 baud dial up in I think the late 80’s…
yeuzinips@reddit
Definitely high school classes that used the computer lab in the library. That and finding html chat rooms on Yahoo! at my best friend's house after school. Good times
whamburglar@reddit
I was in Jr high school. We were working in pairs and directed to go to the White House website.
My classmate types in ~.com instead of ~.gov
The teacher walks by as a black background loads and gifs of people having gay sex fill the screen.
She then announces to the class while walking away "Please type in the address EXACTLY as it appears on your sheets!"
MajesticEmergency@reddit
I used a Macintosh SE and 2400 baud dialup modem to go on AOL. Using this thing and going on AOL was my first experience, in like 1993. I got in big trouble for going over the 10 hours and incurring extra hours at $2.95 per hour haha
gule_gule@reddit
Built in Lode Runner also
hacksawomission@reddit
This was me too!
Imaginary-Bunch-460@reddit (OP)
That’s incredible. I guess I have no right to complain about our 14.4k connection anymore, do I?
Redditor_Reddington@reddit
Mine:
Mudcreek47@reddit
library in 12th grade at school. Had to get on webcrawler or yahoo via Netscap I think but it's been ages. This would've been 95 or 96.
Crabcakefrosti@reddit
Finding photos of Suzanne Sommers topless
Moxie_Stardust@reddit
Learning to set up Trumpet Winsock to connect to the local node. Mosaic was my first browser, I actually used some other one that was weird, you opened up a website like you were opening a file, rather than having an address bar. Not long after I got Netscape Navigator. Used to make money in high school going over to people's houses and getting them online, knew enough modem commands by heart that I could connect by typing them in (useful for troubleshooting).
edwardturnerlives@reddit
Mine is in 7th grade science class my teacher helped me write a DOS prompt email to Newton's Apple. 1989?
xkonerox@reddit
You’re not in the right sub my dude.
fromthedarqwaves@reddit
I remember AOL and the chat rooms. I’m pretty sure yahoo came later. I don’t recall compuserve. AOL and later AOL IM was the shit.
Rhapsodyingloom@reddit
Bouncing on my Dad’s knee in front of his Amiga, dialed into BBS or Usenet. Him reading about UFOs or Bigfoot probably.
WickedlyAvocado@reddit
I was asked to homecoming on AIM on this very machine… propped on my bed with roses around it. My boyfriend and I messaged a lot of- sigh… the good old days
bgva@reddit
We used these to edit our college yearbooks. And because I broke my Internet LAN card (showing my age big time here), I spent a lotta time in that office using the Internet. Kinda miss those days.
BoringExperience5345@reddit
A rich kid I knew had it really early and invited me over to check it out. I remember going on the Pepsi website and the Domino’s Pizza website. You could not do anything on them but read some sparse text. I said, then what? He said you look at the pages. And I said why is it different from looking at a can of Pepsi and he said because it comes into the computer through a phone line. I just felt bad this kid’s family was paying so much for this. You couldn’t order food you couldn’t go shopping. The Internet was just a boring slideshow that took ages to load then. Little did I know…
kinetic_cheese@reddit
My sophomore year of high school, so maybe around 1995? My math teacher was a bit of a tech nerd and she ordered and installed the very first modem in our high school. For a while the computer in her office was the only computer in our entire high school that was online. I remember one day she took our class to her office to show us something called "the World Wide Web." All of the web pages she showed us were nothing but text and I remember thinking it looked extremely boring 😆.
DisgruntledTexan@reddit
My rich friends had Macs
RickHuf@reddit
Aim at my friends houses. Or yahoo chatrooms at my aunt's. She had a gateway lol.
Emannuelle-in-space@reddit
1996, 5th grade teacher says he got the internet on the library computer and we’re gonna spend computer class taking turns on it. I wasted my turn waiting for the graphics and images on the sportscenter website to load.
First Internet interaction was a couple years later, at a rich friend’s house. We went on AOL chat rooms and pretended to be ‘hot babes’ and flirted with grown men for a while. We were both straight boys. Weird times.
bcentsale@reddit
I was a freshman in college when the iMac was released. My HS computer lab only replaced their Windows 3.1 lab midway through my senior year. My first exposure to the World Wide Web was on our Macintosh IIsi via AOL on a 14.4 SCSI modem in late 93, but before that I was dialing in to bulletin boards on my uncle's 386.
jacabasselope@reddit
I had experience with dial-up modems and bulletin board stuff when I was younger. The first time I saw the Web was in 1992, when my 7th grade computer science teacher demonstrated Prodigy on the overhead projector. It blew all of our little, fucking minds.
withgreatpower@reddit
Mr Miller's 5th grade after school computer club, 1995. He let us watch him log on to America Online and told us why the modem was screeching then showed us the different channels and how to find pen pals. It was a preview of a lesson he was putting together for the full class but he let the real nerds get a sneak preview.
SubMikeD@reddit
Sweet summer child. This was the NEW fancy internet!
Benzinni1@reddit
It was 92 and I someone a teacher knew brought a computer and modem to school. We downloaded a picture of a terminator from T2 and was blown away we were connected to a server in the Netherlands. I thought it was wild I was connected to a computer across the Atlantic.
martapap@reddit
My friend's dad ran a public access tv network and a local isp provider and he always had whatever was the newest technology first. So I remember through visiting my friend seeing a cell phone for the first time. It was one of those huge car phone things. I also remember accessing the internet too at his office/studio where we used to hang out. That was early 90s. But I don't remember actually doing anything on it. I just remember he had it.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
AOL on a packard bell and asking people from "Germany" in a chatroom if they knew what happened in WWII. The playground taught me to that point that "other countries lied about their history."
rangeghost@reddit
Our grade school had one internet capable computer, in the library, around 95'-'96.
When my friend and I had our turn with the library aide showing us how it worked, we chose to look up a website with supposed alien/UFO photos.
throwawayhbgtop81@reddit
My school had so many of these.
Top_Resolve_107@reddit
I remember they had these computers in our school lab that we would get to play educational games like Carmen Sandiego. I enjoyed it because it was right after physical ED and we got to sit in the Air Conditioning playing video games.