So I was inspired or something by the change of course of conversation in the 'Internet hell' thread and decided to see what everyone's first time on or exposure to the Internet was like. What year was it? If you remember, what kind of Internet connection did you use? Do you remember the journey to your first website? Y'know, crap like that.

For me, the first time I remember hearing about the Internet was probably about age 4 or 5 when my family was obsessed with playing the early Doom series (this was back in 1994, 1995). It might've been slightly later, even. But yes, I remember my brother, who is six years my senior, told me, "Did you know that people can play with each other... using their phone!?" My sisters and I were amazed by this concept. Did you call them to pretend you were playing together? Did your computer use your phone to call the other person? It seemed like witchcraft, and we largely ignored it for a few years.

When I was about 8, we got dial-up. I had been hearing about the Internet for a while then, mainly because back in 1997, 1998, I was collecting Ty Beanie Babies. They'd tell you to go to ty.com for more about Beanie Babies. I would tell my parents that I wanted to use the Internet because "I want to go to H-T-T-P-colon-slash-slash-slash[sic]-W-W-W-dot-T-Y-dot-com and get free Beanie Babies!" I sincerely thought that if I managed to get online that the Ty company would reward me by allowing me to order as many Beanie Babies as possible... for free.

But first, my dad sat us down one by one at the computer and told us, "Here, click on that and make an e-mail address so people can send you stuff electronically. I'll be here if you have questions." I had no idea what I was doing but I ended up making my first e-mail account and then looking over at him and saying, "Now can I go to [reciting the whole webpage again]!?"

And yeah. I'm sure that I probably wrote mine out a bit longer than most, but I just do that, I guess.

I got my internet connection in 2003. Back when I was a wee lad. My first question: "Can I visit Cartoon Network using this?" and the kindly person typed in the address into the URL and viola! If I remember correctly, it was a 64 KB/s connection (cannot imagine using that today.).

Yep, I've come a long way since then.

Back in 1985, I had to dial up to mainframe to get a 300 baud (bps) connection. 1200 baud modems were about 1000 bucks back then. Had to manually type in the handshaking requests and acknowledgements. Anyway, once there, I had to type in a series of commands that at the time I did not understand. It was to get some information from a computer, only it was in California. I did not know that. Now, being an IP Engineer, I understand what some of those commands were.

Flash forward to 1995 and I double clicked on a browser icon and then I was chatting with a buddy in Australia. Back then, chat was meaningful. Of course, by 1996 it fell apart.

I got my first computer in 94-95, but didn't have my own internet connection until about 2007.

As mentioned in the "Internet Hell" thread, my first time online was my niece showing me her favorite Disney site in about 2000. They had a 56K modem.

My own internet access was a coffee shop and a laptop from 2003-2005, sharing a neighbors connection 2005-2007, Sprint wireless device 2007-2011, Clear WiMax 4G 2011 to the present.

I don't remember much about it. All I know is that I reeeeeeaaaaalllyy svcked at Google-fu, or whatever the search engine was back then.

Seriously, I was almost completely incompetent.

Ahh, the days of having multiple search engines. My search engine of choice was Ask Jeeves at the time, since I thought the idea of a butler taking my inane search requests was way too cool.

My first foray to the internet was when I was in art school in the mid 90's, when I had a mandatory computer class. Although, I consider the whole experience rather impersonal since, not only I HATED computers, I didn't care what I was learning(I even forgot most of the "stuff" I did in that class)

My "official" experience in the internet, if you will, was in 2001. When I had to buy a pc for the first time to edit my artwork. The pc came with bloatware which included a free trial version of AOL. The rest is history. (I still have AOL mail, lol)

The early 2000's is when I had my first encounter with the internet by AOL dial-up and Netscape (holy cow, is Netscape even around still!?). I only remember going to the Serebii.net forums and the GameTalk.com forums.

I hopped on to the WayBackMachine, and http://web.archive.org/web/20030203020936/http://gametalk.com/ this brought back memories! Looking to see if I can find myself

It was in the early 90s, I remember using FTP clients and Gopher for a few years before moving over to the fancy new graphic browsers. Mostly I just downloaded freeware games and read newsgroups.

It was dial-up, I had to ask my parents for permission to go online and each member in the family had a limited amount of time (=money) to spend online. We didn't use it much, but I used to go on neopets.

Yeah, AOL dial-up was king of the internet back then. Then again, there wasn't that much competition.

It would have been sometime in Sep. '95 for college at age 23? It was probablly netscape and some search engine, in the computer lab at college. After that...no clue.

first internet exposure 286 some university's online library catalogue I was 13 at the time the experience was memorable but not the new car smell memorable internet was not such a big time consumer for me until well anything above 56k after that file sizes grew but speed always kept up

It was in the 90's I think when internet first came to Alaska. My first time on was from work. We had used computers at work for a long time but not been connected to the internet. My first time was placing ads for nurses to come to Alaska and work. I was amazed at the number of applications I got. Before that I had to call Newspapers across the country and place ads individually after searching for the names and numbers via phone information and then wait for the long process of nurses mailing in their applications. After that I used it at work for many, many things. Online conferences, consultations, research and such.

As for a personal pc, our first was a TI-99. Of course, no internet back then. We could not get internet in my home until 2002 and that was a dial up through our local school. So it was heavily censored for everyone. We were confined to dial up until just a few years ago when we got DSL. Now we still have dsl and slow speeds. No cable to be had in my neck of the woods. No 4 G either for that matter.

And this forum was an early internet moment from home because when they gave us dial up I had already been looking for that freaking puzzle box for a very long time.

It would have been in 1998, we'd just got our first computer. I went on the Lego website, it was slow and was mostly just bland hypertext. I don't think I used the internet after that until 2001 at high school.

Mine was in like uhhhhhh... I think it was 2000. I got a webTV, it is like a crappy dial up computer you plug into your TV and use the TV as the monitor. I was 11 and discovered the magic of chat rooms, it was pretty much the only thing that slow thing could do. I spent months on those talk-city chat rooms. It is what pretty much taught me how to spell. Then in like 2003 I finally got a real computer and the rest is history.

i've always known about the internet my whole life I started with dial-up then got verizon a few years ago, not sure what year exactly but it was during the big webkinz craz with kids

Dial-up. Used it for eBay and Toys-R-Us. Then my dad taught me how to use DOS to run a flight simulator game I had. It was a special time.

Google in the fourth grade. Never heard of the Internet before then, I was ten. I actually didn't get Internet in the home I lived In until 3 years ago. So up until I was 19 I could only acess Internet for no more than an hour a day at the library.

Can't really remember. The only thing I can really remember about going on the internet years ago was youtube in 2005 onwards when it was a small site with seemingly rubbish home videos. I first went on in about 2000. What for I cannot remember. Possibly it was for help to allow me to progress in the PC game Hype The Time Quest.

I remember the horrors quite well. I had to use AOL, and I had a 14.4 modem. My shiny 56k connection was the shiz nit when I got it. My happiness peaked when I finally got a cable modem. Went from stuttering like mad in Counter-Strike to running at full blast.

I think my first internet connection was at school and my first internet purchase was the soundtrack to Willow.

I can't even remember, googling books in the animorphs series or something. I remember I loved listening to the boopity beep when connecting to the internet.

My first online experience was not the internet but rather a number of local BBS's. I liked BBS forums and their "door games". Usurper was my favorite door game. I was darn good at it too! Best Usurper player in my area, imo. No one could best me. Heck, I even held my own against cheaters (which I didn't do). Played a good bit of "Legend of the Red Dragon, but it was never a favorite.

This would of course have been dial-up on a pre 56k modem. Viewing online images was a long drawn-out affair. They took so long to download! Thank goodness for progressive GIFs! With those you could see an extremely low res version of the image almost immediately. That way if it didn't look to be something you wanted to see you could back out of the "page" right away, rather than waist minutes waiting to see what you'd end up with.

Joined the web proper, dial-up 56k, during 1997. One of the first things I did was look for an internet equivalent for Usurper. What I found instead was the beta for Merdian59, the first "modern" MMO. (It pre-dated Ultimate Online by nearly a year, if memory serves.) Thus began my love affair with MMOs, which I played almost exclusively until going cold-turkey after purchasing TES4: Oblivion in 2009. (Yes, I did play Morrowind upon its release.)

Much as I loved Meridian, I soon realized I had no desire to participate in, and little tolerance for, non restricted non consensual PvP. Meridan being almost wholly centered on PvP, I knew I'd jump ship when a decent non PvP fantasy MMO came along. That turned out to be Everquest, which I played from late beta up until the launch of EQ2. Played EQ2 (plus a few brief forays to other MMOs like Horizons and Dark Age of Camelot) until giving up on the genre.

-Decrepit