In 1995 I made a little discovery called America Online. My mom was a teacher and she would get the discs brightly exclaiming things like “5 hours free!” And immediately I was excited. As soon as the modem finished screaming the friendly gentleman exclaimed “Welcome!” and “You’ve got mail!” My pupils dilated. My blood pumped faster. instantly I knew I was hooked.
After I used up those five little hours I decided to find out what else my modem could do so I found the four message boards in Roswell, NM and each one had about 2-15 users on at a time, and that was during peak hours.
Then BLAM, non-AOL 14.4bps internet service hit New Mexico featuring Netscape 1.0! I was double hooked. It wasn’t long before I found IRC and super basic web-based chat, like the kind you’d have to press reload to see new posts. My favorite was Café Kyoto, pretty much the only chat room I could find at the time, and now I can’t even find it on google.
Now here it is, 14 years later and I am currently a member of:
Myspace
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
DList
lifeOUT
Gay.com
HotorNot (even though I deactivated my account!)
Photobucket
Blogger
Redbubble
Eventful
FMyLife
Ning (and about 6 mini social networks inside that one)
YouTube
Rethos
AND Yahoo!
Is this a problem? Does that count as an addiction? Is there a group I can go to, or maybe just a message board or something I can join?
Sound familiar? (two minutes in). Oh and thanks for alerting me to a few things I haven’t signed up to. Perhaps we should set each other challenges that involve, er, leaving the house (without any electronic devices).
You need to join Linkedin.com. It absolutely, positively ROCKS!!!
lol ok I will 🙂
do they have an iPhone app?
Hi, I were on Café Kyoto too.
What was your handle back then, and do you remember some of the other nicks?
Kind Regards
Charlotte
Heh, Cafe Kyoto, that’s a great memory. I was Miss_Stress and my now husband was Papa Smurf\Grog. We met there!
Shana