I’ve grown up with internet access and feel quite comfortable surfing the web / general data acquisition. Still, I feel inadequate. I’m aware of friends that are masters of the internet.
Really I’m just interested in whatever neat / useful tid bits of knowledge I may not have already absorbed as a casual internet user. I am not sure what I’m looking for exactly so just throw whatever comes to mind.
All the good stuff is on Gopher.
I actually did a lot of telnet, myself. That’s where the BBSs (i.e. message boards) were.
Not to be blunt, but that’s similar to asking “Tell me all the stuff I need to know about music”. What is it you want to do better? Describe something these masters are doing that you would like to to.
My first thought was “Tell us what you don’t know”
You’ll learn a bunch of tricks by just clicking on “advanced search” on the Google home screen and finding out how many more tools Google has to offer than you’ve been using.
You’d be surpised how little is left on Gopher. Every once in awhile I poke around and the stuff is getting smaller and smaller and Gopher servers are getting scarce.
Ah like the death of Usenet (yes, the Usenet we know and loved is for all purposes dead. The traffic being kept alive by spam, file sharing and six people on misc.transport.road), and IRC (yes, that is for all purposes dead, it’s not like in 1998 where you could go onto efnet and have a conversation with somone).
Those thing are either on life support or restructered for other purposes, leaving us with Web 2.0 services.
So go out to your blogs and instant messengers and fancy schmancy Google, while us old folk continue with our 5 second mpgs, and geocities designed website and bemoan about how much better it was 
EFnet is pretty much in shambles (and don’t get me started on DALnet) but Freenode IRC is still pretty good. I still use the programming-language specific channels there.
The OP sounds sincere, so I will offer an important bit of advice. I don’t know what browser you are using, but change your settings to dump history, cookies, temp internet files upon exit. Each time you close the browser a quite incredible amount of shit will automatically get dumped.
This will clear out a lot of clutter that builds up and slows your machine down. In the Google-Facebook world it’s not so much to protect privacy, you have almost none, but simply to keep your computer running well.
The business model is now all about knowing where you are, where you have visited, what your interests are, etc. And all this, probably ‘mostly harmless’ crap is done at the expense of your computer’s speed.
lurk more
Lifehacker is a good place to start. Just read the blog posts and research anything you don’t know but sounds like it could be useful.
I was recently given a link to “the last page of the internet” (or some variant of that) and advised to work backward from there.
Now I know everything.
But I’m not going to tell anyone.
There’s no place like 127.0.0.1 (the home address for each computer on your network).
The difference between IPv4 and IPv6
Whether you have a DOCSIS 2 or 3 router (for cable ISP’s)
How to create and use a VPN (virtual private network)
How to spoof an email address
All internet masters use Firefox plus the same half dozen plugins - such as adblock+, noscript, TACO, ghostery, etc.
know how to use an ftp server - extra points for being able to set one up on your home network and access it from outside (hint - DYNDNS.org)
being able to use a newsreader to download binaries from usenet (as opposed to using pussy ass torrents)
The best search engine isn’t Google. It’s Wolfram Alpha (if you’re a math nerd anyway).
Wow. I had no idea gopher still existed.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what I don’t know.
To all the other advice, thanks guys, I’ll do some recreational searching on the sites recommended once school winds down. I do use Firefox; wasn’t conscious of cookies being a noticeable detriment to computation speed. Also use Wolfram alpha extensively, great resource.
To emphasize, if there are neat tricks that in your experience most laymen are unaware of please divulge the goods.
There are thousands upon thousands of neat tricks to do all sorts of obscure or irrelevant things. It’s not like tricks will lead to mastery; they are shortcuts but won’t help you solve the next problem that comes down the pike.
Here’s a “trick” - check out what databases your local library subscribes to. They may have extensive periodicals databases, financial stuff, that sort of thing. Whole new piles of stuff to search that you won’t have access to through the general “free” web.
The real power of the Internet is being able to construct concise and useful searches. Then no matter what you’re trying to find on the Internet, it will be much easier to get there.
For example, I’ve often found it’s easier to use Google to search sites even when the site has their own search system. If I was on washingtonpost.com searching for watergate and their search wasn’t giving me what I wanted, I’d go to google and search for: site:washingtonpost.com watergate The site: tag restricts results to washingtonpost.com
For me Google is still the best search engine even though they’re trying to screw it up.