Since my parents were early internet users and we had MacBBS when I was 5 years old or so, this would be my first as well. I loved those flying toasters!
This is mine too.
I’m 23 and have been on the internets since about ‘92. I dint’ really get heavily in to the internet before '95 though. Before then it was maybe once a month access.
Ate My Balls, After Dark, and Hamster Dance I remember sitting in my high school computer lab. Along with The Straight Dope, of course.
One of the earliest “fads” I can remember was the Good Times virus hoax, which warned that opening an email with Good Times in the title will cause a virus to spread through your machine. But we canny individuals in the internet community pompously asserted that emails can’t carry viruses because they’re just text files.
Then Microsoft came along and messed all that up by creating a way for viruses to be included in emails.
The internet.
Actually, I knew After Dark well before high school.
Does After Dark even have anything to do with the internet? I know it could be purchased in stores, and I recall the trademark(ed) Flying Toasters even before I knew what the Internet was.
Not really, but whatever floats their boat.
I guess the first internet fad I remember is the web. I was using e-mail and usenet before Netscape hit it big and then suddenly everyone wanted the web…
alt.barney.die.die.die, maybe.
I think Hamster Dance would be the first fad that I remember. I just love that tune.
Marc
kibology.
I think it’s the Hamster Dance for me too. I was in middle school.
Woah, woah, woah. Hamster Dance had music?
Speaking of early [del]internet[/del] computer fads, remeber when your sound just stopped working and you never bothered to fix it? Doesn’t seem to happen that much anymore.
1st web-based: Mirsky’s Worst of the Web.
Before web: ASCII art email sigs
Before web: FTP shareware sites wuarchive.wustl.edu, sumex-aim.stanford.edu, and mac.archive.umich.edu
Before internet: BBS listings
Ate My Balls was probably the first crazy meme that I remember.
A couple of years later, but more imprinted on my brain, are NAPSTER BAD! and that Mahir “I kiss you!” guy.
There was a popular glurge Email being passed around when I first got on the Interwebs titled “Chalk proves existence of God!!” that seemed like it was never going to die. I must have received that damned letter two dozen times. This was in 1996.
Downloading pornography from different bbs-es as the pictures slowly appeared from top to bottom.
The thrill of the chase, and the thrill of discovery, that was.
Beyond that, was there anyone who didn’t hear about the Neiman Marcus cookie thing?
Oh! Kibology, sure!
I remember using Prodigy! Wow, that incredibly shitty online service seemed like the coolest thing in the world to my 15 year old self!
Ooh, Captain Janeway. Lace: the final brassiere.