# Your first "I love the internet!" moment **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 21, 2008, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153 "2008-05-21T21:01:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/1 "2008-05-21T21:01:18Z")
Think back to those wild & wooly days of the mid-90s…you’ve got an IBM PC XT, an AOL dial-up account, and you’re “surfing” the “web”, probably by clicking random sites on the old Yahoo site directory. What was the first thing you found that made you think…this is going to be fun? For me, it was finding a listing of all the Pinky & the Brain “are you pondering what I’m pondering?” responses. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/2 "2008-05-21T21:06:23Z")
[QUOTE=jsc1953] Think back to those wild & wooly days of the mid-90s…you’ve got an IBM PC XT, an AOL dial-up account, and you’re “surfing” the “web”, probably by clicking random sites on the old Yahoo site directory. What was the first thing you found that made you think…this is going to be fun? For me, it was finding a listing of all the Pinky & the Brain “are you pondering what I’m pondering?” responses. [/QUOTE] I got to read wired online, we had a trial up here in Ontario that some judge imposed a media ban on, one issue of the printed magazine had a mention of it ,and thats all it took to have the issue pulled off the shelf. With the internet, thats no longer possible. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/3 "2008-05-21T21:07:09Z")
1. Sheridan College. My first introduction to FTP: “What? I can log on to and use this computer _all the way over in Finland?_” It was another two years or so before I had regular dialup access at home, though I know people who did the BBS thing in the late eighties with Amigas. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Tonya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/4491bb/32.png) [@Queen\_Tonya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Tonya)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/4 "2008-05-21T21:11:55Z")
I’m a bit later to the scene, so don’t shoot me for this one. A bit later that decade, I spend a frustrating couple of days putting together my brand new desk and then my brand new computer. Bear in mind here that I’ve never owned, worked with, worked on or even been near one, unless you count watching War Games as a tutorial experience. I’d heard a lot about this thing called Napster, so after I carefully set up the computer following the instructions step by step, that’s the first place I go. Goggle around a bit, figure out how it works, and download my first stolen mp3, BareNaked Ladies “The Old Apartment” for the record. Figuring out the set-up and then figuring out Napster took about 6 hours, downloading that single song and that very busy site using my very slow dial-up access took another two hours. I’ve now killed an entire day off, a friend stops by at the end of this as I’m excitedly playing the song over and over. She asks “Don’t you have this CD? Couldn’t you have just put it in? It took _how_ long to get that?!” I didn’t care, I thought I’d just hooked in to the coolest thing ever in the history of coolness. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/5 "2008-05-21T21:12:07Z")
I was about to comment re: Prodigy, but I guess that didn’t count as “the web” at the time. I would have to say, discovering Gargoyles TV show fanfic. That was the coolest thing ever since my sister and I loved the TV show so much. ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/6 "2008-05-21T21:12:21Z")
Probably when I discovered the browser-based strategy game “Stellar Crisis” when I was at York U. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/7 "2008-05-21T21:14:36Z")
With me, it was discovering professional discussion lists, where you could interact with colleagues from around the world by email. This was before the Web became popular: I’ve been a member of one such list since 1991. ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/8 "2008-05-21T21:27:24Z")
Probably '94 or '95. My roommate could log on through his dad’s university account. First thing we looked up? Naked pictures of Pamela Anderson. Although, honestly with the time it took to download one pic I could have walked to the liquor store, bought a magazine, and walked back. There was just something so _liberating_ about porn right there waiting to be looked at FOR FREE!!! ---
**Author:** ![Astroboy14](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Astroboy14](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astroboy14)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/9 "2008-05-21T21:41:25Z")
[QUOTE=Ol’Gaffer] Although, honestly with the time it took to download one pic I could have walked to the liquor store, bought a magazine, and walked back. There was just something so _liberating_ about porn right there waiting to be looked at FOR FREE!!! [/QUOTE] _ **nodding enthusiastically** _ ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/10 "2008-05-21T22:05:32Z")
[QUOTE=Ol’Gaffer] Probably '94 or '95. My roommate could log on through his dad’s university account. First thing we looked up? Naked pictures of Pamela Anderson. Although, honestly with the time it took to download one pic I could have walked to the liquor store, bought a magazine, and walked back. There was just something so _liberating_ about porn right there waiting to be looked at FOR FREE!!! [/QUOTE] [Comic Book Guy] **H U R R Y UP!** [/Comic Book Guy] ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/11 "2008-05-21T22:12:40Z")
I suspect that porn produced “I love the Internet” moments for a large portion of the population----and still does. One night, as the eighties withered to a close, I no longer had to wonder what a woman defecating into a man’s mouth would look like. ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/12 "2008-05-21T22:15:34Z")
You know, the innocence of the whole thing is really kind of nostalgic. We just wanted to look at naked girls. No particulars, they just had to be naked. Now, I’m like a cranky old man wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart on Saturday morning. “Goddamn it, I said I wanted video clips, less than 5 minutes each, with one redhead girl and one blonde girl. Dildos but no vibrators…I hate those goddamn things. And they have to be at the beach…and then at the zoo. But no elephants, those goddamn things drive me crazy. Why can’t I find a goddamn thing in here? Don’t you people ever organize anything. You know, when I was a kid all we had we were naked pictures of Pamela Anderson and we liked it. You goddamn kids don’t know how good you have it.” ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/13 "2008-05-21T22:19:30Z")
I’m amazed the thread got to post #8 before porn was mentioned. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Ol\_Gaffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Ol\_Gaffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ol_Gaffer)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/14 "2008-05-21T22:22:58Z")
[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip] One night, as the eighties withered to a close, I no longer had to wonder what a woman defecating into a man’s mouth would look like. [/QUOTE] Wow. In the 80’s? Considering what the Internet looked like in the late '80’s, one (not I mind you but “one”) might suggest that you had to…ahem…look vigorously for such a find. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/15 "2008-05-21T22:53:58Z")
[QUOTE=Ol’Gaffer] Wow. In the 80’s? Considering what the Internet looked like in the late '80’s, one (not I mind you but “one”) might suggest that you had to…ahem…look vigorously for such a find. [/QUOTE] On Usenet , not likely lol Declan ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/16 "2008-05-21T23:02:03Z")
I got Usenet and e-mail access in college in 1993. I thought they were way cool. I wrote an e-mail with some weird ass Unix program while someone was standing over my shoulder. It was addressed to someone across the country. I hit send and said “Ok, she has it now”. :eek: was the response. I will have to go with the crowd though. I worked in a lab while I was an undergraduate in 1994. A graduate student down the hall whipped out a floppy in a hush:hush tone and had us install something called Netscape 0.8 beta on one of the lab machines. It worked right away but there weren’t any good search engines then, certainly nothing like Google. There was even a printed directory of web sites available. It took me a few minutes but I figured out the purpose of the whole thing pretty quickly. The porn addict graduate student that I worked under had eyes that lit up when I found the first image. From then on, I did my lab work and then stayed after hours to search for quality porn. It sounds ridiculous now but it was an interesting challenge. I just had to jump from random link to random link until I isolated the prey. On a good day, I could find one unique quality image an hour which seemed miraculous at the time. People joke about this stuff but porn really did drive early web development and it was one of the first on-line businesses that proved businesses could make money that way. Without porn, none of us would be here. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/17 "2008-05-21T23:09:25Z")
[QUOTE=Declan] On Usenet , not likely lol Declan [/QUOTE] Oh yes, Usenet. I mentioned it but haven’t thought about it in depth for a while. I used Usenet quite a bit from 1995 - 1997 until the web dominated everything. People warn about the perils of the web but hardly ever mention Usenet because it takes some technical expertise to unleash its horrors. Donkey - Midget porn may be scarce on the web but I am sure it is still alive and well on Usenet just as it has always been. All you have to do is take 15 text messages, combine them, and then use applications to decode them to see this beautiful union in all its glory. You could get whole applications this way as well. The web is the toddler section of Disney World compared to Usenet. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/18 "2008-05-21T23:16:15Z")
IIRC, it took globbing a few lumps of Usenet together to make a copy of Mosaic, which we then used to look up the time something in space was going to be overhead - can’t remember if it was the shuttle or a satellite - sure enough, at the appropriate time, a bright spot whizzed through the sky. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/19 "2008-05-21T23:20:05Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty] Oh yes, Usenet. I mentioned it but haven’t thought about it in depth for a while. I used Usenet quite a bit from 1995 - 1997 until the web dominated everything. People warn about the perils of the web but hardly ever mention Usenet because it takes some technical expertise to unleash its horrors. Donkey - Midget porn may be scarce on the web but I am sure it is still alive and well on Usenet just as it has always been. All you have to do is take 15 text messages, combine them, and then use applications to decode them to see this beautiful union in all its glory. You could get whole applications this way as well. The web is the toddler section of Disney World compared to Usenet. [/QUOTE] Yeah as much as USENET was the adult section , Mosaic and Netscape really did bring equality to the masses. No more having to having to navigate FTP sites , no archie , no gopher. To often I remember that USENET was set up on Univercity systems, and reading a post that was friggen long and having someone just hit reply to the post and quote all, with just ditto at the end. Aggravating on a dial up account that only had nine hours before going to the meter. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [May 21, 2008, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153/20 "2008-05-21T23:56:16Z")
For me… Late 1994. My first term at Sheffield University. I wander into the hall of residence computer room (2 PCs, 386s I think, seemingly connected to the university network by carrier pigeon, such was the length of time it would take to log in). My attention is caught by someone typing away on a green-screen, seemingly having a real-time text conversation with… who? Apparently a friend in _America_? Woah! That was the [Monochrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monochrome_BBS) BBS. From that point on I spent an inordinate amount of time on the internet. Sheffield University had its own BBS, called Arafel (also known as Cass, the acronym of the Computer And Software Society which ran it), and I met lots of, if not exactly cool, at least enjoyably geeky and harmless, people through it. Thirteen and a half years later, I’m still spending far too much time online. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-first-i-love-the-internet-moment/450153.md?page=2)