CompuServ chat rooms when I was 8.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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I turned 8 in 92 by the way 😄😄😄😄😄😄😄
Anything to do with nickserv ??🤔🤔🤔
lol no. It was pre-IRC. Technically pre-WWW. This was in a weird period between when the first commercial ISPs became a thing and websites as we know them today began to pop up. It was all kind of self-contained. You were connecting to a curated network of things and not untethered to explore everything connected to "the internet."
You mean before the dot com boom ??🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
I mean slightly before dot com even existed.
First social media account I signed up up for was msn to talk to a girl I liked. Msn is long gone, but that girl is now my wife
Here is to us that met our wives on the internet before online dating. We will be married 25 years this year.
Congrats! My wife and I hit 21 this year... though we met in person, in a cage filled with vending machines.
Crazy to think she has been a contact on almost all of them, at least the main ones of the time AIM/ICQ/IRC/MSN/YAHOO...
What sort of cage is that ??? Not in a zoo of course ??😳😳😳
🤯🤯🤯....... You actually remained married that long ??😳😳😳😳😳😳
You get less for murder
Does Neopets count? I think I made my first account there in either late 2002 or early 2003.
I too had opened my first account around that time, but I came across Neopets today.
To any French person here. Skyblog
That shit was lit, everyone was on it in France at some point but it then disappeared when Facebook arrived.
Compuserve, dialing in, pre-internet
Absolutely new terms😄😄😄
Bolt was my first social media experience in the mid 90s. I hardly ever hear people talk about it and I didn’t notice anyone mention it in this thread. There were forums, games, chat rooms, and you could earn different badges. It was perfect for middle school me. I was introduced to a lot of good punk bands through forums there.
In the mid90s, l too was in middle school, but that was the time when l was actually getting acquainted with world wide web.
I started typing classes in 2nd grade and I spent a ton of time at my local library going into middle school. My intro to the internet was Bolt and the SciFi channel chat rooms in 6-7th grade. We watched a ton of SciFi channel stuff and they were constantly advertising their chat rooms.
Go Sliders chat!
Were you born in 84 ?? Anyways, since you're so close to my age, I might learn more new stuff about internet history from you, as you've actually been using the internet back then.
I am an 84 baby! I don’t remember a whole lot about that time as I only had access at the library, but we did go a few times a week. Most of my time was spent on either Bolt talking about punk music and books or in chat rooms talking about Sliders, Star Trek, and science fiction. I was part of the initial push to renew MST3K way back in the day when online petitions were far less frequent. I remember building my first web page on Geocities and how everyone had a visitor tracker to compare how “popular” our websites were. It was a simple time with a lot less distraction.
I didn’t have a computer at home until I turned 18. When I finally did, I played a lot of Quake and hung out in some IRC channels. Again, talking about punk, scifi, and books.
Other than no longer having a Geocities page, my internet activities haven’t changed much over the last 30ish years. I still primarily talk about punk, Star Trek, science fiction, and books, now splashed with bunnies and plants lol
On the off chance that any of my old scifi channel chat room friends are out there, Pony says hi to Carly, Joe, and Drew.
It was in 98 probably....... Definitely before the Y2K 🐛, that l got a hands on exposure to the internet at the British Council Library. Also to multimedia at the same time.
It’s good you still got in early so you can remember what it was like before enshittification. Libraries are magical places. I used to spend entire weekends there online or reading. I still go at least once a week to borrow blurays and books. I’m building a digital collection of moves and tv shows with my borrowed media.
What was the first place you remember hanging out online?
Myspace ??🤔🤔🤔
Yeah, that was probably my first more mainstream social media too. I don’t hear a lot of people who remember Bolt.
Does posting on BBS count as 'social media'? Asking for a friend.
Totally counts my man. In the early-mid '00s my wife and I were stationed in Germany and she knew no one so I hatched a plan. I registered a domain, set up a basic BBS, and we had business cards printed out with her name, email, and the address. Anytime she ran into another mom at the commissary, px, or just around base she would pass them out and organize a playgroup. From what I've heard it is still around, it just moved to Facebook.
She really got out of her shell and she organized a ton of playgroups (reserving community centers or organizing backups in case of bad weather). It was called K-Town Moms (the K was for Kaiserslautern). Good times and fond memories.
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I guess, Gaia Online? That's the first thing I can think of making an account on.
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Must have been early 2001 when I joined http://www.irc-galleria.net/
I think I was amongst the first few thousand users on the site.
I began my internet journey around that time. There was the internet explorer as the main browser back then.
I think it was livejournal, but there's a chance I had some forum account somewhere even before that.
Deadjournal had a better color scheme but thanks for the reminder.
Slashdot and Segfault.
At the time, all my online friends used it to discuss techie things.
First social network with real people in my local area? Whirlpool.net.au
It started as a site for peer support for one ISP but became a forum for local and regional technological issues.
There were also other niche forums for niche interests, including a Nissan Pulsar forum; we would organise cruises IRL and share technical information.
Most of these communities have been subsumed by Meta, which I believe is a terrible thing. Their platforms are not as conducive for that sort of socialising, without significant amounts of friction.
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