Internet 1.0 Stories - Tales of the internet past

[Tragi-Chan]

One thing I remember when I first got online in the 90s was how little there was. You could look up, say, a TV series you liked and find nothing at all. So many companies just didn’t have a web presence.

I also remember that you’d get a lot of websites that didn’t really have a purpose. Some guy would just create a site that just contained whatever he felt like putting on there, with no real focus or aim. Just “this is my website, here are some things I like, here’s a funny cartoon I found, here’s a crude MIDI of a Beatles song.”

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Mainly pre-Youtube stuff.

Flash videos by Marc M (Sick Animation) or Neil Cicierega (Lemon Demon). Sites like Albino Blacksheep, Mucho Sucko, and EbaumsWorld.

Stuff like The End of the World flash video:
https://youtu.be/kCpjgl2baLs
or looped stuff like badgerbadgerbadger.com

Which got credited to GroupX, but it wasn't them. Kind of like that Zelda song by "The Rabbit Joint", that people thought was System of a Down.

How about downloading something off Limewire and the like that turned out to be not at all the thing it said it was?

I remember I was trying to download some movie (don't remember which one), which finished waaaaaaaaaay too soon. Always a bad sign, but I opened it anyway just in case.

It was a cute naked Japanese girl sitting inside a clear plastic container. "OK, not a total loss, let's just see where this goes"
Suddenly the chick looks up with this apprehensive look on her face and next thing I know, actual shit is raining down on her.

I will NEVER forget that look on that chick's face.

 

[drain]

How about downloading something off Limewire and the like that turned out to be not at all the thing it said it was?

Ah yes, it really was a cyber russian roulette every time I went to Limewire.
I remember being a pre teen and wanting to download 'horror movies' because my parents didn't want me watching 'gory scenes'. Me and my school friends would look for horror movies all night long, and one time, we downloaded some sort of porn short movie, where a dude puts some sort of oxygen mask over the woman's vagina and after he took it out, her vajay was all swollen and red. We cried and laughed in disgust and deleted the file lol

 

[Syaoran Li]

Eh, I didn't get on the internet until around 2003-2004 or so, I was about ten or eleven at the time.

We lived in a very rural area at the time and so all we had was shitty dial-up, I didn't even see the need for my own email address until my family moved to a place with actual decent internet, and that was back in 2007. I think I missed out on actual Web 1.0 but I was around when things were beginning to transition to the current internet culture of today. I guess it would be Web 1.5?

My earliest internet experiences were going to places like Simpsons Archive (I loved their Episode Capsules), as well as looking up my favorite movies, TV shows, and anime on stuff like IMDB and TV Tome (later on, TV.com) and subsequently lurking on their forums.

I also spent a lot of time on GameFAQs and Neoseeker, looking up stuff for my favorite games and again, lurking on their forums.

Hell, back in 2005, I discovered Wikipedia and was fascinated by it, I spent a year spending most of my time on there, reading random articles about stuff I found interesting such as anime and manga, dinosaurs, military history, video games, historical figures, and stuff like that, which in retrospect was pretty autistic of me, but looking up random information on Wikipedia was the best I could do considering I didn't have an email address and only had shitty dial-up internet back in 2005-2006.

When I was twelve, I played a lot of Morrowind back then on my family's desktop computer, and when I discovered the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Page wiki, I became hooked reading about the lore of the game like some weirdo autist.

In addition to Morrowind, I played a lot of Grand Theft Auto and Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors on my PS2, and watched a lot of InuYasha back then too. I even came up with my own ideas for various OC's and fanfiction for those fandoms that luckily were never posted online, mostly written for fun on WordPad or on actual notebook paper. It was pretty autistic and cringe-inducing, but I was like twelve and thirteen at the time.

After getting an email address and better internet connection in 2007, I discovered early YouTube and started posting on the forums I lurked on, such as GameFAQs and later on, GTA Forums.

 

[drain]

In addition to Morrowind, I played a lot of Grand Theft Auto and Dynasty Warriors/Samurai Warriors on my PS2, and watched a lot of InuYasha back then too. I even came up with my own ideas for various OC's and fanfiction for those fandoms that luckily were never posted online, mostly written for fun on WordPad or on actual notebook paper. It was pretty autistic and cringe-inducing, but I was like twelve and thirteen at the time.

I think we all had a similar phase during our early teens, because GTA was the shit for me back then and I lurked various forums about GTA/Driver lol

I also remember that, around 2002/2003, I visited the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon sites and played all the games, like the Spongebob driving test and the Powerpuff Girls dress-up

 

[Syaoran Li]

I also remember being a freshman in high school back in 2007-2008 and discovering the concept of forum-based RP's. As a young D&D fan, I thought it was the coolest thing ever and was obsessed with it for a while.

First online RP I ever took part in was a Resident Evil RP based on the old PS1 games and set in Raccoon City, I can't remember the site it was hosted on and it's probably long gone. Two of my high school friends also played in it, though someone else ran the RP.

The RP even had "character classes" with their own starting equipment (civilian, police officer, STARS officer, Umbrella mercenary, etc.) and I played a STARS officer who was also an anime girl because I was a dumb fourteen-year old weeb. Strangely enough, the GM accepted my character concept, and it was all autistic and dumb, but we had fun.

When I was fifteen, I ran my own GTA-themed play-by-post RP set in San Andreas, and there were like three people playing not counting myself and two of them were friends from school I convinced to join. We all made our own OC's (I was an Italian mafioso living in Las Venturas) and the RP fizzled out in like a few weeks, but it was fun when it lasted.

 

[MrTroll]

Downloading a Medal of Honor: Allied Assault demo that was about 100mb and took a week on dialup with some shitty download manager. And it barely ran on my Dell Pentium III.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

Am I the only one who used Napster? I was in high school when that came out. On dialup it would take 20 minutes or so to download a low quality song. But considering the only other option was to buy the whole CD at Sam Goody at the mall for $10 it was a bargain. I bought a CD-RW drive shortly after that so I could take my pirated music elsewhere as MP3 players weren't a thing yet.

Then Metallica ruined it. Fuck you Lars.

 

[Ask Jeeves]

Which got credited to GroupX, but it wasn't them. Kind of like that Zelda song by "The Rabbit Joint", that people thought was System of a Down.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DqKHGMQGP8Y
How about downloading something off Limewire and the like that turned out to be not at all the thing it said it was?

I remember I was trying to download some movie (don't remember which one), which finished waaaaaaaaaay too soon. Always a bad sign, but I opened it anyway just in case.

It was a cute naked Japanese girl sitting inside a clear plastic container. "OK, not a total loss, let's just see where this goes"
Suddenly the chick looks up with this apprehensive look on her face and next thing I know, actual shit is raining down on her.

I will NEVER forget that look on that chick's face.

I remember downloading Limewire Pro through Limewire, the good old days. That and downloading songs that turned out to be bill Clinton's "I did not have sexual relations with that women, i did however go to ...{some random website name}" speech instead.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Am I the only one who used Napster? I was in high school when that came out. On dialup it would take 20 minutes or so to download a low quality song. But considering the only other option was to buy the whole CD at Sam Goody at the mall for $10 it was a bargain. I bought a CD-RW drive shortly after that so I could take my pirated music elsewhere as MP3 players weren't a thing yet.

Then Metallica ruined it. Fuck you Lars.

Oh no, I used it. I had this one joke program that was a fake Napster loading screen where it said something like "Stealing money from Lar's Account" or something like that.

 

[Syaoran Li]

By the time I first got online, Napster had already caved into Metallica's demands and I didn't know how to download music from the internet, being a kid and all.

I can't remember if it was through Kazaa or Limewire, but my uncle did download music for me and my brothers and would burn it onto blank CD's for us to listen to. I had a lot of cool bluegrass and metal compilations.

It was great for me as a young bluegrass fan because the nearest FYE was a two-hour drive away and the local Wal-Marts and K-Marts rarely sold bluegrass albums save for the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack and maybe a compilation album or two if you were lucky. And I think the only reason they would stock the occasional bluegrass compilation albums was because we lived in the middle of rural Appalachia.

Thanks to my uncle's CD's he would make for us, we could get all the cool songs we liked (as well as new songs we hadn't heard before) that you couldn't really find at the music section of the local Wal-Mart or K-Mart, especially niche genres like bluegrass, folk, or metal.

Seeing as I was a metalhead in a whole family of metalheads at the time, it was awesome being able to pop in a metal mix CD on the old CD boombox at our house and just jam out. We had a lot of cool stuff, mostly classic metal from the 80's and thrash metal, but we also had some black metal tracks on there too.

I remember listening to Bathory for the first time as a kid back in 2005.

I was twelve years old, it was after dark in the middle of winter and I was home alone, just me and my Dad while Mom was working night shift and my brothers were staying at my grandparents' house (I was feeling sick that morning and decided to stay home with Dad) and I started playing one of those blank CD's that my uncle had put a bunch of metal music on. There was no label on it, just a blank unlabeled CD, so I wasn't exactly sure what was on it.

The only lights in my room were from the boombox and a single shaded lamp on the nightstand. As usual, I had the volume cranked up way too high.

Then this started playing...

Scared the fuck out of me but I also thought it was really cool and badass at the same time. Before that point, I had no idea what black metal was, or any other form of extreme metal aside from thrash bands like Megadeth, which were nowhere as rough as Bathory.

 

[Maxliam]

The most annoying thing about MySpace was that some people would have songs play once you went on their page at full fucking volume.

I had a racist song playing at full blast on my fake profile. Also trolling wasn't as fun but seemed better in a weird way. Weens didn't really exist until Chris Chan. Before you'd troll and then move on.

 

[liliput]

Here's an oldie but a goodie: http://www.973-eht-namuh-973.com/

It's this schizophrenic fever-dream of a website, entirely coded and written by some insane (math professor/artist?) guy named David Denison that used to paint in the 70s/80s. Here's a picture of the author:
View attachment 525488

The whole thing is based off coincidences and matrices of intersections between Abrahamic faith, the bible, symbology, the numbers 9-7-3, etc. There are literally thousands (3.2k) of pages hidden throughout this website and some pretty warped original paintings by the author.

There were stories for years on boards like 4chan's /x/ about this website and the things it held.
People said it contained instructions on how to summon demons, or even defeat them. Or that it reveals conspiracies. Sometimes about how it could be used to predict events... and so forth.
You know, shit about stars gorging on clay and archangels.

Halloween is coming up and this a great thing to show your friends.

Finding info on the author is pretty hard from what I've gathered. The only things I've been able to find are that he lives in the Wakefield, England area and he was born in 1939. It is impressively difficult to find info online about a man who publicly sold artwork and taught university.

Take a trip down the acid turnpike if you dare:
View attachment 525503

Holy shit, I've always wondered about the artist behind those weird fucking images on that website. Seeing the inside of his house is a trip in itself. A lot of the art is actually pretty cool imo.

Spoiler: A smattering of examples

The guy put inverse colored images of his paintings throughout this site, for some reason.

 

[drain]

I had a racist song playing at full blast on my fake profile. Also trolling wasn't as fun but seemed better in a weird way. I HAVE AUTISM PLEASE LAUGH AT ME didn't really exist until Chris Chan. Before you'd troll and then move on.

I had a fake myspace account and I pestered the scene/emo/goth users with things like 'lol if u so sad why just u dont kill urself lol'
Looking back it was pretty idiotic/weak from my part, but man, it was so much fun writing garbage and hit the 'send' button, it was like Kiwi Farms 1.0 for me

 

[AF 802]

Around 2007 (12 at the time), a forum that discussed trolling and internet drama infrequently (that turned into quite a lolcow community later on) is how I got into internet drama stuff. I remember there was a bunch of people who ended up taking the site over by force (which I mean protest) from this British guy in his 40's, and by about 3 or 4 years after that the site got into so much drama they went towards the way of turning into another NeoGAF/ResetERA, but instead of banning solely for political reasons, they would ban people for that and paranoia that someone was going to attack the site again (since they suffered several different server attacks in the past).

I kinda wish it didn't go to shit, it was a neat community.

 

[Maxliam]

I had a fake myspace account and I pestered the scene/emo/goth users with things like 'lol if u so sad why just u dont kill urself lol'
Looking back it was pretty idiotic/weak from my part, but man, it was so much fun writing garbage and hit the 'send' button, it was like Kiwi Farms 1.0 for me

I did that too. I used to go on the Yahoo chat rooms for infertile women. They were a bunch of know-it-all white trash hicks so I'd love telling them they have raisins for ovaries. They'd get so butthurt.

 

[drain]

I did that too. I used to go on the Yahoo chat rooms for infertile women. They were a bunch of know-it-all white trash hicks so I'd love telling them they have raisins for ovaries. They'd get so butthurt.

Duuude, you made me remember about my Yahoo chat days...
I impersonated a muscular douche guy and one time, a gay dude in his 40's asked me to follow him to some webcam site because he wanted to see me shitting on the floor of my room. Literally shitting. On the floor. Like a fucking animal.
I blocked him and keep sperging retarded shit in chat until another gay dude asked me to roleplay as his son, and he wanted me to shit on his chest, in his fantasy. Blocked him too and left the site.

Now when someone mentions Yahoo chat it reminds me of gay people who likes shit. Literal shit.

 

[SnowBall]

I remember making several attempts at a Geocities website and adding a chat room feature on it. You could also browse other chat rooms in it and I just visited random ones. Even came across someone with the username 10poundsofpulsatingpenis. Thankfully I was very educated in internet safety so I never gave out any personal shit.

There was this game program called BEYOND where people made awful custom mmorpgs. I loved joining random games and just being annoying as hell to everyone.

The homepage for our Windows 98 system constantly kept getting changed to porn sites.

Before Youtube was around I loved AlbinoBlackSheep. I still recall a flash video on it where Doraemon kills Osama while a Green Day song played in the background.

My friend showed me rotten.com and it was my first exposure to shock images. That parrot image will forever be burnt into my brain.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Duuude, you made me remember about my Yahoo chat days...
I impersonated a muscular douche guy and one time, a gay dude in his 40's asked me to follow him to some webcam site because he wanted to see me shitting on the floor of my room. Literally shitting. On the floor. Like a fucking animal.
I blocked him and keep sperging retarded shit in chat until another gay dude asked me to roleplay as his son, and he wanted me to shit on his chest, in his fantasy. Blocked him too and left the site.

Now when someone mentions Yahoo chat it reminds me of gay people who likes shit. Literal shit.

That's the problem with the internet.

I mean sure, it's a great way for people from all over the world with similar interests to discuss said interests in a way that simply didn't exist before, but it's also a way for degenerates who would normally keep their gross and sometimes harmful kinks to themselves to form communities and start moving into IRL with their gross shit.

 

[Maxliam]

Duuude, you made me remember about my Yahoo chat days...
I impersonated a muscular douche guy and one time, a gay dude in his 40's asked me to follow him to some webcam site because he wanted to see me shitting on the floor of my room. Literally shitting. On the floor. Like a fucking animal.
I blocked him and keep sperging retarded shit in chat until another gay dude asked me to roleplay as his son, and he wanted me to shit on his chest, in his fantasy. Blocked him too and left the site.

Now when someone mentions Yahoo chat it reminds me of gay people who likes shit. Literal shit.

Gays are disgusting to begin with. Anyone who wants to stick his dick in another dude is already kinda fucked up in the head. To quote DMX, "how you gonna explain fuckin' a man? Even if we squash the beef I ain't touchin' yo hand!"

I remember making several attempts at a Geocities website and adding a chat room feature on it. You could also browse other chat rooms in it and I just visited random ones. Even came across someone with the username 10poundsofpulsatingpenis. Thankfully I was very educated in internet safety so I never gave out any personal shit.

There was this game program called BEYOND where people made awful custom mmorpgs. I loved joining random games and just being annoying as hell to everyone.

The homepage for our Windows 98 system constantly kept getting changed to porn sites.

Before Youtube was around I loved AlbinoBlackSheep. I still recall a flash video on it where Doraemon kills Osama while a Green Day song played in the background.

My friend showed me rotten.com and it was my first exposure to shock images. That parrot image will forever be burnt into my brain.

I used to love griefing people on games. I'd team kill, stand in a spot and block a player in, betray people right before we'd all finish an objective. Man my therapist was right, I have aggressive and deep seated urges to be anti-social and malevolent.

That's the problem with the internet.

I mean sure, it's a great way for people from all over the world with similar interests to discuss said interests in a way that simply didn't exist before, but it's also a way for degenerates who would normally keep their gross and sometimes harmful kinks to themselves to form communities and start moving into IRL with their gross shit.

Yep. The internet gave all those weird sickos a chance to circle jerk their weird fetish shit out in the open. It also helped get the God Emperor elected.
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