Internet 1.0 Stories - Tales of the internet past

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

So the internet has been around for a while now, and some of us here have been using it for 20+ years.

From making a Geocities page, to coming up with your ICQ handle, I'm sure we all have some pretty interesting stories.

One that I've thought of a lot lately was talking to the AIM chatbot "Smarterchild". It was an early (sorta) intelligent bot that some company developed and put onto AIM as a way to show off their technological capabilities. There were a few other chatbots developed by the same company, but Smarterchild was the one with the most functionality and was therefore more interesting.

It was actually pretty cool. It would ask you personal questions (name, birthday, height, etc) and would remember everything you told it. You could even ask it about other AIM users and it would tell you what it knew about them.

One of the best things about talking to it was, of course, insulting it. Most of the time it would make you apologize before it would talk to you again, and one time I was so harsh with it that it wouldn't respond to me for six months, after which it seemed to have forgotten who I was.

What about the rest of you? Any good Internet 1.0 stories?

 

[HomeAloneTwo]

Bonzi buddy was pretty cool when you're 8 and a gorilla says "pee fart".

 

[TiggerNits]

EverQuest and Ultima Online were amazing because they let you be the biggest asshole possible without breaking any rules

A few friends and I used to go ganking whenever a player social event was held. We made so much money murdering everyone at an ingame wedding in Everquest and selling what we looted that a friend of mine was able to finance his 5 day trip to Vegas with it. It made atleast 5 people quit the game according to forums posts

 

[Nekromantik]

I once found a website for gay Russian Space Werewolves. To this day I still don't know what the fuck it was about.

 

[Flying_with_the_Penguins]

Most of my earliest memories are flash game sites like Newgrounds or Homestar Runner, but I also remember the time when I got a porn pop-up of a lady fingerblasting herself when I was around 4 or 5. I only remember my mom freaking out when she walked in wondering about the noise.
And thus began my long descent into depravity.

 

[Yeeb-Renzo]

Pretty much my early internet days were filled with me playings flash games on the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon websites. And a while after 2006 was me watching a lot of YTPs and Let’s Play vids.

 

[A Hot Potato]

Reading these kinds of stories make me miss an era I was too young for.

 

[TiggerNits]

WinNuke was a lot of fun. I remember randomly adding people to MSN and AOL IM and just sending them goatse and then popping off winnuke

 

[ThePurpleProse]

Planet Nu (was called VGA Planets), I think they're still around, it was a game that never came to be, the idea was you got a ship, you colonize planets, get those nasty natives to work, expand, you get the drill, the thing that made it interesting was the multiplayer, each player had turns and it could take a full week to a whole 50 players to complete a round, by the time you got a turn again you would forget who the fuck was your ally, what you were doing and pretty much everything, was a real shitshow after 10 rounds.

 

[Monsieur Guillotine]

I remember those times.

When there was MSN Messenger, but also AIM, Yahoo IM, and ICQ, and you needed all 4 because someone always used one of the others.

Looking into Khaled Mardam-Bey's dead fish eyes while mIRC loaded.

Tabbing through like 10 browser windows because tabbed browsing wasn't a thing yet.

Clearing history after browsing porn on Google Images because incognito mode wasn't a thing yet.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

At one point I figured out how to make all the AOL sound effects "You've Got Mail", "Welcome", etc play in chat rooms. I would have felt bad about it if anybody on there had anything interesting to say.
God people fucking hated that lol.

 

[DrainRedRain]

i miss the 'internet legends', like the supervirus who would explode your computer or the shitty early-youtube screamer videos
also myspace was so fucking cool for personal cows, i spent hours looking at weird vampire and scene people

 

[TiggerNits]

I remember those times.

When there was MSN Messenger, but also AIM, Yahoo IM, and ICQ, and you needed all 4 because someone always used one of the others.

Looking into Khaled Mardam-Bey's dead fish eyes while mIRC loaded.

Tabbing through like 10 browser windows because tabbed browsing wasn't a thing yet.

Clearing history after browsing porn on Google Images because incognito mode wasn't a thing yet.

Cerulean was the answer. Ran aICQ, AIM, MSN, IRC and Yahoo IM in one program

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

i miss the 'internet legends', like the supervirus who would explode your computer or the shitty early-youtube screamer videos
also myspace was so fucking cool for personal cows, i spent hours looking at weird vampire and scene people

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

 

[Nekromantik]

Back in the early 2000s when Yahoo voice chat was just starting, some one came in to the chat room singing about the then Pope. "Pope JP is a big fat pig!" Than he made guitar noises with his mouth. "Ner Nar Ner Nar Ner Nar!"

 

[DrainRedRain]

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 remember one band called simple plan that was all the rage and their song 'welcome to my life' played on at least 9 out of 10 profiles i looked into

 

[ForgedBlades]

I don't really have any specific stories that stick out. I spent eight hours every day between the ages of 12 and 18 on the IGN Boards, which explains a lot about the man I am now.

I do remember I made a shitty Geocities site dedicated to that shitty PS2 game State of Emergency. I was so fucking hyped for that shit when I was an edgy 13 year old. The "site" was basically just copy and pasted IGN articles.

I was also really into YTMND. I never got into making them, but I would spend hours on the site. Also, Joe Cartoon and Tourettes Guy.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

i remember one band called simple plan that was all the rage and their song 'welcome to my life' played on at least 9 out of 10 profiles i looked into

FUCK Simple Plan. I'm so glad the Emo fad is (mostly) over.

 

[FierceBrosnan]

I don't really have any specific stories that stick out. I spent eight hours every day between the ages of 12 and 18 on the IGN Boards, which explains a lot about the man I am now.

I do remember I made a shitty Geocities site dedicated to that shitty PS2 game State of Emergency. I was so fucking hyped for that shit when I was an edgy 13 year old. The "site" was basically just copy and pasted IGN articles.

I was also really into YTMND. I never got into making them, but I would spend hours on the site. Also, Joe Cartoon and Tourettes Guy.

I had forgotten about Joe Cartoon! Between them, Camp Chaos, and Newgrounds I learned far more about flash then I ever wanted to. I remember the day when Spongebong Hempants got a cease and desist from Nickelodeon and the Camp Chaos guys couldn't afford to fight it.

 

[A Witty Name]

My earliest memories was sitting through that AOL connection. The phone chimes and buzzing noises from the dial-up connection are still in my head today.

I did get a broadband connection just before Runescape got big. There were far too many geocities websites about RS with Linkin Park on autoplay.