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[Kadin]

Some friends and I were talking about the online social scene these days and it got me thinking about when and where my first step was into socializing with people online. My immediate reaction was, and I'm gonna date myself here, AOL Chat rooms. Back before AOL 5.0 was the new big thing, I remember being online chatting a lot there.

But then I thought about it more and it was actually on IRC via mIRC and Undernet. I used to hangout a ton in the #Starwars chat room and a few of us even created our own channel there. It was nothing like we see today but there were some great friendships started there that I still have to this very day.

I also remember having a lot of friends on ICQ but it was never a really big deal for me at the time. For some it was the end all be all of keeping in touch. For me, not so much.

 

[ckohler]

Dialup BBSes.

 

[O.DOGG]

It was IRC for me. At first it was a friend from my old school who emailed me about it, and I wasted countless hours hanging out in IRC over the next couple of years. I sort of miss those days. ICQ came after that.

 

[Abounder]

Star Wars as well. Nightly.net forums which is probably still around

 

[Japanmanx3]

GaiaOnline. Back when it was GoGaia. Wow that takes me back lol.

 

[Zozz]

Yahoo pool.

 

[BertramCooper]

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Dialup BBSes.

Yep.

BBS in the late 80s to early 90s. Then Usenet groups, early message board forums, and IRC in the mid to late 90s. ICQ when it came out was the first IM client I can remember using.

 

[hydruxo]

AIM. Kinda miss those days haha.

 

[Patriotsbball5460]

 

[Acorn]

Aol chat rooms and messenger then MSN chatrooms and messenger.

I miss chat rooms.

 

[Kadin]

AIM. Kinda miss those days haha.

That was the other one I was trying to think of!

 

[EatinOlives]

Yahoo chat rooms back in the dail-up days. I remember mostly chat features in their online games and whatnot.

It wasn't serious, though, mostly a novelty. My first real step into online socializing was when a friend of mine moved away in 7th grade and we communicated via MSN messenger. The "everyone uses AIM" fad I think happened a few months right after that.

 

[Messypandas]

MSN messenger. Still remember that sound of people logging in #blooop

and the riveting conversations

Emma: has logged in in
Me: Hey x
Emma is offline

 

[Clydefrog]

"Uh-oh!"

heheh, ICQ was stupid

 

[AlexMogil]

Dialup BBSes.

Yuuuup. Then Usenet, netnews, nntp, whatever you want to call it.

 

[strafer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJzExDHF4Ac

 

[sangreal]

I had some exposure to BBSes but my first real step would be AOL. Even got suspended for using some progz -- my mom was none too pleased. Good Times. The first true socializing (as in making friends) I had was through the AOL game Gemstone which later became a standalone text mud (still online) from the shitty company that made the Hero Engine (SW:TOR, ES:O)

After that I spent a lot of time w/ randoms on IRC. Mostly piracy circles back then (was into the scene and fxp and all that nonsense as a kid). I used ICQ to chat w/ schoolmates but never strangers.

 

[Daffy Duck]

ICQ.

My mate used to hit on local girls for random chats to try and get sex.

He ended up meeting some right fog beasts.

 

[YesNOnoNOYes]

It was IRC for me. At first it was a friend from my old school who emailed me about it, and I wasted countless hours hanging out in IRC over the next couple of years. I sort of miss those days. ICQ came after that.

this...

man, nostalgia

 

[soepje]

TMF chatrooms. TMF was like a Dutch MTV with music videos.

 

[Hackworth]

AIM, MSN, and some videogame boards that I'm pretty sure don't exist anymore.

 

[Joe]

Seventeen Magazine chat room on AOL 3.0 because it was full of nothing but girls. I practically lived there one summer.

 

[Vyroxis]

Yahoo messenger I guess. First real forum I followed was the old Utopia game forums. Then sherdog, which I was banned from repeatedly.

 

[Syf]

MSN Messenger aww yiss. Plenty of awkward, forced junior high conversations on there. And my first gaming forum was IGN, which I left when I realized just how awful it was.

 

[Couleurs]

Usenet on my WebTV in '97

I think WebTV users were the only group of people considered lower than AOL users

 

[asthmagasm]

AOL in late 1999/early 2000. Migrated to using messenger programs afterwards.

 

[Dr.Acula]

Dialup BBSes.

I remember asking my brother to get off the internet so I could connect to a BBS.

 

[LuffyZoro]

Neopets, and the Neopets forum I was on.

 

[enigmatic_alex44]

mine is the one who's name shall not be spoken:

Spoiler

GameFAQs

I think my membership there is like 12 years old!

 

[railGUN]

MUD's. Via telnet.

 

[Mistle]

In terms of forums, The Sonic Stadium, back in its first or second version.

 

[Captain Pants]

Ha! My cousin was really into this Star Wars chatroom and she was visiting us and got me hooked on it. I bet I was 10. That and ICQ chats with her and her friends were how I got started.

 

[Siegcram]

MySpace and ICQ.

Spoiler

Fuck both.

 

[SliceSabre]

On Gamefaqs forums back in the infancy years of that site.

 

[RustyNails]

Yahoo Game Room:1

 

[strafer]

There was also this.

Before Facebook and all that.

 

[Kadin]

mine is the one who's name shall not be spoken:

Spoiler

GameFAQs

I think my membership there is like 12 years old!

I'm probably breaking a rule here by saying this but I still have an active account there myself. Never really use it but sometimes I'll hit up the FAQs for references, etc. That was the last place where I was really active with gaming socializing before I landed on GAF. And it's amazing how much better it is...

 

[Data West]

Used to an old pokemon site that had a chat called Gamers Chat. That's the earliest place I can really remember. Site was called PokeHouse USA.

 

[Conor_Fool]

I remember going into the AOL chatrooms when I was reallllly young, probably kindergarten to first grade. I typed "fuck" and nothing else in the chat room and got my entire family banned from AOL. I didn't fess up, they only figured out when they called AOL to ask why the hell noone could sign in. Man my parents were pissed.

First forum site I posted on was n-philes back when Pokemon Diamond/Pearl came out.

 

[Dizzy]

Sadly it was Habbo. A friend talked me into it when I first got a PC.

 

[teruterubozu]

AOL chat rooms. Usually troll places like "religion" and "philosophy".

 

[jstripes]

IRC for me. DALnet. Mid-to-late '90s.

It was like some "Wild West" level stuff back then. Tons of channels. Closely-knit ones and giant, chaotic ones. Friendships, betrayals, and all sorts of drama. Network-wide calamities, people mass-invading from other networks (fucking EFnet), using DOS tools like "BitchSlap" to knock people offline, tricking people with the Alt-F4 command, and script kiddies making massive threats that they couldn't possible fulfill. Intricately customizing your IRC client with scripts to show off. They were some pretty epic times.

Then it all faded away.

 

[Chariot]

Technically a AOL chatroom for pupils where my first encounter was 30 year old men who said that openly. He was nice and I didn't thought much of it, but in hindsight I have to say that it was pretty creepy.
The first bigger step was an internetforum with no bigger topic.

 

[Bodacious]

Dialup BBSes.

Same here, sometime in late '93, on a 14.4 connection. I remember when 28.8 came to town, it was like suddenly being on the internet bullet train.


.

 

[Henry Swanson]

 

[Kadin]

IRC for me. DALnet. Mid-to-late '90s.

It was like some "Wild West" level stuff back then. Tons of channels. Closely-knit ones and giant, chaotic ones. Friendships, betrayals, and all sorts of drama. Network-wide calamities, people mass-invading from other networks (fucking EFnet), using DOS tools like "BitchSlap" to knock people offline, tricking people with the Alt-F4 command, and script kiddies making massive threats that they couldn't possible fulfill. They were some pretty epic times.

Then it all faded away.

Wow, yeah I can remember some of that stuff. One thing I definitely remember back then was how people in the porn channels would offer their FTP servers and you could dial into it and download/upload pics, etc. Obviously the speeds were crazy slow back then so doing this a lot took a while. I remember some channels were just mass spam but that's what ppl did back then and shared everything they had with everyone. Crazy stuff.

 

[sangreal]

Same here, sometime in late '93, on a 14.4 connection. I remember when 28.8 came to town, it was like suddenly being on the internet bullet train.


.

I started w/ 2400 baud so a 14.4 was amazing but my first was this external modem that meant I could not use a mouse at the same time so I explored AOL and the 'WWW' one tab press at a time

 

[Panzon]

Yahoo pool.

My man!

Edit: Actually, it was a mix of everything. I can't remember which came first but I've had a computer and internet access since like 1999... Holy shit I'm getting old

 

[Scirrocco]

Dialup BBSes.

Same. Play by post Star Trek RPG's on Prodigy. And when i quit, i tagged a bunch of boards with a post telling everyone their ships warp core exploded, vaporizing them instantly. With my brothers account, so he'd get all the hate mail. Good times.