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Back in my day, all .gifs were horribly pixilated and we liked it that way!
It's interesting to see how the Internet has worked it's way into popular culture. Things have changed a lot in ten years.
I remember being involved with various fandoms around the turn of the century. This was back when Bravenet forums were popular (before fancy-shmancy bulletin boards required you to register) and people had midi files playing in the background of their Geocities websites (remember FLASHING ANIMATED BACKGROUNDS?). On-line fandoms were crude to say the least, as transfer speeds were slow and Web 2.0 was still a few years in the making. Newsgroups and mailing lists and eventually Yahoo! Groups were popular hang outs, though forums had gained an increasing number of followers and seemed to be defining themselves as the prefered method of communicating. No-one in my high school used the Internet for anything other than ICQ conversations and homework, though occasionally I'd hear people talking about rotten.com, which seems to have been replaced by jj.am and /b/ these days. Most normal teens didn't know what LOL meant. Shocking, isn't it?
There's an online fandom for pretty much everything nowadays - and a slash fandom for absolutley everything - though this was not always the case. (Do web cliques still exist?) I had to search for months before finding a community relevant to my interests, possibly due to the lack of a decent search engine. Ah, for the days where I got up early to play RPGs on mailing lists and debate over the virtues of my favourite characters on dodgy forums where I was the only Australian. I found a modest amount of e-fame in my fandom's community by establishing a horribly, horribly fangirlish site about my then crush. It was littered with mouseovers and MSPaint icons and as well as the usual fansite stuff also had highly relevant information like how much I liked football/being a tomboy (*wince*) and hated it when the VCR broke, as well as details about ill-fated parent/teacher interviews. (It still exists and has around 46, 000 hits. No, you're not getting the address.)
It still takes me by surprise when I see that the geekery which once caused me alienation has now become so popular. It's like the reverse of how things are supposed to happen- as you get older, the things you like generally get LESS cool. Watching kids get excited about things you were doing a decade ago is weird to say the least. Seeing "OMG!" used in TV and movies almost feels like someone's invading your territory.
Also, I miss l337sp34k :(
I remember being involved with various fandoms around the turn of the century. This was back when Bravenet forums were popular (before fancy-shmancy bulletin boards required you to register) and people had midi files playing in the background of their Geocities websites (remember FLASHING ANIMATED BACKGROUNDS?). On-line fandoms were crude to say the least, as transfer speeds were slow and Web 2.0 was still a few years in the making. Newsgroups and mailing lists and eventually Yahoo! Groups were popular hang outs, though forums had gained an increasing number of followers and seemed to be defining themselves as the prefered method of communicating. No-one in my high school used the Internet for anything other than ICQ conversations and homework, though occasionally I'd hear people talking about rotten.com, which seems to have been replaced by jj.am and /b/ these days. Most normal teens didn't know what LOL meant. Shocking, isn't it?
There's an online fandom for pretty much everything nowadays - and a slash fandom for absolutley everything - though this was not always the case. (Do web cliques still exist?) I had to search for months before finding a community relevant to my interests, possibly due to the lack of a decent search engine. Ah, for the days where I got up early to play RPGs on mailing lists and debate over the virtues of my favourite characters on dodgy forums where I was the only Australian. I found a modest amount of e-fame in my fandom's community by establishing a horribly, horribly fangirlish site about my then crush. It was littered with mouseovers and MSPaint icons and as well as the usual fansite stuff also had highly relevant information like how much I liked football/being a tomboy (*wince*) and hated it when the VCR broke, as well as details about ill-fated parent/teacher interviews. (It still exists and has around 46, 000 hits. No, you're not getting the address.)
It still takes me by surprise when I see that the geekery which once caused me alienation has now become so popular. It's like the reverse of how things are supposed to happen- as you get older, the things you like generally get LESS cool. Watching kids get excited about things you were doing a decade ago is weird to say the least. Seeing "OMG!" used in TV and movies almost feels like someone's invading your territory.
Also, I miss l337sp34k :(
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... seriously, I still count it as a language other than English that I speakXD;;
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remember netspace navigator? hotmail before it was associated with msn or even ninemsn?
i remember fanfic.com, rotten.com, image-heavy backgrounds and when the nickelodeon homepage had a part where you could create your own homepage with ugly, ugly layouts.
i also remember being the only australian on forums and /b/ inb4 anonymous
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Man... the 90's sucked
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Even then I didn't much care for it. It was around 2002 I started joining forums and shit.
I feel no real connection to the early web babies. I still don't use the internet to the fullest of it's capacity.
I don't know where I'm going with this but I think all I want to say is fuck nostalgia.
Seriously... fuck it.
The only thing I miss was that websites had much more interesting layouts before myspace, facebook, LJ, blogger and wordpress made everything standardized. The way people chose to index their personal sites. You'd get a guy who'd have a basic front, bio, contact, links page. Then one or two pages that don't quite fit... like... one dedicated to his lederhosen or various things he'd inserted in himself. Just seeing how people chose to prioritize such things. Then you'd get completely baroque labyrinths by insane people with poems and random pictures along the way. And "secret" pages.
I think it was in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle where somebody said you can understand a person by how they index their book. Yeah... shit's for real.
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OH MY GOD. NOSTALGIA.
Fansites. I confess, I miss them. I miss them a lot. Character shrines, music/anime/manga/etc. shrines...
Now, we just have Wikipedia. And, well, ok, I like Wikipedia, but... THE FANSITES. I MISS THEM. I MISS THEM A LOT.