Do you remember when you first got online?

I do not remember the exact day, but I distinctly remember us first using the internet in 1996, and I'd visit Amazon all the time to find books I never could find at the bookstore. I also (regrettably) remember Mayberry USA, one of the worst internet browser safety programs ever invented. Tumblr's shitty anti-porn bot that was implemented this past year brought back sad flashbacks of just how terrible Mayberry was at policing the web for "inappropriate" content. I also remember the really bad clipart and animations they used to have on the web back then. Even as a kid, I thought it looked tacky.

I’m not sure if this counts but in the 80’s in the Commodore 64 days we would set up a BBS or bulletin board system that was on our2nd phone line. People could dial up call and leave messages on the board and d-load games. On my board people had to up load 2 games to down load one. I amassed a huge collection quickly.

The first real internet I used was at a friends house I registered for classes in college and I think it was in 1995.

Yep, it was somewhere around 1993-95. Apple had come out with a service called e-World and I was on that. It was cute. But the less cute AOL took over it and the even less less cute CompuServ.

I think the screechy sound of a dial-up modem is permanently etched in many of our brains.

At home it was 1995 as that was when I got my modem from the university and I think it was a 28.8 modem. I think at school it might have been a year or so earlier.

I mostly chatted on ICQ, or some chatrooms on other pages. I used Powwow for a while too.

I started at the public library, I think it was maybe 1998 or 99 I created my e-mail account, and also started looking up websites. I think I mostly looked at Ancestry.com in half hearted attempts to get into genealogy. I went about once a week to check my e-mail.

It wasn't until maybe 2000, or 2001, I finally bought my own computer. Having only used the library, I was that stereotyped person that "didn't know how to even switch a computer on" lol!

Within two days of unpacking my PC I had not only found my way around how to use it, but signed up with a website builder and created and published my own website, so, I took to being online pretty fast once I had my own.

I do remember my first forays into communities was in chatrooms and they were awful. Fast moving and chaotic conversations all crossing over each other. Then I found MSN "Groups" which were basic forums.

I was on dial-up and although it was slow as hell, I kind of still have nostalgia for that dial-up noise when you connected -- "eeerrueueahaaahhheeeeeeeewhoooooeeee"!

Dialup -early 80s
World Wide Web - early 90s

At work in 1993 but that was in-house at first. And then in 1998 I bought my own system and hooked up to the internet on 56Kps dial-up. I can't believe I paid so much money for such a crappy PC. It wasn't until I retired that I really started to spend time on the internet and joined IMDb a few years later.

A friend and I got on his dad's computer in the early 80s and dialed into The Source (or Compuserve, cant recall which first). we were astonished that there was a chat room with 10 people from around the world.