When did you first use the Internet?

[Äike]

1999, I used the internet mostly for gaming and reading news.

[Svipdag]

When I first acquired a modern computer; I had been using a Commodore-64 previously, the successor to my TI 99 which I used to write programs in Basic to use in teaching astronomy and crystallography. Then, I acquired a COMPAQ
and discovered the Internet.

At first, all I used it for was search engines, most often, Alta Vista, and chat rooms. In one of the several chat rooms, I met the person who now calls himself Óttar on this forum. He suggested that I join Skadi Forum of which he was already a member.

I hated Skadi Forum and after a year or two, resigned and joined Blut und Boden, which I loved. I was shocked and saddened when it was suddenly disbanded. To fill the vacuum left by BuB, I joined The Althing. When it, too, disbanded, I reluctantly re-joined Skadi. They treated a friend of mine very arbitrarily and, out of sympathy for and soldarity with him, I resigned again.

Skadi just doesn't get the idea. They keep inviting me to return. {sigh} I don't want to. I DON'T LIKE THEM. I have found the Apricity Forum much more congenial. I feel comfortable here.

So, what do I use the Internet for, now ? News, e-mail, forums, and search engines. I had never imagined that it would occupy as much of my time as it does. It has usurped the places of several of my hobbies, which I rather miss. I ought to restrict the time I spend on the Internet to allow time for other activities which I have been slighting.

[Murphy]

04 or 05 I think.

Regards,
The Papist.

[Poltergeist]

It was only about 2000 that I started using it extensively and on the regular basis.

[Absinthe]

I think it was 1999, when I was away from my house for the first time...

I first used it for downloading (the golden Napster years...), then I discovered e-mail, mIRC and ICQ, and this was also the first time I had a e-crash on some guy from Arizona that I met on Napster...

[Loki]

I first used email at work in South Africa at around 1997, I think. Then in 1999 I opened a Hotmail account to keep in touch with friends and relatives when I moved to England. I started browsing the web at that time, and became involved in some anthropology discussion groups where I met people like Allenson, Thorburn/Njord Eriksson, Ross/Hors, Suomut and a few others. Friendships gained there grew in strength, and at around 2002 Thorburn invited me to be involved on Skadi staff. It was then called Aryan Dawn, before the ownership takeover. That was my introduction to the world of forums, and I became more deeply involved later having opened a few forums of my own.

[Loddfafner]

I got a modem in 1993 or 94 and discovered USENET. I spent a good chunk of the 90s there. I set up some Listerv-type discussion groups which shaped my sense of the potentials and problems of online communities.

[Frigga]

I had a brief introduction to the internet in probably 1997 or so when having to work on some school projects. But I didn't get my first email account until summer of 1999. I mostly just used email and looked up random things until 2004 when I found out about the Heathen Front forum, because I had had a friend who had been in prison for a long time who was an Odinist. He had given to us in a letter a lot of useful links to heathen sites and forums that others had told him about. I joined Heathen Front and was there for a couple of months, but left shortly after. After that, it was just email and myspace until 2008 when I joined Odinist.net and I have been an ever increasing addict ever since. I had never thought that I would enjoy internet forums so much, but I find them superior to just plain social networking as I'm being mentally stimulated with the discussions.

[The Lawspeaker]

Proof please... My parents who live in the same province had internet since '94.
Shure it wasn't some Azian chick?

Australian. I am quite sure of that as she said Australia. The "chat" didn't go much beyond "hi" and "how are you" - "so where are you from ?" The internet was all new to me back then and one of the caretakers knew more about the internet and he put me in a chair and "gave me the floor" (so to speak-he was already talking to her).
And I will need to look up that article. The picture is still on that foster house (Stichting de Oosterpoort - in those days the head office was still in Den Bosch). And I was in Oss btw.

It was one of those early programs when you could not choose your chat partner.

Edit; My reply to this threat stated I had internet late 80's, begin 90's... I was living in Helmond then another town in the same province...

But you were living at home. Not in an foster house.

[Electronic God-Man]

It must have been around 2000/2001 when I started playing the MMORPG EverQuest:The Ruins of Kunark It was a cool game but it ended up eating my soul and devouring every bit of time I had free.

I also remember playing some online Stock Market game. I'd come home from school everyday to see how my virtual stocks had been doing. It was cool because it followed the real market.

Man, I also remember trolling the AOL chat rooms before I even knew it was called trolling. I used to go to the help chats and say that my mother had cancer, or that I was losing faith in God, all sorts of funny shit. I was a f*cked up kid. The reactions were always worth a laugh.