>How long have you been on the internet?
Since 2002, though I truly, actively started using it in 2004 when I started using IRC on the mircx IRC network — sadly it shut down that year and most of the userbase shifted. I still wish I was able to experience Usenet, though no point in dwelling on it. It was quite decentralized which was fun in a strange aspect though much less convenient than it is now. Many people tend to hate on the centralized format the internet is in now, though many of the things they enjoy wouldn't exist without the centralization. Convenience is what truly guides the internet, after all; whatever is most convenient is what people will switch to using.
>What are your best memories?
Fucking around with people on IRC, discovering anime, watching anime series with e-friends together, posting on forums such as SA and AnimeSuki. Pretty much all of my enjoyable memories are from IRC and forums/imageboards.
>How have your internet habit changed?
They haven't, really, apart from talking to less people. I still use IRC frequently and browse imageboards, though forums are a thing of the past for the most part unfortunately. The remaining forums tend to have unbearable userbases — SA is at the forefront of that. I avoid social media & related things and I don't use much of the "centralized" portions of the internet, minus 2 or 3 services such as YouTube. It's not very difficult to avoid the internet centralization, it's more that it's more convenient to use it which continues to drag people into it. That's not to say it's not becoming much more prevalent, though. The internet is becoming much more centralized just as people predicted as far back as two decades ago.
>Do you enjoy it nowadays?
Do I? I still use it, though not so much for a specific purpose as I used to as much as I do just for the sake of using it. I'm sure the vast majority of people using the internet across the globe use it for the sake of using it rather than attempting to accomplish a specific task with it. I'd say I do enjoy it for the most part, though there's numerous aspects I don't enjoy as much. One of these relates to the centralization of the internet and the sheer lack of socialization on it now. Rather than people talking and being able to hold basic conversations, they're all in their little Discords with their friend groups and never chat in multiplayer games or the like. The internet's much less social now and I feel it's suffering for it. It's very difficult to meet new people online now, let alone ones over 20-25 and not obnoxious. It's not so difficult to see why it's the case; after all, what's the point in branching out and meeting new people when all of the people you "want" are on your Twitter feeds, in your Discords, on your social media? It encourages echo chambers and filter bubbles, which I hate to see on the internet.
Another aspect I don't enjoy is the prevalence of irony, though I'm not sure whether that's me being irritable or whether it's really as bad as I seem to believe. There's very few places on the internet you can still maintain a long, deep conversation that doesn't devolve into shitposting. The conversations tend to become ironic and obnoxious — short-lived. Not many places to actually express yourself with like-minded people since many people simply have a surface-level interest in topics.

I'd be willing to say more, though this is already quite long and I don't want to type a fully-fledged rant.

>>36131
>mircx
searching for that I found this: http://munx.de/
What a blast from the past.

I started using the internet around 2004. That was before I could read. I learned to read so that I could use internet more easily. At first I pretty much only used it to play flash games on the websites of cartoon networks and that kind of thing. Then there was the wave of money-generating, second-life-type games like webkinz and club penguin I played. Later on I mainly used youtube and watched typical 2000s youtube shit. 2009 stood out to me as the last "good year" for that kind of content. At that point, youtube was still a place where you could find full length pokemon movies, so "parodies" and guys commentating on other guys complaining about things was no problem. Lots of people have whined and bitched about not getting their ad-revenue or being banned over something, but I think people starting to use youtube for the sake of getting ad-revenue was the real death knell. Blip had it's own stuff, some of which I also fondly remember. I started watching anime around 2010-2011.

The impression I have of back then is that I was following a lot of people. Not people like the sparkly faced vloggers and "influencers" of more recent times, but more like strange adults that had too much time on their hands. My youtube account from back then had hundreds of subscriptions. Deleting that was probably one of the best decisions I've made. I never actually socialized. I didn't participate in imageboards or forums until after 2014 and using myspace or whatever never occured to me. I was out of the loop. What's more important to me is preserving the products of that enviroment more so than the the enviroment itself. There's no large record of causal conversations people had in the 80s or 70s, but right now, you can read threads from 20+ years ago and it's amazing to me. The sheer amount that has been preserved is amazing.

Social media is stupid, it's annoying whenever it comes up and I can't help but think less of people who extensively use it, but on it's own it's not that big of a deal. You can ignore it fairly easily. What's far more worrisome to me is encroaching government and corporate censorship. That freedom the internet gave is the most valuable aspect of it I think. As long as there is some avenue on the internet for information and the things I like, I will keep enjoying it. It was never a social thing for me. Part of me feels like I missed out, but regretting it is pointless.

Post edited on 29th Sep 2020, 5:08pm

>How long have you been on the internet?
Since late 2004.
>What are your best memories?
Nothing stands out in particular. I miss the melancholic atmosphere from 2006-2008.
>How have your internet habit changed?
I don't communicate with anyone aside from a few imageboard posts every month. Aside from that, I only use it for research, archiving for my backlogs, listening to music, and buying overseas mail-order shit.
>Do you enjoy it nowadays?
No.

>How long have you been on the internet?
Geez, since like 2005? I'm younger, but I can remember surfing the tail end of the 90s type internet.
>What are your best memories?
Probably the Haruhi boom. Watching stuff with certain boards, the fun atmosphere in general. I desperately miss places like Wakachan/iichan, but I try shoving down those feelings as much as possible because it gives me a not great feeling knowing how much stuff is gone and there's no way to get it back. You can still find echoes of the genuine weeaboo/wap culture but it's not much more than that and often is intermixed with whatever the kids are into nowadays.
>How have your internet habit changed?
I stopped using "fast" places in the last couple of years, they are mostly not worth the time. I rarely game either. TC in the last year has been a lot more positive, so I have been posting more, I like hanging out on the rizon channel sometimes but my internet connection is not good enough to idle. I have been getting more into textboards, the handful that are active are nice, even if they're not always highbrow they have some of that genuine grassroots fun vibe that has been long lost. I often feel guilty about not giving smaller boards my posts; I have been lurking a bit more on forums about more western non-nerdy things mostly because the median age of them is older and they're less shitpost-y for the most part. There are some bad apples on them, though. It is what it is. I tend to use it more to look at and download hentai than actively surf like I used to.
>Do you enjoy it nowadays?
Yes, although I feel like I am too old for the internet and am desperately trying to hang on to my teenhood, I just have no other social outlet than it. Many old places simply withered and died due to the age of the staff and userbase. http://www.baka-updates.com/ is a good example. Hongfire was another, overrun by bots and eventually taken down by an exploit, nobody bothered to fix it. A sad sight, and it genuinely upsets me even if it's inconsequential in reality. Surprisingly, there are places from these days still active, like another poster noted https://forums.animesuki.com/ is still active as a community although I have no idea of the type of person who posts there. Maybe I should join bakaupdates and get a life.


The widespread adoption of the internet has some more disturbing effects, as well, aside from me just feeling wistful about the old days. https://www.socialcooling.com/

>>36136
>https://www.socialcooling.com/
This is so easily avoidable; I feel no sympathy for anybody who is a "victim" of this phenomenon.

>>36139
There are a lot of people who don't know better. A lot of the world sees facebook as the entire internet.

>>36139
At least it's more real than global warming.

Since 1999. You all make me feel old. My best memories must be around 2010 in imageboards, I think. Late 90's internet was charming and everything but I was a dumb teen so I don't have that many fond memories from it, it's weird. But I could still experience the transition from a non-internet world and it was amazing, I never took it for granted like younger people.
I remember going from chats and multiplayer games, to forums, to imageboards. I still enjoy it sometimes but it's something like 10% of really good and 90% of wasted time.
It could have been the greatest thing ever but it was populated by humans, and humans are mostly shitty even outside real life.
I should write more about this later.

>>36139
It's not like it is the only thing worrying about the ubiquity of tech and the internet.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200511172408/https://mainstreet.one/
>Main Street One repairs harmful narratives and advances positive ones on behalf of causes, campaigns, and companies. Our intelligence system tracks opportunities to shift public discourse and then outputs messages and content to change the outcome.

>We figured out how to identify algorithmically ongoing opportunities to win each day’s discourse. Based on these data models, we create and distribute messages at the scale, speed, accuracy (and lower cost) required to actually win it.

>>36154
Even though their website is now less transparent and uses slightly more coded language, anyone even remotely paying attention can see how insidious it is. It feels so much like satire it's funny.
>Messages people are ready to believe, delivered by messengers they already trust.
>Recruit creators and social influencers.
>Persuade audiences via highly personalized content.

>>36151
I could see why you like that time. 2010-2011 was a really nice year for imageboards and probably the last good one.

>>36129
>How long have you been on the internet?
I suppose very recently compared to many other posters. Joined online communities sometimes around 2012 but was using the internet for various tasks like games and downloading music since the mid-2000's. At that time my parents told me to be careful online me so I avoided it entirely for a while without questioning it at all. I ended up joining too late and was always out of touch with the current trends like social media so I just ended with a sense of longing for something I could have never experienced.

>What are your best memories?
Whenever I went down a big rabbit hole. One example is when I started getting into downloading anime I ended up uncovering a lot of stuff as a result such as old websites on web archive, still active xdcc bots to grab stuff that wasn't on public trackers, and downloading random forgotten stuff just for the hell of it. As a result, I learned about fansub groups and the history of anime subbing including the tape trading days and early otaku culture.

>How have your internet habit changed?
Not really, I've spent 99% of my time online lurking. I went through a period of wanting to find friends online during the 2010's but without much avail. Unlike a lot of older users, I joined the internet relatively late and consequently missed out on a lot of what I wanted to partake in now. I saw everyone as participating in this huge game to try to make everyone else laugh as much and as frequently as possible and forgetting sincerity in the process. Maybe I was the retarded one trying to find friends online. Now I just continue to lurk unless a certain topic seems too hard to pass up responding to.

>Do you enjoy it nowadays?
Not nearly as much as my usage indicates. I generally lurk a few imageboards now because it's a reminder of the type of circles I would have liked to be in. I think as a tool its great for research and entertainment and still find really cool stuff because of it, but the current direction is disappointing. Though at the very least there are still ways to experience the early days of the internet, even if vicariously, which I frequently use such as the Web Archive and watching old youtube videos which is like opening a time capsule.

>>36212
A lot of your story reminds me of my own. Especially the last part about wanting to be part of communities that aren't around anymore. I feel like I missed out on so much and it makes me sad.

You didn't miss a whole lot, there were some fun times and a different attitude to the net but the vast majority was porn/game trading, excessive flaming and spam.
Media wasn't as easy to come by either so secondaries ran rampant in 2D circles.

>How long have you been on the internet?
Well I first started using it sometime around 2000, when I was 8. But during that time I was rarely allowed online (mom would always say "no, I'm waiting for a friend to call", but I imagine she just didn't want me running up the bill). The few times I could get online, all I really did was look up cheat codes and play flash games.

It wasn't until 2004 that I could get online consistently and I started trying to take part in communities. Mainly gaming forums for what few games I had. Of course, being 12 among a group of 15+-year-olds, it was only natural that I made a massive ass of myself. So after a few tries to fit in somewhere, I just kept to myself until stumbling upon 4chan via YTMND (which in turn I found through the Wikipedia article on Sonic the Hedgehog) in 2006.

>What are your best memories?
Having spent most of my time on imageboards, that's where all of the best memories are. Even then I don't know if they're all that good. I remember my first day on 4chan pretty clearly, there was a motivational poster thread on /b/ that immediately got hijacked into a porn dump. I won't say what kind it was, but I'll just say it was like nothing I'd seen before and I came buckets several times. Also hung out on small chans' /i/nvasion boards, was a good place to vent my teenage frustration in the form of raiding other people.

I guess other good memories would be getting into new games and the occasional new anime. But with my computer being the 1998 toaster it was, "games" only meant SNES JRPGs and Doom WADs, and "anime" just meant whatever I could find on streaming sites. I lurked a few forums for the stuff I enjoyed, but I never posted on them since I was too shy. Looking back, I feel like I should have tried to be a part of those communities, I probably would have been driven to pursue the artistic passions I had back in my teens. Without the support of having friends, all I could really do was just dabble occasionally in code and music, never really getting anywhere.

>How have your internet habit changed?
Well I stopped using 4chan. I still use imageboards frequently, even though it's something I'd like to quit. But I can't. Where else could I go? There's a few long-standing forums and IRCs still around, but they're circlejerky as hell and seem to care more about dunking on $POLITICAL_STRAWMAN than discussing whatever the community's centered on.

Essentially, it hasn't changed much. I still use it frequently, maybe even more frequently than in my teens since I'm not busy with school anymore.

>Do you enjoy it nowadays?
Not really. Imageboards are getting samey, hell everything's getting samey. Everything feels so homogenized. It used to be, you could go on imageboards and see a vastly different culture than your favorite anime's fansite, which itself felt different than your second-favorite's fansite, and so on. Now that everyone's on social media and given celebrities an easy way to tell them the Right Way to behave and think, everything's bled away its individuality. Imageboards feel like the last bastion against this, different chans at least still have distinct cultures and have an overall negative view on social media.

>>36129
Been around since the late 90s.
My best experience was a small non-English BBS with quite a nice community. I still miss friends from there, but it died quite suddenly when the admin went to Iraq and didn't come back so most people didn't connect up again.

As far as I'm concerned, the clearnet is as good as dead. It's been overrun by the social media hordes that spread like a plague and who complain about anyone that's different, which gets sites taken down (see: 8chan), net infrastructure companies (DNS-providers, hosts, anti-DDOS...) are banning sites at random and it's accepted by their other customers, and giant quasi-monopolies eat websites. Forums have been killed by Reddit, IRC/Mumble by Discord, webrings by Google, personal websites by FB...
I'm moving more and more to darknet stuff, I2P, TOR, hopefully gnunet at some point. There's still more interesting things there and less of that centralization stuff that's killing the clearnet.

>>36312
> My best experience was a small non-English BBS with quite a nice community. I still miss friends from there, but it died quite suddenly when the admin went to Iraq and didn't come back so most people didn't connect up again.

I'm sorry to hear that, online communities just going down with no backup means of communication is always a tragedy.

>How long have you been on the internet?
Complex question. I first experienced it on the PCs at school in 2004. After that I started going to internet cafes to play Runescape on and off.
In 2010 I could use my laptop in highschool to browse mostly anything, since I found proxies and whatnot to circumvent the school restrictions. I got into Wikia/fandom communities especially and small weeaboo YouTube communities.
I had the internet connected at home properly in 2011-2012. I discovered 4chan a matter of months after that and became obsessive about it.

>What are your best memories?
The Shazbowl, uncovering certain memes for the first time, reading things like Encylopedia Dramatica, making friends and forging communities.

>How have your internet habit changed?
I used to download a plethora of things back in the day with no VPN, was just generally very lax with internet security. More recently I've thought more seriously about that sort of thing, but I still don't know much and I probably make a lot of mistakes. I don't really browse 4chan much anymore, /v/ is an absolute shithole for example.

>Do you enjoy it nowadays?
Unsure. It's just still 'there'.

>How long have you been on the internet? How have your internet habit changed?
I did not grow up with a computer so as a kid all I used the internet for was playing flash games on school computers.
We got one when I was 16 but I still did not participate in online communities, my cousin told me about torrent sites so I used the internet for that, that did lead me to anime wallpapers which lead me to Konachan, anime in general and 4chan and thus imageboards. I was about 19 then. A lot of my online habits have been slow to form, I did not start using Youtube until a few years ago when I was 26 or something like that and even then I did not have a Youtube profile for years, I would just open a tap on my browser with every channel I liked.


>What are your best memories?
Discovering things for the first time and delving into them, whether that is a new tag on Geelbooru, or a new website about things I like.

Probably my best imageboard memories would have been of early 8chan /jp/ and /int/. They were fairly varied in the people there particularly /int/, like there were two desu posters that would have interesting discussions with me about things like the Prussian-Austrian war and I had another conversation with some guy about whether Hong Meiling was a cannibal or not, they are probably the only three posters that I have ever really liked. Well I mean that sounds bad but it's just that on imageboards like this I don't know the posters as individual posters, we don't use flags so a post could be made by anybody they don't create personas, so people can make good posts but I would not attribute them to one person. But anyway, then I left to do some IRL overseas stuff and when I came back they were gone and 8chan lost all it's appeal to me.

>Do you enjoy it nowadays?
I guess I still enjoy it or I would not be on it. It gets worse over time and I find it harder to find places that I feel comfortable in or to feel comfortable on the internet as a whole. I post on Tohno and Kissu, Tohno is fine, but Kissu has issues but is the best I can find like it, both sites together don't fill the things I want them too, they don't have the kind of discussion about the kinds of topic that I would want to have elsewhere like about Military hardware or something like that, but the places that do have discussions about topics like that are terrible with horrible people.

>How long have you been on the internet?
It depends on what you'd consider being "on the internet". I've been using computers and the internet since I was a tiny, pants-shitting child. My memories are practically nonexistent, I only really touched flash games on sites I probably got help with from my family members. A few years later I'd have my own computer where I was a little more independent because I probably learned to read. Primariy looking for porn because the teachers told us not to do so multiple times. It was around that time I stumbled onto 4chan. That would have been late-mid 2000's. I didn't pass the homepage because I saw a ton of words and not boobs. It just seemed like a boring site to my elementary school brain. Aside from porn I also lurked video game forums a bit, used youtube, and played flash games.
That was basically all I did until 2014 when I started using imageboards, and what a shitty time to start it was.

>What are your best memories?
I don't really have many memories. Internet was heavily limited in early 2017, and I didn't really have much fun until 2020 or so. It was alright at first, reading the epic screencaps, but outside of that, everything was always the same and anything new got immediately got old due to overuse. My best memories were pretty much all in the past couple years when I started focusing on small boards. /jp/ was also really fun for about a year. It was fun familiarizing myself with things I had occasionally seen over the years and digging through vague memories, probably from early youtube, flash games, and people I was around as a kid.

>How have your internet habit changed?
I don't waste as much time browsing these days. I still check often, but usually during whatever breaks I take. It's nice since this way I actually do stuff instead of being bored refreshing pages.

>Do you enjoy it nowadays?
Yes, but in a different way compared to how I used to. Nowadays it's less of a direct source of fun. More of a guide. I do still enjoy small boards. TC in particular is my favorite. It's a site I feel right at home at.