Internet Community History

[pd~]

My family got our first proper computer and internet around 2002. I've been in and out of online communities ever since.

2002-2004ish: led-zeppelin.com forums, mostly under 'Muse' (as in Jethro Tull's Baker St. Muse). Some people told me about Radiohead, which led to

2004-2008ish: mortigitempo.com. I had several accounts, I think my longest was 'sharrock'. Spent a lot of time in the Other Music forum, where music snobs clued me into RYM.

2008-2012ish: rateyourmusic.com. I was 'Trace_WM' for awhile, then switched to 'motion', I think? I discovered Korean Brood War and Dota through bros there. I lost track of them all. Kinda sad

2009-2012ish: teamliquid.net. 'myopia'. When StarCraft II failed to deliver, I hung around for Dota/LoL. Got really into Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Gradually stopped visiting as my interest in most video games died.

2013-present: ILF. I read a few other gear/engineering/tech forums but don't participate.


I wonder if I've crossed paths with anyone here

[oscillateur]

Haha, I've been using the same alias online since I bought the domain name in 2000 or so (oscillateur) but I've also usually been active online in only one or two mailing lists or forums at a time. Some for a few months, some for many years. No intersection with yours though.

Incomplete list :

Benders circuit bending mailing list
Analogue Heaven and Analogue Heaven Off Topic mailing lists
Loopers Delight mailing list (the signal to noise ratio on there was so bad...)
Whitechapel (used to be Warren Ellis' forum - the writer, not the musician)
A little bit of OffsetGuitars
Muffwiggler (which slowly but surely turned into shit, sadly)
ILF

[UglyCasanova]

I don't know the years, but I only stick to one forum at a time

Spillegal.no - gaming forum
Be-mag.com - rollerblading forum
Gitarnorge - guitar forum
ILF - boner forum

[fcknoise]

Forum as in places I have my internet friends?

I've only really felt at home on ILF, but I was a pretty heavy Twitter user and have several good friends from that time too

[Jwar]

No clue on dates. I'm a nerd. Who knew.

Rue-Morgue.com
Fangoria.com
dvdtalk.com
steelbookhunterz (not even sure if that exists anymore?)
Muffwiggler
TheGearPage
HarmonyCentral
Talkbass
ILF


There are probably more that I've been apart of, but ILF is the only one I'm active on.

[hbombgraphics]

other than ILF I have never really stuck with a forum at all,
Tried TGP didn't get it
Never latched on sneaker freaker or solecollector either, ILF makes sense

Oh I did have some Myspace penguins but I am not sure that counts for anything

[popvulture]

I guess my progression's the norm social media wise. Friendster (!!!) > MySpace > Facebook. I miss the old ones. I do like Twitter though, even though it's me just randomly belching shit up. Oh and Tumblr--I had one of those for a while.

Forum wise I started on Gearslutz, then TGP, then ILF.

This is the only forum that hasn't made me want to self-immolate.

[rustywire]

Warning: memories have blurred together.

NSFW: show

I grew up with a computer in the house as far back as I can remember. My old man was an early adopter going back to punch cards before I was born.
He had an IBM or compatible for work related stuff when I was in pre school circa mid 80s, plus a TI-99/4a which I was allowed to play with.
Had my own Sesame Street learning games plus my earliest vidya memories: Car Wars, Alpiner & Hunt The Wumpus.
The old man even had an acoustic coupling modem and a computer with an internal; the Compaq Portable [luggable] which was my first proper hand-me-down pc. He had a 286 Toshiba and around 1991 got a 486 which had been my uncle's & built for CAD. In late 1993 it was handed down to me, loaded with Windows 3.1 as he still preferred DOS, and used the Toshiba until 94 when he got his first Pentium, a Presario with Win95. Anyway... my earliest internet memories revolve around game genie codes for SNES but also NES games. Street Fighter 2, specifically. 3 of my friends & I were doing mid-air Hadoukens and weird uppercut hacks months ahead of Gamepro & EGM printing the codes. Modifying codes to see what would happen. I still have a printout from a Usenet mailing list, march 1993 [it's on well-yellowed fax type paper].

I've mostly been a long time lurker, of lurking the lurks.
My first memory of internet community participation: FF3 bulletin boards on Prodigy where I went by... various pseudonyms Then chats.
This was on the old man's 486 w/external modem. 14.4. Later got AOL and used to chill in PR scene chats like warez3, c o l d i c e, moose & THE END was fav.
The website I remember most from this era was Silicon Toad's The Infinity Void. Bought a secondhand Thinkpad for $50 with Win 3.11 and got a lesser-known Win96 [it had an active desktop and was buggy af] installed before loaning it out & getting stolen.
That was at the end of the 90s, over a period of about 20 months when I went through my *college experimentation party years* while still in HS, rarely staying home other than to eat & sleep so I didn't use internet very much. Got my own first new computer as a graduation present upon completing a HS FYP. It was actually 4.5 This one even had a cdr burner! It came with a free year of AOL so I went back to what was left of the PR server scene [mp3, cerver, mm, aviempire etc] and chilled in some AIM chats as well, but the names always changed as they'd get shut down & blacklisted. Chilled in music chats on Napster 2.7 and later on WinMX, then soul seek. And music sites, ug hip hop and idm type forums still alive [watmm, rmc] and not. HipHopInfinity was pretty cool in its day. Also the Tough Crowd message board when Colin Quinn was on cable. Early social media sites like ezboards, friendster & the dilly, xanga. Early meme sites like ytmnd. But I had some of my best online community times chattin with popular babes & normies as well as punks/goths/freaks in public, member created AOL chats. Desirable, attractive people and individuals w/personality actually used to go there and chat with anon strangers. A far cry from the safe space bubbles of current year where it seems like everyone is 3edgy5u and hiveminded.
Ever since I've been lurking, mostly as a ghost but I get around. Less so lately. Contributed some to sites I've gleaned much info & knowledge from passing the time and exploring...but ILF was the first community I've ever really wanted to stick around and help enrich without any sort of subtle long-troll game in play.
It's possible we've run into each other before, and while it may have been me, I like to think I'm somewhat of a different person every time I wake up

Legendary lurk steez, having not 1 post between the world's fav image board ...in over 10 years of browsing. I just ramble on...

[PeteeBee]

I was on silverfishlongboarding for years when I was trying to become a pro skateboard racer. Screen name keziahlongboards, which was the name of the skateboards I was selling. That was a lot different than ILF because the online community was a lot lamer, but all my buddies in real life who were also Ams trying to jump to pro were on there so we had our own thing going on.

[skullservant]

Started out on noise forums first. Chondritic Sound and HNW forums. Also Doomed Forever Forever Doomed which was a forum about doom/drone/etc. wasn't really as much into gear then. Lurked ILF for a while and then came here. Also on TGP and TalkBass to lurk BST, stompboxes.co mostly to lurk, and diystompboxes and madbean to post builds

[bigchiefbc]

My dad got an IBM PC with a 286 in 1985 I think (?), when I was 6 years old, so I've pretty much always been around computers.
We first got on the internet in 1994 with a brand spanking new 28.8k modem. I found usenet pretty quickly, mostly going on red sox and celtics newsgroups, I never found any of the music newsgroups very interesting. The sports ones were at least fun because it was just a bunch of people arguing.
The first real message board I remember joining was the one on the TDN Tool page, just after Lateralus came out.
I joined Talkbass probably sometime around 2005. I checked out both HC and TGP around this time as well, and was not a fan
Then I joined the Devi forum in late 2007 (as you can see in my profile) and have been here ever since.
I also post on some fantasy-sports related forums, as I'm pretty obsessed with that as well.

I've always gone by the same name on all forums and newsgroups. It's a nickname I've had since freshman year of HS.

[casecandy]

My aunt was an expert in computers. Seriously. She received the Queen's Jubilee Medal for her contributions to Canadian computer sciences. She brought home a PC in 1992 and I grew up with no Internet but tons of games. Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, etc. OG shit! Loved it.

Only time I used the Internet between 1992 and 2003 was (a) to read about Star Wars in 1996 and (b) to play Pokémon Red on a Gameboy emulator in the computer lab after school, circa 1999-2001. Okay, maybe a little homework, too. And I did know what Napster was it and used it over my friend's shoulder. He was the kid who charged other kids $5 for burned CDs if they gave him a list of songs, but he was my BF so he let me have them for free. Good times.

My nuclear family didn't get a computer until 2003 and that's also when I got the Internet and immediately downloaded Kazaa and MSN Messenger.

Circa 2003, 16-17 years old, Rolling Stone forums, as CASH_WAS_A_GREAT_MAN. Quoted on the front page of the Rolling Stone website on one occasion, "The White Stripes music will be as synonymous with the 2000s as The Who's is with the 1960s."

Circa 2005, 18-19 years old, Say Anything forums, as trnsylvanian. Helped to uncover several old Say Anything demos from around the web; as a member of The Peach Pit, which was an effort to get Say Anything's old music out there to the public in the days when elite P2P sites weren't very accessible.

Circa 2006-2007, OiNK's Pink Palace forums. Very active OiNK user, eventually becoming a Power User+ and running the site's annual Best Of lists as well as the Best of All Time list. When the site was nabbed by the feds, this activity ceased...

Circa 2007-2008 or so, heavily active in the forums for both What.cd and Waffles.fm. Am a Power User+ on both sites. Still occasionally post, mostly looking for recommendations.

Circa 2009-2011 or so, ran the Tumblr Conversion 2.0, which was about my own conversion to Judaism. When I moved up north, I had to put the whole thing on hold; conversion to Judaism requires proximity to a Jewish community, and there's definitely not one in the Arctic. I was pretty active on the Tumblr Jewish community for a while. I also ran a Facebook group called "Zionists" but it was for liberal zionists who are also proponents of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

2013-2014, extremely active on Rap Genius (now just Genius) as xWHALESHARQx and other usernames. Still have an open account but not active. Amassed over 60,000 IQ in about two months, became a moderator, and a Top Scholar on Earl Sweatshirt and Jay Z. Still the Top Scholar on Macklemore, I think. Very active on the forums. Site has subsequently lost its soul and I just don't feel it anymore after the loss of several key staff I was friends with including the founder Maboo. There was also a lot of political BS about an internship in Brooklyn.

2015, ILF! Best community yet!

Also 2015, joined up as a Moderator on Everipedia. (With the aforementioned Maboo.)

[D.o.S.]

. Still the Top Scholar on Macklemore, I think.

[repoman]

4chan

[Eivind August]

Didn't have teh internetz at home while growing up, so didn't have regular access until I was thirteen or something. Sorta happy about that.

Joined GitarNorge in 2006, which is basically Norwegian TGP, just with more metalheads. It was pretty fun back in the day though, with less mods and political correctness. Think I'm still one of the all time top posters over there, but now I mainly use it for the BST. I joined before most of the peeps who run the place these days. Got banned at some point, and while it was lifted pretty quick it left a bad taste, which led to me not spending time in online communities, save for lurking Prog Archives (which I still do now and then).

Then I came upon ILF, as it always seemed to come up when I googled for pedals I found interesting. After lurking for a while, I joined. Basically like coming home. Luv ya.