My Web Anniversary

My good buddy Al got me thinking about internet memories, at a time which is my internet anniversary.  So here goes ....

I happened to pull out a file yesterday with a set of invoices ... including one from late May of 1995, saying that I was now a client of Island Services Network.  That was the month that I started my life on the Internet.

I well remember it.  Aside from looking at various websites, one of the things I was most interested in was meeting people from other places and chatting.  My buddy Davey suggested IRC, so I found a program (MIRC) and hooked up through a server at the University of Texas (there were actually two servers there, nicknamed "Minnie" and "Mickey").  They connected me to Efnet, and I was on my way.

My first stop was - and I can give no reason for this - a channel called #Buffalo.  People from or around or interested in Buffalo.  I called it up and *BLAM* ... all these conversations, coming at me, disjointed, seemingly unconnected, words scrolling down my screen.  I thought I'd never be part of this, just because I couldn't comprehend what was going on.

Just as I was about to give up, some kind soul offered some help.  He explained some acronyms that, today, seem laughably obvious.  LOL ... ROFL ... IMHO ... and others.  He offered advice - essentially to sit back, relax, let the screen unfold for a while, and it will all make sense.  He was right.  By the time the evening was done, I wasn't so intimidated.

The next night, I wandered into a channel called #Canadiana ... seemed like a good place for a Canadian boy.  Again, I was intimidated by the speed and volume of chatter, the acronyms, the inside jokes, the camaraderie which I wasn't part of ... all of it.  So I hung back (what I now would call "lurking", but the term was not yet invented), watched, and occasionally threw in a smart-ass comment.  I remember being thrilled when somebody responded to a comment with "LOL".  Wow .. I made somebody Laugh Out Loud.  Cool.  (OK, how naive was I?)

A few weeks - maybe even days - later, and I was an active participant, with a whole raft of people I knew only by their screen names:  Carla, Ed, Tea, ScarletWitch, NOFX, Mouse ... almost all were from Canada, and it was a genial place to be. 

I got into a conversation one night with ScarlettWitch, who said "There's another channel called "NOBS" you might like." 

"NOBS"?  I'm going to hang out with a bunch of people who openly admit to being Nobs?  I don't think so.

"Not NOBS," she said " "NoBS"  As in No Bullshit."  Ahh ...

So I went there, and yet again met up with a group of people who all knew one another and weren't much interested in me.  I watched, waited, threw in the occasional smart-ass comment, and eventually felt ... well, like a part of it.  A newcomer, sure, but ... provisionally accepted.

I was "Nilbo"  (a nickname I picked up in junior high and which has, for whatever reason, stuck).  In the channel were others, male and female, with nicks like "Sugggar", "EShark", "SweetLace", and "MsK".  To complicate things, they all knew one another's real names, as well as nicks from previous incarnations on AOL and other mediums. - meaning one person could have several names. One character - "Dani" - would chip in every now and again with: "Women Suck".  That was his sole contribution to the conversation:  "Women Suck".

I sat, watched, and occasionally lobbed in a smart-ass comment.  It's what I do.

The conversations were - as anyone who has done this for any length of time will know - all over the map.  Daily happenings in peoples' lives, bawdy repartee, current events, more bawdy repartee, bitchiness, pissypants behaviour, anti-social rants, flame wars, the whole IRC experience. 

It was utterly banal and utterly invigorating.  I was addicted to it.  "I'm just going to check my e-mail," I would say to my wife as I signed on at 10 PM.  At 4 AM, I'd be almost asleep at the keyboard.

Then, one night - a few days after I joined the channel - I was sitting there, watching the shit being shot, when I heard a ding.  It was a private message.  The tag on the screen flashed the nickname of one of the women in the channel.

(In the interest of fairness and accuracy, I will say there is and always has been some dispute about who messaged whom first.  I consider the question irrelevant.  But, strictly for the record, it was - take my word on it - she who messaged me first.)

She said something like "Can you believe this?"  The conversation in the channel was eye-rollingly stupid, and I was delighted to realize I wasn't the only person who thought so.

"Morons," I agreed.  We traded a few good-natured, snarky comments about the people who were dominating the discussion.  Then we began the tentative, drawn-out, overly-cautious process of getting to know one another.

It was tricky, because the net was then - and for all I know, still is - dominated by HNGs - Horny Net Geeks.  For all she knew, I could be one.  I certainly knew the lingo - my early joke was to greet her with "So whut r u werin?"  (To which, of course, the only correct answer is "Nuttin. U?")

(Let me interject here that nothing should be inferred by the fact that I became close friends with a member of the opposite sex.  I'm not much of a "guy's guy" - in fact, I don't have many male friends at all.  I much prefer the company of women.  Always have, always will.  Call me a girly man if you will, but that's me.)

But we did gradually become acquainted.  She had a couple of young daughters, aged 4 and 7, the same number of years apart as my girls, so we had that to talk about.  And lots of other things.  She was smart, could spell, could punctuate, made me laugh, and was great company through the long night.

That was ten (!) years ago.  A decade.  In that time, my girls have grown up, graduated from high school, one has finished University and become engaged.  Her girls have grown as well, into lovely young women.  We've both been through enormous change.  And through it all, we've talked - in the early days every night for weeks, less often now as our lives have changed, but still more regularly than I see most of my closest friends in "real life".

We have a shorthand now, like any old married couple.  She can finish my sentences, I hers.   If something's not right with her, I can feel it from the way she types a comma or the way she says "Hello".  She can sense when I'm bothered about something or when I'm in need of a hatpin for my inflated ego.  And she always has one handy, although I've never seen her wear a hat.  I can ask her opinion and know I will get an absolutely direct, honest answer.

She's become a close friend, one of perhaps three or four people on this planet with whom I would literally entrust my life.  Knowing her has been endlessly enriching.

She lives a long way away.  We met once, for lunch and a couple of drinks.  Nothing scandalous.  Nothing untoward.  Just two friends.

I shudder to think how much poorer my life would be if, some ten years ago, I hadn't signed onto the Net.  And ended up on IRC, and in that channel ... 

And if, of course, she hadn't messaged me.

Hey, you ... ten years, huh?  Ain't that something?

Now, I know that a lot of you have been on the net for years ... what were your first experiences ...?

Comments

[kalki]

Your experiences in those first few channels sound exactly like how I felt at first in the dooce comments "chat room." Everything you said, I completely relate to. Especially how remarkable it is to meet people online to whom you completely relate and in some cases even grow to love. I love the way such a diverse and international group of people can form a close-knit community, a technologically-enhanced urban family.

[Laura]

HOLY Smokes!! I've got to collect myself first.
wow..

have mercy. I'm still reeling from this post.
I just got home, decided to "check my email" and came over here instead.
boy, you sent one outta the ball park today Nils. I cannot believe it has been 10 years already.
When you told me to look closely at Erin's picture from Paris, I almost cried. It's been an incredible watching our girls grow up. I wouldnt have traded it for the world. And I had you to lean on every time the going got rough.
And every time it was good, I always thought to myself: "I've got to tell Nils about this."

I'm going to go make some coffee because right now, I want to say everything all at once.
and BYYYY the wayyy, as far as the who messaged whom debate: I have always maintained that I never message strange men on the internet. And that's the truth as far as you know ;)

Here's to the next 10 years ***

[Bucky Four-Eyes]

I shall whisper this part, out of shame and fear of taunting: My first online experience was AOL in 1993.
I really dug chat at first, but burned out on it quickly because of the rampant, well, stupidity in AOL chat.
And then, mercifully, I was kicked off of AOL. Another story for another day.

But I wear it like a velcro badge of honor: Banned from AOL for Life.

Glad I got out on the "real" Internet and met people like you and all the other crazy mofos I met in Dooce comments.

[weetzie]

I am still the naive one going Wow .. I made somebody Laugh Out Loud. Cool.

[suburban misfit]

My first memorable internet experience was in 1990 or 1991, when chat rooms were just starting up. I ended up a regular on one...I can't remember the whole name now, but it had England in it somewhere. I met and became good friends with Bosco (not his real name, and not from the East Coast of the US). We eventually started talking on the phone and had I not had a boyfriend (who became my husband) something surely would have developed. As it was, I was a little apprehensive about my feelings for him (were there any? I don't know.) and when he came to the US on vacation, I made myself unavailable.

I regret that. I wonder whatever happened to him....

[whfropera]

oh my...I may trump all of you and will validate my geekdom forever and my age, which is 40 - I started in 1984 in undergrad on the fak.merspap at Carnegie Mellon University - now known as opera-l, or "Opera-List".
Yep. A bunch of whacked-out opera geeks online. Many of us are still there, many of us unsub/sub based on how many flame wars about Renata Tebaldi are going on, and I will never forget what the elm and pine email clients look like. They are UNIX-based and still in use at some colleges.

[AndreaBT]

whfropera, I bow at your geeky feet ;) 1984...wow...I did not even know there WAS internet in 1984...I mean, I did not know of its existence when I was 14 that year, and I did not know now that it went that far back. That is so cool.

I am a comparatively relative newcomer to the net (1998); and like Bucky, my first brush with it was AOL (and Bucky! You had totally better blog about getting kicked off of AOL! I am going to be checking in, and if you don't write about it, I will harass you in your comments until you do!). The first thing was jump into a Chinese chat room, oddly enough. Not so odd if you know I lived in China for three years, I guess, but still an unexpected place! And even though I think AOL is a big waste of money now, I did love those chat rooms. COLOR! .WAV FILE SOUNDS! COOL FONTS! ROLLING THE DICE (though I still don't get that...rolling a 1000-sided dice??? Eh???)! I liked that they were real time. Fast and hard to follow at first, but like Nilbo said, I figured it out soon enough.

My life changed in 1998. If I have time to waste, my first thought is always, "I'm just going to go check my e-mail..." ;)

[Bucky Four-Eyes]

Opera gal - Nobody better say anything bad about Pine mail, since I only recently abandonded it at work. UNIX and command-line interface rock my world, baby.

Andrea - guess I'll have to spill the AOL beans one o' these days.

[whfropera]

Command line jokes for BFE:

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

[whfropera]

Nilbo- sorry to use up your bandwidth with this :)

The Internet actually goes back to about 1965 - it was a research tool developed on college campuses and using gov't grants. That Internet, known as Internet1, is the Internet we know and love today, because it has primarily been abandonded by the research institutions.

There is an Internet2 .....cue spooky music

[Nils]

Qucik, everybody, gather 'round .. an old person is telling a story!!!!!

[whfropera]

ok, that is enough of that shit right now, mister.

[whfropera]

oh damn, i tried to code *grins* and it didnt work.

[Nils]

Heeheehee. I've done that, using the whattyacallem angled parentheses and had it not appear ... and worry that everybody will think I'm serious. Fortunately, it's me, so nobody ever thinks I'm serious anyway.

[whfropera]

seriousness is overrated - just ask Bucky.

[gina]

I signed on in 1999, and quickly became addicted to the chat rooms. I loved to lurk in the rooms and pounce on the straight lines. I lost 40 pounds in the first three months on what I call the AOL diet -- work, little sleep, and eating yogurt at the keyboard when I would remember to eat at all.

[AndreaBT]

whfropera...is that the www2.whatever.com I see around some places?

[whfropera]

I'm not sure, but this link has a lot of info:
http://www.internet2.edu/

[marybishop]

Hobson's choice...somehow that's how I got here...I don't know where you wrote these words, I want to say Lawbrat?, but I'm not sure...

so HI!

I die for the chance to say Hobson's choice or Occam's razor...

Not many opportunitites...

[Nils]

Heeheee ... let me make you all sweaty, then, by mentioning "Pascal's Wager" ... ohhhh ...

[deneen]

Your story made me smile. I have met one of the best friends if not the best friend I will ever have in a chat room. Our paths should have never crossed but they did. She is the sister of my soul.

Technology-ain't it grand?

Deneen