Pretty sure it was in middle school, so we are talking like 98-99. It was in the computer lab. Other kids were playing gerbils on the mac while I was surfing I think a world factbook site, I remember clicking on Japan because I was obsessed with catching DBZ on the morning cartoon blocks before toonami was a thing. Seeing girls in kimonos and the usual fluff about ancient honorable Nippon and Tokyo. What about you?
Probably one of those Flash games sites that were popular in the mid-late 2000s. I seem to be a bit younger than other people in this thread.
Almost certainly neopets but battleon, ebaum, new grounds, and game spy/game faqs are also in the running. Idk what order my memories go in anymore
my parents refused to get an Internet connection in the house until like 2004, genuinely ridiculous how much anxiety they have around technology
the first website I purposely visited was probably Disney or Nickelodeon
it was metacrawler in about 1996 on a silicon graphics machine, running some early netscape. at my dad’s work. google didnt exist yet, of course.
I went to a technical high school where you got to learn a trade and academics on alternating weeks. I went because one of the trade shops was computer programming/repair.
They gave us access to a dialup Internet server at University of Massachusetts, but it wasn’t TCP/IP, it just dropped you into a purely text based Linux terminal. My first web access was using Lynx through that, but I can’t remember what the first page I would have used. Probably Archie, since the only thing it was useful for(to me at least) at that point was finding files to download via gopher.
I don’t remember tbh, it was probably in a computer lab, but I do remember setting up my first email address as a pekklemail address (the duck from Sanrio)
and my brother set up a badtzmail address (penguin from sanrio 
I don’t remember the first website, but I do remember my grandpa sitting at his desk showing me usenet. My grandpa was really cool and loved technology, he had a prodigy connection at home as far back as the 80s. I remember he had one of those cradles that you’d put a phone headset into and it would play dial tones, and that’s how you’d connect to the internet. He would even work from home using it sometimes, like sending emails and stuff. Grandpa was really cool, he had a Sputnik watchers badge too and apparently listened to it beeping as it passed overhead on his radio. He was just so different than most other older folks, he was very online and capable at using computers. He knew about software and kept up to date on innovations. Just a cool guy. Also he bowled 299 twice in his life, one of those times after he had part of his heart removed. He ruled.
I don’t even remember what he showed me on usenet. I was too young to read very well, but I was really impressed by it. It was those old monochrome CRT screens with the white text on black backgrounds. Yeah, he had Oregon Trail too lol.
If I had to guess the first actual website I used, it was probably during school? Probably the netscape homepage. Macs were ubiquitous in schools back then, or at least my school had them.
Encarta?
The first one was probably the official site (EA its in the shame) for extra content circa 1999? after I saw a showcase for it but that might as well be a dream from back then because I remember wanting it bad or maybe it was just a mod site.
whitehouse . com
Got our first computer in I think '96? At first my mom put age restrictions on my browsing but I figured out her password and logged on and changed my access rights. I think the first three websites I tried (after I figured out there was more to the internet than just AOL) was either mtv.com, disney, or nickelodeon’s website. I used to spend a lot of time playing games on there, back when sites like that had games on them.
Yahoo.com probably; whatever the Netscape homepage was.
I think my first might have been nickelodeon or cartoon network dot com, back when they had flash games. Or it might have been joe cartoon?
First website I visited was altavista.digital.com. It was a search engine that didn’t even have its own site. My first search was for Metallica, my favorite band at the time.
Pretty sure mine was this too. But not entirely sure anymore.
Rotten dot com used to have a library of essays about stuff.
It’s now located at https://www.rottenlibrary.net/
Rotten, Ogrish, and &Totse pretty much ruined me. What’s crazy is Ogrish was the first site that I’m aware of to break the news about Kevin Spacey being a chomo when they posted a video of him in a hot tub with a Guatemalan boy in the early-mid 00s. I’ve since tried to find evidence to support this claim, but it’s long since been scraped from the internet, but that shit is seared in my memory.
Rotten, Ogrish, and &Totse pretty much ruined me.
I remember being 12 years old and downloading a random video through Kazaa, which turned out to be an Ogrish video of a bunch of Russians cutting some guy’s head off while he was still alive.
places like totse exemplify just how wild the early web was. Openly available instructions on how to hack an ATM or whatever, right there on a public forum. Coordination on what sort of crimes they’d commit too, like there was just open talk about drug trafficking. I don’t think anyone from totse was ever arrested but i wouldn’t be surprised
I was an active forum member in the heyday of &T, and I’ll say that people definitely did get arrested (myself included) but &T was rarely implicated. Post 9/11 there was quite a bit of attention because of antiterrorism propaganda, but to my knowledge Jeff and the mods all stayed out of trouble.
It really was a fun place with some incredibly cool people. The horseshoe effect in full swing as well; from my memory it was a healthy mix of communists, anarchists, and libertarians. Also it was more racially diverse than you’d think. The text file repository was mostly 90% bullshit, but there were some incredible nuggets in there. Much of what I learned about chemistry came from that place.
I often wonder what some of those folks are up to these days. Wish I’d been able to keep track of them. I ended up getting locked up for two years for unrelated shit and by the time I got out the place was pretty much dead. Those who remained were insufferable. There are &T enclaves around the internet, but they’re mostly boring and filled with sad people making the same jokes from 20+ years ago. Teehee huff raid teehee skreeeaaawwwww teehee u got belaired teeeheeee.
I don’t think once in my browsing career I went on that site, though I had seen shocking things like tubgirl and 2girls1cup :yea:
I never browsed the main site but I read all the library articles.
