This is about all I can remember for my first online experience. Just remember opening AOL and not exactly knowing what else to do except click around random links, looking at whatever websites I came across, all with that classic 90s basic HTML look.
The very first time I got internet, it was by hooking my BBS up to an internet provider in Colorado. Every night my computer would do a dial-up connection and exchange email and Usenet via UUCP. I was the only BBS that was connected to the for-real internet that I know of. Probably the very first things I accessed as I was getting the account set up were Usenet and poking around on anonymous FTP sites for major universities. They had all kinds of random nonsense there.
I moved away from home for the last two years of high school, so I had no internet, but we got email through the high school in my senior year. It was a big deal; among other things it meant I could exchange email with a girl I knew who lived far away instead of sending letters. It was her dad's email account though. She had no email of her own. You kids have no idea how lucky y'all are.
The first time I messed around with the web was at a summer programming job; it was very rudimentary at that time. We basically didn't use it; the day to day job was effectively disconnected from anything aside from the work we were doing locally on the machine. Pretty much the only thing I remember from the one machine in the office that was hooked up to the web was the Rome Lab Snoball Cam.
In college first first couple of years I used an extremely rudimentary DSL-type system for accessing email and things from off campus. Text only. Computers on campus were web-aware; mostly Unix machines with Netscape. It was as I was going through school that things like the web started to become really ubiquitous on all PCs, and by the time I'd graduated it was everywhere, mostly the modern version, and all computers were assumed to be hooked up to it.
I remember the “to download this answer this survey and win a free iPad” and being smart enough to know it was a scam but also dumb enough to think it might be real and just enter the info of the vacant house down the road and check it every day to see if it had came
BBSes. My first modem was for my Commodore 64. All you could connect to were Bulletin Board Services which were simply someone else's computer that was running software. Usually you would get some sort of menu if options when you connected.
CompuServe came not too long after that probably on an 8088 or 386 PC.
Some pictures loading pixel by pixel, first in very large pixels, then a bid smaller, in finer resolution, and by the time the smallest pixels start to appear, you are already finished.
Probably Yahoo. I had dialup in the 90s and Yahoo was the gold standard for search.
I remember trying Ask Jeeves later, but always went back to Yahoo when it inevitably failed to find what I wanted.
I played a ton of Yahoo games and remember getting into their “gambling” games as a kid (mostly blackjack, but also holdem on occasion). I would play at night when my parents were asleep because I want allowed to tie up the phone line during the day unless I headed to for school.
I remember setting up actual black jack games during recess in high school. I would be bank, and the other kids would play. I made decent money before the games got busted by the teachers.
We did something similar, but with a game called “13” in high school, but we played in Biology class and during lunch (we didn’t have recess in high school) when we finished early.
My brother also sold candy bars in middle and high school from his locker. He’d go to Costco to stock up, then sell for double, then rinse and repeat. A bit more same than your hooch ;)
i remember going on some kind of video game tips website that had user submitted tips. The only one i remember was someone saying that if you did some like, crazy amount of fights in Super Smash Bros 64, you could unlock Goku
Earliest I remember?… searching for “Mario 64 tips & tricks” in the Internet Café on Yahoo and printing a novel length convoluted “cheat” to unlock Luigi
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