Talk about your earliest Internet memories

[guy who is so high]

I recently discovered the first two videos I ever saw online archived on Youtube. They were originally hosted on a guinea pig-themed website in Flash format, and I vividly remember seeing them when I was 4-6 years old (so, 2002-2004).


I'm still looking for the original site these were hosted on. There are a surprising amount of guinea pig websites in the Internet Archive, in case anyone's wondering.

Anyways, I'm fascinated by Web history and silly little personal stories like these. Share your own if you'd like.

 

[RIG]

probably playing a jimmy neutron flash game on the nickelodeon website where you fly through space blasting meteors on my grandparents pc.

 

[M1083A1P2]

My early internet experience was looking up cheat codes on gamewinners.

 

[ZinRicky]

I remember my aunt helping me reach the old yugioh.com website. It was 2005 and the site almost failed to load because my aunt's connection was quite unstable

 

[Gimbo]

Mine was gathering any and all URLs I can find on my way to my dad's office when I was 6.
Then I found the cartoon network website and spent hundreds of hours there playing games of shows I don't even watch as I only have connection to the web from my dad's office and TV cables was expensive as fuck in my country back then.
good times.

This game in particular was the one that kickstart my gaming addiction, while other games on the site are just small arcade-y games, this one has upgrades and shit that make me feel like I'm accomplishing something, I also vaguely remember playing it on like 15 fps

 

[guy who is so high]

Ah, I've been neglecting this forum. I like all your responses. It's a shame so many sites for kids went to the shitter, I feel a lot of kids would benefit from them instead of being on Twitter or Tumblr.

 

[Sketch Relics]

Browsing Newgrounds, miniclips, ebaums world, Cartoon Network, Flash Portal and game faqs around middle school.
In particular, I used to play the IGPX tactics game on cartoon network a lot, the game is still online, or at least it was a few years ago, but difficult to find.
I think I had some earlier interactions with the internet when I was in the 3-7 range, but I would have been to young to understand what was going on at the time

 

[wot]

My early internet experience was looking up cheat codes on gamewinners.

Their forum was the first one I ever used, joined them when I was 12 and made a complete ass of myself. Of course I had no self-awareness back then, so when everyone started calling me an idiot I just thought "they only hate me because I'm new" and left to make my own forum on Proboards. Naturally nobody used it.

 

[Some_porcupine]

2007-8 or so,
flash games, newgrounds maybe, crazy ads, personal + crazy yt vids, fandoms, virtual online worlds, skype, ICQ,

sister showed me little tree friends lol

 

[Vetusomaru]

My early internet memories were at mid - late '90s at my junior high school libraries. The first things I looked for were video games related. And the first image I ever downloaded (and still have) is this one:

 

[dorgon]

The first video i ever watched on the internet that i remember was a song about the greek alphabet. Nonetheless I completely forgot most of the greek letters.

 

[r_7]

When arpanet died you mean? Or like paying per minute for slip access to patch into my board? When mosaic was popular? -_- Good times.

 

[ｃｙｂｅｒ ｌｏｖｅ ９７]

An early memory I have was getting banned from some forum for calling a mod "faggot mc******stein"

(Censored text is le n-word for anyone wondering)

 

[Pink Fluffy Cat]

I can't remember the exactly contents that I was exposed as a kid back in early 2000s but the game Maplestory did really played a big part of my life, I still remember pretty much every detail of it up to big bang (aka crapifed) and has a personal private server installed in my PC.
picrel my maplestory nekosona

 

[Mеченый Яков]

This is old as hell, i used to be addicted to San Andreas Loquendos back in the day.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqx0L5z9qPA

 

[Mеченый Яков]

this channel was childhood.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyvERtjnBHc

 

[stonehead]

My dad and I used to laugh at this one a lot.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWgovxo3eA&ab_channel=MiguelHito

God, the dramatic narration and random elephant noises are so inappropriate it's hilarious.

---

The first website I remember visiting was some Lego website that hosted a lot of flash games. My brothers and I would all huddle around the computer trying to figure out how to solve each puzzle. I remember it being pretty well done, but I must have been 7 or 8, so it's hard to say for sure.

I found a screenshot on the wayback machine, I used to love this game

There was also a bionicle adventure game we played, but I couldn't find any screenshot of that.

---

The first video I remember watching was when I was at my cousins' house, and they were all crowded around a laptop, watching this in all it's 240p glory

It's kinda funny how much simpler viral videos used to be. I miss the days when viral videos were just some person with a camera who wanted to share something, not professional 'youtubers' trying to make ad revenue.

 

[octave4]

One of the earliest internet memories I have is being fascinated by the fact that my grandmother and great aunt could type to each other in real time over AOL Instant Messenger. Really does feel like a simpler time--I take that kinda thing for granted now but it makes me want to deep dive into computer architecture and networking just to better appreciate How We Got Here

 

[D1G1TAL]

Staying up all night on Yahoo Chat/Messenger and downloading new booters to kick people out of chatrooms. Also, the fight room was always fun to go in and listen to people roast the hell out of each other over voice chat.

 

[Markovian Parallax]

I wasn't very curious child and I didn't explore the Internet. Well, my earliest memories are old Firefox logo and a website where I played games (mostly the ones for girls, like dressing dolls or home decorating. Uhgh ). I found screenshot, it's broken (no website name) but at least you can see the most characteristic element - little dragon.

This is the game I remember most from that time. No comment, pls :/ can't believe I used to like such things.