@Natasha_Jay At my previous job I was joking about this with some youngsters.

My Hotmail account was created in '97, is older than some of them.

This was our place before it was theirs too.

@Natasha_Jay I'm so cyber I piss neon and spit chrome. I cut my teeth in a time when you would swap floppies and underground zines. I would try to learn every machine I touched, from the C64 at my friends house because his dad was an enthusiast, to the Tandy I inherited from a dead grandfather I had never met. No modem, no wifi, no youtube tutorial, no money. Just technology that was facinating to someone who just prior had been living on a mountain reading outdated encyclopedias by kerosene lamp, and only listening to the radio for 15 minutes a day because batteries were hard to get.

A computer was science fiction still, something from the movies. The ICU message notification still can set my brain on fire with anticipation. I keep my notifications off now, because no amount of push messages or advertising will ever compare to the sound that meant the person who I could actually be myself with had arrived online.

@Natasha_Jay :)
As I like to phrase it: Younger ones grew up in the internet. I grew up /with/ the internet.

And, since we're showing off ICQ numbers: UIN 516801 here :)

@Natasha_Jay

Amen

@Natasha_Jay

I expect thriller_instinct is busy crying to mommy now.

@Natasha_Jay I love how this thread has just devolved into everyone sharing their six digit UINs :P

just going to put this here, don’t mind me:

https://crosstalk.im

@Natasha_Jay

uhhhhh we invented this shit. why are YOU here? how bout we bully you young fuckheads who don’t respect their cyber elders? bitch please, until you’ve waited in line after school for two hours just to get 15 minutes of playtime with Oregon Trail so you could kill your friends off with dysentery, let’s not pretend we’re the ones who don’t belong here…… *drinks from garden hose and roams the streets like a feral fairy child whose MTV actually played music videos*

I HAVE USERNAMES OLDER THAN YOU!!!

🤣

@Natasha_Jay nice quote. I wonder why people try to rage bait online over who is unable to use emoticons and social media correctly. My observation is that in any age group there are a lot of people who do not know how to use communication tech correctly, understand the tech to some degree and know how they are manipulated by it.

Also I do not know my ICQ number anymore, but I use my first university login as Mastodon handle. Thus, it's from 1993.

@Natasha_Jay

My first social media was a BBS at 300 Bauds and you had to know the right AT modem config command or you couldn't connect...
..and you had to whittle your modem out of wood, cuttle fish bone and use pirite and flint to spark binary sparks and blown them down copper tubes to the exchange where the lady would direct them with plugs to where they needed to go!

#oldschoolcool #retrocomputing

@Natasha_Jay fuck me, this thread is making me miss those days in the 2000s when me and my cousins and my friends and their friends would all sit around on the living room computer and swap software, websites, ideas and games.

I'm in my mid-20s. I don't remember the dawn of the internet. I wasn't there. But i'd like to think that I managed to catch a glimpse of what could have been.

We have to get back there.