How did your interest for the Internet begin?

Speaking of interests, the internet seems to be quite common in this day and age, even right now as we're all on this forum, viewing this topic, but what I want to ask here is, where and how did it all begin for you Think as far back as you can remember: how did your interest in surfing the web all start? Was it from sheer curiosity, or, something else otherwise?

Forums.

Forums took away my social life. I became so engrossed in wrestling forums and even created my own forums and had many friendships and bitter ties with trolls or arrogant users throughout my 7th and 8th grade in 2007-2009. That's when I began to spend all day and every day on the computer, just browsing the forums, while watching youtube videos or listening to music or playing video games. I even did poorly in school because I was so distracted.

I guess I first enjoyed the internet when I played Cartoon Network games online and when I first found Youtube back in 2005. However I spent most of my time watching TV during those times. It wasn't until 2007 when I became addicted to the internet.

I still am addicted to the internet but I still have my priorities in school and social life before anything else.

6 years ago my cousin introduced me to AddictingGames. I played some games on there, and then I eventually wanted to go to the public library in my city to play more games. Then in 2009 I stumbled across a game called Red Remover. I loved that game so much it's probably my favorite flash game of all time. Now, Red Remover had a level editor, and you could post your levels to a site called The Game Homepage Forums. So I checked that out, and months later created my first account on a forum ever. 4 years and 5 accounts later, The Game Homepage is a ghost town now, but I still go there every day to see if there's any activity. Ever since then, I've joined about a million forums, including this one.

When I was younger, I think I was like 8 or 9...my parents were shopping for a new computer and when I was playing with the one that had internet, I remembered that I've always wanted to go on to nick.com (Nickelodeon). It was always advertised on TV and I wanted to check out the games it had. That's what actually brought me to the internet for the first time ever.

Neopets, lol... Even before that though I remember going on the official Pokemon website back in 2001 or so to look at all of my favorite Pokémon on the virtual PokéDex thing they had waaay back when.

I didn't start getting involved with actual communities and chatting with people until I was a bit older, and it was actually through Pokémon forums that I started exploring the deep, dark depths of the Internet. Oh, the people I met and their interests in 4ch. Ruined my innocence at such an early age...

Pretty much when my brother discovered YouTube back in 2005. All of the videos I was finding on the site were pretty much funny to watch, and I've been hooked ever since.

Other sites I've been on prior to YouTube include Serebii, Psypokes, and IGN; these of course I looked at for tips and tricks on FireRed and LeafGreen when those games were still new.

It started with Pokemon, and Action Replay codes.
I found Super cheats had a solid list, and then found more sites that had list of codes. Then, I found Serebii and joined their chatroom, forum, and it all grew from there.

Hmm... how did my interest started...?

Well, I've been interested since I've heard about the internet back at elementary school's computer class. One time we were given free browsing time, and most of my friends ended up searching for HSM and opening Friendster while I was like, "Should I search Pokemon?" "I think my friends will find me weird if I do." "I feel alone now." Elementary School was the worst time in my life. I was given an hour to browse with my father's laptop, and I think it was mainly for checking out Serebii and Gamefaqs, just for guides and stuff like that.

And then by 2008, we finally got a working internet connection on our computer. At first I was wasting my time watching youtube videos of Digimon anime (I never liked the Pokemon anime and I was curious on the other seasons before Frontiers, okay?), but then our parents blocked youtube on our computer and I had to find another place for refuge. I ended up going to SPPf, where I ended up staying and it evolved from there.

Very early days, official Disney site.

Later, Nintendo's official site and IGN, what was then N64.com.

Later still, family PC (rather than Dad's work laptop above), Nintendo and Zelda and everything really

When I first started off, I had very limited access; per day, my parents would only allow me to use computer for only an hour. During weekends, it would be two. I used to spend most of my time playing games online, and sometimes offline when connection winds up to be too slow. I also used to get homework help from certain sites on Internet from time to time; they were pretty informative!

After my dad bought me my own computer on my twelfth birthday (or was it thirteen?), luckily, I didn't have any restrictions any longer, and was able to surf web as much as I liked. One day, I began searching for Action Replay codes for a game I was playing, which led me to some message board; I've signed up, began posting, and before I even knew it, I became addicted.

Ever since I discovered how fun it could be to hang around in forums and whatnot, I... couldn't stop myself from constantly going online, haha. I find it amusing to be meeting people who share similar interests as you (Pokémon, for example), making friends, possibly learning things; it's an adventure of sorts, so to speak. Only negative side is, sometimes, Internet could distract you from doing certain work, such as studying for exam. If we could control ourselves from being distracted by it, however, then it's not so bad.

When I started to getting interested in internet, one of my cousins invited me to the internet cafe and find some webpages to be saved on the floppy disks, and I was allowed to internet once per month back then, because I was a kid. Several years later, I bought an internet modem that I'm starting to browsing in my laptop, and I was interested in downloading some videos and apps, I must say that downloading stuffs is my driving force of being in internet, and still is, today.

It was back when I was about 10, I was introduced to it. I think I played games quite a lot? It was on a Windows 2000 computer, I believe.

When we lived in South America, my parents introduced me to educational computer games when I was 3. Then I really started to use the internet in 4th. grade when I dated this girl, we would use the yahoo IM chat to message each other. Then my friends and I got into Club Penguin and we were addicted until like 7th. grade, and I also had gotten in Smash Bros. Brawl and started playing with a group of online friends.

I can't remember how old I was but it started when I got onto Neopets. I used to go on there all the time. xD Then I started using youtube and various other sites. Eventually got myself into MMOs.

I feel like it was either searching up stuff related to video games (I do recall finding some FF-related sites that I thought were cool at the time), or-- well, no, I don't think my aol days count because that was basically just search up a show or something and then get offline. So I'll place the beginning on searching up video game most likely FF related stuff, especially after getting proper internet that didn't charge my parents with long-distance fees and being rather intoxicated with "omg we can stay online as long as we like?!"

But yeah. You find one site you like, then you end up branching out from those, and next thing you know you're finding plenty of other sites you like. And then you just want more!

My parents bought this really old computer (but of course at that time it wasn't old) and my mom made my sister and me accounts on Club Penguin. I remember that you needed "Membership" to buy all the cool penguin wigs and penguin outfits so my sister and I started searching more online worlds similar to CP, heh. Then I discovered forums and YouTube and social-networking sites, I guess.

I have written my first e-mail when I was 13 yo, in 1998. My go to websites were smof (defunct now) the sailormoon online fanclub. It had a collection of fansites about sailor moon, and I was amazed at the great website backgrounds (tiled pictures lol back in the pure html days) the midis(i think mp3 only got popular when i was 16/17) and animated gifs. Waiting for the wmp or real player to load for mini clips before the advent of flash (shockwave). I was also using a website hosted by a comics and childrens literature publisher that had chat rooms and an early message board. Later at 14 /15 someone told me about how you can play gb/c games on the pc . that was when i first played roms (tcg all night), and a rather japgli(t)ch patch of gsc and hacks and later modelled some of my own map hacking via gold map.

My first search engine I used was (apart from the provider(telekom; parastatal back in the day)was altavista, and its translation engine was babelfish and it wasnt very good lol. At school a teacher introduced google as the new flash search engine. The browser had to be set to go offline whenever we were reading something as flatrates werent introduced then although we already had isdn dial up . (we had to connect first using a windoof/or provider gui)

One day, we obtained our first computer. I can't actually remember when I discovered the internet being a thing, but I remember we used this free version of something called Juno which was absolutely the crappiest dial-up ever to exist. Then we got AOL somehow and my consistent internet usage began there. I would surf on many websites. Then I discovered the AOL chatrooms and got a social life online. It was a godsend for me, because real life is immensely stressful with its real time and my inability to keep up with it. Those days lasted for a while, until I found a forum and began to socialize on it. AOL faded into the background as we finally got broadband internet... and so, the modern days began. Nowadays, I have no real life social life. Online or off. But at least I am not alone.

All of this was probably sometime during the early 2000's, around the time I was 10.

Saw my dad browing I-Am-Bored and my school friends browsing Newgrounds and Albino Blacksheep some time around 2006. I adopted them as my web browsing habits, and from there went on.

Technically it was the AOL kids games portal for about four years before that, but I don't consider that to be a part of the internet. ;)