The internet is one of the best things that have been invented in my lifetime. I think it is the best invention, since the printing press or fire, before that. The internet has made the world a truly small place. In the last 10 years the world has been made really small. I mean one can sit in their home in San Francisco, chat with a guy from Belgium, flirt with a girl in Taiwan or yell at someone in South Africa. It is pretty insane when you really sit down and think of it. I am part of that weird time, when the internet was just born. I mean remember the days of getting the AOL floppy discs in mail. I remember one time I had a collection of about 25 AOL floppy discs. I had just entered the 8th grade, when our school had gotten a very primitive MAC that had internet access. It was interesting, but at that time it was a piece of shit.
I do not consider my generation, folks born in 80-84, the internet generation. I say this because we knew the world before the internet. I would say folks my age, since I am 28 are the pager generation. I say this cause from the time I was in 7th grade all the way until I was a senior in high school I had wanted or had gotten pagers. Some could say that my generation is the generation of the cellphone, but I don’t think so, because I didn’t get my first cellphone until I was 23 years old, and a lot of my friends didn’t get theirs until they were in their early twenties. It could have been because we were not rich, but I don’t think that was the case. Cellphones did not become insanely prolific until around 2005 when everyone and their mother had one. People who are teens during this time are people born of the Internet and Cellphone age.
I remember when AOL actually charged for their minute to minute use on their dial up networks. It was fucking insane. One of my memories I had was when I had used my screen name at my friends house, and racked up a bill of about 100 dollars. I remembered getting yelled at about it. I didn’t understand why they got so mad, I mean I did rack up the bill, but within the day, I had the money to pay it back. I did say sorry, so I don’t understand why their was so much drama over it. Man that was 15 years ago now. That’s pretty insane that it was that far back.
AOL back in the day did kind of suck. I mean even to us newbies, who had never experienced the internet all we were shown was that it was a cool place to chat and I think it was in the late 90s, when chat rooms were in their golden age. I mean to us back in those dark ages, to be able to talk to a complete stranger was fun. I mean teen chat or romance chat was always a cool place to be. To put it into perspective just how far back, I am talking, is when I first went inside at a chat room at my friend’s house I would say things like “Does anyone wanna chat with a 13/m/ca. I am 28 years old now.
The only downside I see with the internet these days, is that is, it is something that is really addicting. It is more addicting then anything else on earth. I mean there are some people who are always on it. I don’t have internet access in my home. Due to financial means, I have chosen to just use the free wifi that is offered all over the city. I used to use it at coffee shops and at Quickly’s but these days I figured the library is free. On Sundays, I sometimes use my friends or I just find a coffee shop.
The net is great for watching videos, porn, shopping and meeting people, but it does cause isolation to people who are always online. It is supposed to make people more social, but I think that it actually retards their social skills. People just want to chat and when it comes to real life they seem to spaz out and not know what to do.
Meeting people online is something I have done on a few occasions and I have embarked on insanity when it comes to that. But that is another tale for another day.
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