Prior to the internet condensing into just 5 or so websites, what do you remember fondling about being online?
I remember winning a raffle contest on the old Terraria forums and getting to pick my own title (instead of just New Member, Member, Well-Known Member). Of course, since I was like 13, I picked a random collection of letters that only I knew was an acronym of my signature on said forums.
This was in 99 or so. I still didn’t have internet at home, but my town had dial-up and cyber-cafés. There was this local TV channel dedicated to anime, and I would occasionally buy these cheap magazines with information about the anime of the moment (Sailor Moon, DBZ, Slayers, etc.). The magazine had links to fan shrines, and that’s how I met a lot of people and got into the culture.
To write them, I’d compose an email at home, save it in .txt and then take it to the cyber-café in a diskette. There, I’d login to my inbox – which only had like 2MB of storage and would fill very quickly! – and paste the message and send it. If I got a reply, I’d save it in a file and read it at home.
Similarly, when I got into fanfiction, I’d have to skim the summaries, and the overall story to see if I might like to read it. I quickly learned to use Ctrl+F and my favorite characters’ names. If I liked what little I read, I’d paste it into a file and read it fully at home.