a brand-new form of public humiliation

[devi]

Late last night in the pub I was waxing nostalgic to miss_newham about talkers and BBSs and all things telnet-based, and remembering a world where that was practically all there was to the internet. When I got to college in 1994 there was one single computer connected to the Web in the whole university. There were always massive queues at it, and when you finally got to use it, you'd sit there for half an hour waiting for a little picture of an envelope to download...

Anyway, in my half-drunk and achy state I blurted out that the first thing I ever looked up on the web was (oh god) Robert Jordan. Yes, the Wheel of Time fantasy author. (Oh god the shame.) And I was wondering if other people had similar embarrassments in their past, like that first record you bought that you never want people to find out about.

What was the first thing you (consciously, deliberately) searched for on the web? Set homepages that just popped up, like your college homepage, don't count. Go on, I've owned up, now it's your turn.

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

On the web, or on the internet? First things I searched for on the internet were probably shareware games for the Mac on ftp sites (somewhere called 'sunsite' something or other used to be a good place to find stuff, but I can't remember what it was & google isn't helping patch up my shaky memory) in the very early 1990s.

I'm ashamed to say that I honestly don't remember the first time I used the web. But then I don't remember it being a big event; it just sort of crept in, as something that was a bit like Gopher ... I had a bit of a non-standard relationship with the whole home computing revolution type thing, though.

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Definitely sunsite! I remember that, cos I was downloading Acorn shareware! I seem to remember that it had a preferential relationship with .ac.uk domains though. Google knows about somewhere called sunsite.ic.ac.uk, which sounds familiar...

[mooism.livejournal.com]

It used to be src.doc.ic.ac.uk.

!

[mzdt.livejournal.com]

yes - mac software/shareware - I'd save the files to floppy and take them home to my SE30 (with external 640x480 colour screen - it was great). Perhaps I should have a 9" bw mac out full of games at the party?

The other thing about the internet that I now still relish is bands - intsead of hoping you'd see some support band listed as playing again somewhere, you copuld come home from a gig, look them up, find a website & mailing list... I think I spent serious amounts of time at work going through www.ubl.com, the 'ultimate band list' site. It appears to be still going, kind of.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I remember asking for good websites on IRC and being told about ubl!