A Love Letter to the Early Internet
Log written: July 24, 2026
I was going to make this into a video someday, but I decided against it as there’s far too many similar to it online and honestly I don’t have the time to sit down and edit something for 3-4 weeks like I used to 😅
I was fortunate to grow up in the 90s, when the internet and computers in general were finally being adopted by the wider public. The internet was the next big thing, and it grew from less than 20 million users in 1995 to a billion within a decade. It was simple, really, really simple.
Dialling…
For those unaware, to connect to the internet back in the 90s for an average household would involve a chunky modem, which used your phone line. This presented some interesting issues that we don’t have today thankfully. It would mean nobody else could use your phone line while the internet was in use, it would just hiss at you if you tried to use both (As if the person upstairs was telling you off). The internet we had was called FreeServe (Later became Wanadoo, then Orange, and now EE) which charged per minute, so it cost quite a lot of money to browse the internet. I actually recall that for my 8th or 9th birthday, it was my wish to just get an hours worth of internet time. I knew how expensive it was and I was usually limited to 10 minutes or so at a time at the very most. To me exploring my computer and especially the internet was absolutely fascinating and felt like a luxury.
You’d “install” your ISP via discs in those days. It basically set up your computer to point to your ISP.
Express yourself!
When I first started using the internet, it was mostly using it as a resource as it was originally intended, but as time passed, I began using it to express my creativity, which up until that point I can tell you I had ZERO. The old internet was extremely basic but it was all about making your own little corner with your own content and personality. GeoCities, Angelfire, Tripod, Bravenet, CJB.net all really encouraged this creativity and gave everyone the tools to create something special to them.
My Dad helped me build my first ever website all the way back in 1999 when I was around 10 years old using FreeServe. We were really limited with desk space, with only 5mb, which was later upgraded to a whopping 15mb, shared between the two of us. The website I created was all about GoldenEye, a James Bond movie from 1995 which I was obsessed with especially after the N64 game came out which I probably played for a thousand hours or more. I had such a rush knowing something I made was out there for everyone to see and comment on. Now, looking back the content wasn’t exactly engaging. It was just a list of James Bond movies, villains, photographs and links but it really didn’t matter. I was a kid expressing my love for something I thought was cool as shit.
While most websites looked totally unique, which was surprising given the limited tools we had, they had a lot of things in common. Counters and Guestbooks. The guestbook especially was extremely popular, everyone wanted to know just who was visiting their webpage. I remember eagerly checking every day to see if someone replied to my guestbook and finding out where they were from.
An example of a guestbook comment from my old GoldenEye 007 site.
Seeing the future
Something that blew my mind was the fact I could use the internet to peer into the future. No, I’m not crazy. For example, a lot of my favourite shows were based on Japan such as Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon. I remember where I was sat, what I was doing and how I felt when I first saw Hoothoot for the first time and shouted to everyone “Look! A new Pokémon!”. Another example is seeing adult Gohan, while I was still watching the Frieza saga. Seeing this stuff was truly amazing and it felt like the internet and the people on it were way ahead of me and my little corner of the world.
Seeing this blew my fucking mind as a kid.
As a kid who had only ever seen 151 Pokémon, wtf was this!?
Newsgroups
Before forums were a big thing in the early to late 2000s, there were Newsgroups. These were, as far as I remember, discussion groups that you’d “download” and refresh regularly to see what people were talking about. You’d connect to your ISPs news server via Outlook Express 5 and see a list of groups, for example alt.games.nintendo.pokemon which was a place to talk about Pokémon stuff.
I managed to save one of my old posts in its entirety, it contains the full metadata from when I made the post. Neat.
From: “Bulbasaur” <simon@edwards126.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: I know where to get mew
Date: 2000/05/08
Message-ID: <3915b433@eeyore.callnetuk.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 620347593
X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: da133d71.dialup.callnetuk.com
X-Trace: 7 May 2000 19:21:39 GMT, da133d71.dialup.callnetuk.com
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Priority: 3
Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211I have just figured it out how to get mew this is how:
get surf and go to ss.Anne and go to the man who asks for your ticket and
get past him and go to the harbour and surf right and you will see a
pokeball that contains MEW!thanks for reading
Yes, I was one of those people that spread false Mew rumours 😉
Here’s another post I found which shows me asking for an emulator for Pokémon Gold/Silver. I’m amazed I knew what that even was back then.
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.games.nintendo.pokemon/c/q-kzU09o6Gs/m/vn9SXABRDS8J
Viruses welcome!
Back in those days, there was absolutely no such thing as “online safety”, you just did whatever you wanted and hoped it wouldn’t damage your PC too much. I must’ve downloaded hundreds of viruses and malware, including my old friend BonziBuddy which to my shock and horror years later, was not my friend after all and was farming personal information from everyone including children. It seemed as time went on, ads, popups and annoyances were becoming more prevalent, until the browsers finally caught up and began to secure its users against these threats.
He looked so innocent.
After a few years of innocently downloading malware, I found KaZaA, which was essentially the mecca of viruses, but sometimes, very rarely, if you were lucky enough, you could get a real 144p 15 second clip of a Matrix scene after 2 days of waiting for it to download! I can’t tell you how much I damaged my computer using this program, it was true chaos.
Some things I recall downloading as a kid:
- Matrix clips, specifically the “dodge this” scene
- An infinite amount of South Park songs/clips, including a South Park Matrix crossover which looking back was WEIRD but at the time thought was the peak of animation.
- Zelda Song of Time Techno Remix
- Busty Blondes 3 – Sorry, can’t link this one 😅 LOL, I got in so much trouble when my Dad saw me downloading this. I panicked and shouted “IT’S… UHH… IT’S JUST A CARTOON!” which probably made it sound even worse in retrospect.
I’m so glad these things were reuploaded to YouTube and preserved!
C h i l l i n g
I’d spend most of my time chilling and talking to complete strangers. Amazingly I met very few creeps online, which I feel would be much different these days. Back then the internet was just full of nerds who just wanted to chill and play games. There weren’t many “games”, flash games weren’t very common at this point, that would come later in the early/mid 2000s during my high school years.
At the time I mostly played RuneScape (Classic)
… or Yahoo Pool and Chess. It actually helped me with my chess skills quite a bit!
There were also of course the chat applications Yahoo Messenger and MSN. Both of these were just the absolute best of times to me as a kid. Having an instant way to talk to all my friends? It blew my mind. What blew my mind more was that I was making friends with people all around the world. I even remember some of those old usernames I added, “babygirl” and “Little_Amber_Jay”. I didn’t have any real internet in girls, it just happened that most of the chilliest people I met at that time were female.
In summary, the early internet was amazing and is sorely missed. My website is an homage to the old times and the days of “personal websites”, which I hope someday makes a comeback.
Thanks for reading!
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