At fourteen years old, I had one of three reasons to be home by 6pm: Grounded; Dinner’s ready; too dark outside to play football.
By fifteen, I’d rush home at five thirty in preparation for 6pm: mulling around upstairs in a room that had not been used for anything other than a dumping ground for paperwork, old VHS tapes and other miscellaneous, unloved clutter. Despite years of neglect and with zero redeeming features, this room was about to become the epicentre of my world. As 6pm approached, I would check that my mum wasn’t on the phone. The trusted telephone that had served our family for years was now becoming an afterthought, limited, shunned and playing second fiddle to a new form of communication. As the clock struck six, I’d stretch down to press the button on the bulky, grey box that sat awkwardly under the desk. I’d wait impatiently for the system to start as it sluggishly and loudly progressed through the gears, eventually settling into a calming, hypnotic drone after nearly destroying my eardrums. The noise was somewhat familiar, having grown up with a Spectrum and an Amiga 500. But I couldn’t recall it being that loud and obnoxious. Even the phone downstairs would echo out this chorus, despite being relegated to nothing more than useless plastic, wires and numbers. It was almost as if the phone was screaming out a slow and painful death. But the sound of dial up was also the sound of the year 2000. The sound of my early teens. And the sound of the new family computer.
As soon as silence filled the room I’d hit ‘connect’.
With one click of the mouse I was ‘dialling’ on to the internet.
As ‘surfing’ the internet (is this still even used as a phrase?) was free after 6pm, I would spend much of the evening online. My early memories of this were as equally confusing as it was exciting. I would often wonder: should I be looking at this? and: what the fuck am I looking at? Worryingly, twenty-two years later, not much has changed in that regard.
Despite my eagerness to log on, I still had no idea where to start at first. There was so much to take in, and it was all very unfamiliar. But I was intrigued, fascinated and instantly hooked.
I started by stumbling across solutions to problems that only a fifteen-year-old could have in the year 2000. I no longer had to listen to the charts on a Sunday afternoon, waiting patiently for my favourite song to come on so I could push ‘record’ on a blank cassette tape. I now had ‘LimeWire’ to cater for all my music needs. I would scour ‘Kerrang’, ‘Scuzz’ and ‘P-Rock’ music channels on the living room TV downstairs, on the hunt for new pop, nu-metal and punk-rock songs to download. Access to music in this way, despite still being at a fairly primitive stage, was incredible. Some songs could take up to an hour to download. But that was the price to pay for being a little pirate and wrecking the new computer with viruses.
I also no longer had to hide smutty magazines underneath my mattress (old school).
I now had to figure out how to hide files (new school).
If I wanted to see Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee on a private yacht (I did) I Just had to give it a few hours (over the course of several days) to download. Video preview didn’t always work either, so I usually had no idea if what I thought I was downloading, was actually what I was downloading. I would soon get accustomed to the disappointment of expecting BOOBS…
…but getting balls.
Doubly disappointing if the file promised ‘.mov’ when in reality it was ‘.cam’.
As an alternative, I could run the gauntlet of adult websites in the hope that there was free content available. But I was also naive in regards to viruses and the like and soon learned that such sites had the tendency to pounce at any moment with a sexy pop-up ad or some flashy banner. My parents would see these occasionally too when they used the computer for…printing? Ebay? I don’t know. In any case, I ran out of excuses and mates to blame fairly quickly.
Flash animation was also a big thing in the late ninety’s and early 2000’s: For me, this was the original time waster. Joe Cartoon’s was a favourite of mine. Interactive animations such as ‘Gerbil in a Microwave’ and ‘Frog in a Blender’, where you could control the gruesome fate of insulting, talking animals with a click of the mouse, was just the right level of ‘cool’ for me and my friends at the time. They would also form the foundations for most of the shit that was spoken at school:
“Who’s your Daddy? Me! Wanna know why I’m your Daddy? Cuz I did it to your mammaaaaaa!”
Classic? If you don’t know it, then probably not. Oh, and if you’re wondering, no: I’ve never put a frog in a blender.
I love my blender.
From there and in-between games of Rollercoaster Tycoon, The Sims and Soldier Of Fortune, I would enter new unchartered territories in the form of online forums, MSN Messenger, Bebo, Myspace and chat rooms.
Suddenly, my world felt a hell of a lot bigger.
The low angled white ceilings, of my parents’ dingy upstairs spare room now became a social hub of activity. Where I would learn how to communicate and express myself through an ever-evolving digital world. I was now 16/17. And everything. Absolutely everything…was so fucking stimulating and exciting. My overall identity and social engagements were now a hybrid of online and real life. For the next few years, every house party I went too, gig I attended, drug dealer I’d visit, date I’d go on; friends and enemies made and lost; and experiences I’d never forget, mostly started from those low angled ceilings (and eventually downstairs with the purchase of my first laptop) and ended all over the City of Aberdeen where I stayed until I was twenty-one.
“Sludge” was my online name. A name that would stick with me until Bebo, MySpace and forums died a slow death, consumed and replaced by Facebook – which was literally like letting your parents into your online world for the first time and meeting a version of you and your friends that they had never met before. For me, things were just never the same.
The ‘scene’ and the ‘kids’ within it, also started dying a slow death in Aberdeen. Friends that were once in bands were now split up, grown up or moved on and some of my favourite music venues closed their doors. Social circles now became smaller and more defined, as people went off to Uni or got into full-time work. Most people now communicated through Facebook or via text message.
MSN Messenger was dead, replaced by Facebook Messenger.
There was also now a rise in console gaming, which left me feeling left out and out of the loop. I just wasn’t into HALO, World Of Warcraft, or anything else that incorporated gaming with socialising. It’s just not my bag and still isn’t in many ways – even though I own and regularly play a VR headset which is made for it.
I’m on the edge of the Metaverse, curiously looking in…
But in 2022, I have found my online community again through Twitter and Instagram. And although it will never have the same appeal and magic as those heady and wild early online years, it has provided me a sense of community and belonging yet again. But these platforms also have a shelf life. And although my online world can be as expansive as I want it to be, I’m at a crossroads with what percentage of my life I want to commit to connections online; and how much of it I want to dedicate to “real” life. For me, the lines have never been blurrier as both are, in a lot of ways, very much the same. Communication as we know it has evolved as has the world we live in, and it’s difficult at times not to have one without the other.
Am I excited about where online is heading? No, not really. Will I be as active as I am now? Who knows…but at least I’ll never have to run the gauntlet of downloading songs and porn again.
God bless Spotify and VPN’s.
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