Well, I got my first personal computer in college in
1994: an Acer
laptop that weighed about 20lbs or so with a B&W
LCD screen and a
trackball mouse
with a 9600 modem! It was state of the art! I had
to access my college email from home via the little
telephone icon in Windows 3.1. Text only! ASCII!
I had my own webpage
that I programmed myself using the most basic of
html. I ripped
off other people’s source code to find out how to
get different colors.
ff00ff, baby!
But the computer also had AOL pre-installed, and I
was introduced to the world of AOL chat rooms. I
stayed up every night when I was home for the summer
until 4 a.m. or so, chatting away, being my
effervescent,
clever, witty, pithy self. I owned those chat
rooms. Mostly "the Flirt’s Nook," I think. I had a
posse of very clever, witty chat friends. We would
meet up at the same time every night and gang up on
new people who tried to take over our chat room. We
shamed and ousted people who
weren’t smart
enough for us. There were chat fights, particularly
when some guy was being a jerk to one of us girls,
all the other guys would come to the rescue and the
flame wars ensued. When a new girl would enter the
room, all my boys stayed loyal to me and she had to
go to some other room to be the center of
attention. All the really clever boys would enter
the room saying something like "Roses for all the
ladies @>---',--- " or whatever.
I even ended up losing my virginity to a guy I met in a
chat room. I’m a totally normal, cute girl, too. It’s
the most horribly embarrassing fact of my life.