I can't really remember how it started exactly, but I got introduced to the interwebs quite early in my childhood. We had a family computer in our living room and sometimes watched my mom use it for all kinds of stuff. Writing e-Mails, using the printer, the occasional game of Solitair or Space Cadets Pinball. (man windows xp was the goat) She would me allow to play those from time to time. My brother on the other hand used it for chatting on ICQ or Knuddels, downloading music and burning CD's. You know, typical teenager stuff in the early 2000's.

I, too would spend many hours on the internet playing flash games on websites that offered those. No Newgrounds though, didn't even know about it until my teenage years. Basically all I knew about the internet was "i can play loads and loads of games with it", until my best friend showed me a neat little website called "YouTube". We must've been around 9 or 10 at this point.

And that's when a whole new world opened to me! A place where I can find music, watch funny videos and a source to help me when I'm stuck with a hard section in a video game.

We even made our own videos and uploaded them. Sadly, I deleted those and deactivated the account at around age 15 because of cringe. Now I'd love to watch and laugh at them, but that's how things go I guess.

At this point my pool of games I played growed into F2P FPS-games. I sunk most hours in Wolfteam, Combat Arms and the beta of Ace of Spades. Wolfteam and Combat Arms were riddled with hackers and after revisiting, I recognized how shitty they actually are. CA used to have a CoD-Zombies Horde like mode, and they booted it off! Boring!

The only game worth playing today is Ace of Spades. It's now known under the name Build and Shoot. The community got much smaller of course but once you find a full server it's still loads of fun. Imagine Minecraft fused together with Battlefield.

Check it out HERE!

It's obvious to say that I owned my own computer at this point and basically had absolute unsupervised access to the internet. Naughty pictures, gore and weird and creepy people were introduced to me but I still had a wonderful time. I've met the greatest human beings residing all over the world thanks to social media and its ease of access. From the US-Westcoast to New York, to the Balkans, South Africa, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, you name it!

I'd learn so much about the different lives and customs of their cultures. Their believes and (sometimes lack thereof xP) goals in life

I've satiated my hunger for curiousity, taught myself how to play guitar, to draw and how to edit videos and audio more effectively. The Internet gave me a space in which I could immerse myself in, feel safe and express myself in a very unique way.

Nowadays I mostly use services like Youtube as a noisemaker to drown out the silence when I'm at home without much to do or just as backgorund noise while I'm drawing. Since the recent discovery of neocities I've started exploring old-net and "neo old"-net websites much more. There is so much to discover! People just like you and me, setting up their own little digital homes for everyone to experience. When you think about how modern social media has involved, how sterile, investor friendly and samey everything looks and feels, you start to appreciate these little "art projects" (tbf oftentimes they are just that. interactive artworks. which is great. how tf do people do that?? NUTS) and wikis and communities that have been built (and are currently still building!) around those so much more.

And that's what I believe the Internet is supposed to be. Regular people, doing their little things, having fun, connecting wiith each other. A seemingly infinite library of knowledge giving everyone the chance to learn about the world. Big Companies (at least in the degree they are now) shouldn't be here. They shouldn't have so much influence in everything. They ruin all the good things, because they only see profit margins and lose touch with reality. But that happens online as well offline. So idk really