Brian was the first person who told me about the internet. His parents were both professors at U of T, so he was also the first kid in the neighbourhood with access to the internet.
The day he told us about it, Sandra and I went to his place after school to check it out. He explained it to us as a computer program that any computer around the world could access and share simultaneously via a telephone line. It's comical to think of the dial-up tone now, but at the time when it was still revolutionary, it was nail-bitingly exciting to hear. It also took forever to connect, sometimes multiple attempts, so the anticipation was intense.
As the internet was still a foreign concept to us, all we knew how to do was log onto chat sites. And being 12 at the time we didn't have anything worthwhile to chat about, so we pretended to be the most interesting people we could think of: teenagers. We amused ourselves by building a web of lies and congratulated ourselves when we had seemingly pulled the wool over our chat audience's eyes. Ha ha, those idiots think we're 17! We're only 12!! What losers!! When our lies were too extreme and we were called out on them, we simply employed our 12-year-old skills of rudeness and then hung up on them.
Though this seems like a colossal waste of time, it did serve the purpose of teaching us some social constructs of the internet:
The day he told us about it, Sandra and I went to his place after school to check it out. He explained it to us as a computer program that any computer around the world could access and share simultaneously via a telephone line. It's comical to think of the dial-up tone now, but at the time when it was still revolutionary, it was nail-bitingly exciting to hear. It also took forever to connect, sometimes multiple attempts, so the anticipation was intense.
As the internet was still a foreign concept to us, all we knew how to do was log onto chat sites. And being 12 at the time we didn't have anything worthwhile to chat about, so we pretended to be the most interesting people we could think of: teenagers. We amused ourselves by building a web of lies and congratulated ourselves when we had seemingly pulled the wool over our chat audience's eyes. Ha ha, those idiots think we're 17! We're only 12!! What losers!! When our lies were too extreme and we were called out on them, we simply employed our 12-year-old skills of rudeness and then hung up on them.
Though this seems like a colossal waste of time, it did serve the purpose of teaching us some social constructs of the internet:
1) it has the potential to kill a lot of time without accomplishing anything.
2) people lie about everything. Take it all with a grain of salt.
3) manners don't count when you're on the internet. You can get away with saying and doing all the stuff you'd never do or say in a face to face conversation.
4) you can be whoever you want to online. Back then we pretended to be mature, interesting teenagers. Now I happen to be a dwarf hunter with a pet bear on WOW. Whatever floats your boat.
5) really neat way to meet people on the other end of the world (unless they're lying about their location) and to see that they're no different than you (unless they're lying about that too)
Example: You're reading my blog about memories. Nearly everything I've written so far is bullshit. Just kidding. I'm a thirteen year old girl who has nothing better to do than lie to strangers on the internet.
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