I’ll probably still have some accounts on obscure forums I can’t remember. But something I still use fairly regularly is my Human Paladin in World of Warcraft, he’s almost old enough to drink and drive (not at the same time).
I’ve been looking for my first Usenet post in 1990, found a few close to the first, but not (yet) the first.
I would not be surprised if there are older posts predating the internet, stored on the Hobby Computer Club FIDO mirrors .. assuming that they are still in existence.
I’ve been reading about him over the last few months. Really interesting guy. If things had turned out differently, he almost certainly would have ended up a very vocal present day Fediverse user. Who knows, maybe the entire internet might have ended up a little different than it is today. He certainly seemed to be aware of a lot of things that were quietly happening in America that most people wouldn’t realize for a few decades.
I never experienced Usenet, but seems like I have been hearing it mentioned more and more lately as the fediverse continues to grow. Never really thought about it being like an email chain of comments.
The early internet required so much more patience and attention just to use it for any reason, let alone as a way to communicate back and forth with other people in real(ish) time. We take it for granted.
I have a URL that’s 30 years old this year and it’s still valid and it still redirects to my personal homepage.
(Bonus: The oldest Internet Archive snapshot of it is from 1997.)
Funny thing that, a personal homepage, I first created one 31 years ago, at a time when it was rather unusual to have one. I still have one, and now it has become rather unusual to have one once again.
I graduated in 2000 and a buddy bought a domain to host a forum so our friend group could stay in touch before social media took off. We kinda fell off when MySpace, then FB got big, but now that we’ve all abandoned the latter it’s how we stay in touch.
I’m with you there. I still have my cringe edgy 1998 Hotmail login that has morphed into the credentials for all my Microslop dealings, I never use it for mail, but I have unfortunately had to give it to people professionally during some azure related training and onsite sales pitches.
For good or ill I still use it for mail, hell with ‘em! I just don’t want to go through the hassle of brainstorming all those who have it and then changing it where necessary.
Anything that had that email would’ve been from my teens to early 20’s since I ended up with a Gmail account in like the 3rd wave of beta invites. That was my grown up email, and so anything of value is there while the Hotmail only gets spam and ms updates. But can definitely appreciate sticking with 1 account, since I’ve not swapped emails since my early 20’s for the same reason you describe.
I would’ve said Elfwood, since I posted some cringey drawings there in the late 90’s. Since Elfwood is closed, remnants of my presence still exist on TOR.N (theonering.net). It was a pre-movie Lord of the Rings fan website, which, amazingly, still has Barliman’s chat room. I wonder if my Battle of Fanghorn Forest poem is still there somewhere 🤔
ETA: so in answer I’d say about 28 years old. If you’ll excuse me, I need to drink some Ensure and clean my dentures
I have some Usenet posts from the late 90s that are still there. My oldest actively maintained internet presence is probably my LinkedIn account, which I registered in 2008.
I’m no greybeard in comparison to the wizards here, but can still probably log into my webkinz account from 2008. I think they still have a legacy app anyhow lol
I’m sure you can find old forum posts of mine from when I was an internet baby but couldn’t log back in to those, if an account was even required back then lmao
I have my Gmail account from early in its beta, probably in 2004. I became a Metafilter member I think in 2003. I got my everything2.com account in the late 90s I think, that might be the earliest I still remember.
There’s a Pokemon fan forum that I originally joined around 2004 I believe. They’ve had a relaunch since then, so my current account is “only” from 2009 though. I’m still ocassionally active on there, along with like 5 other users.
My old Yahoo account had emails from 98 or so, I had some AOL content starting in about 94 and Prodigy before that. Before that everything i did was on multiple BBS’s and don’t think any are still going, the last one i looked at was back in 2008 or so and they still had the BBS archives up on a web page.
My livejournal account, my email, and my website are all of an age, though the website is oldest. But my submissions on Z2 are my oldest artifacts on an active website.
Team Internet Paintball from 1994. My member number was TIP#860. Still have the patch on an old set of cammos, if I didn’t accidentally get rid of them during one of the many times I’ve moved over the years.
The wayback machine has a snapshot of my personal Age of Empires 2 and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds fan site from October 2002. Digging around a bit, the site and its forum must have been online since at least August of the same year. (Edit: if you dig around long enough you’ll probably find forum accounts from 2001 or even older but those old phpBB forums usually only have a fraction of their threads preserved).
The oldest thing that’s still in use is a forum account from September 2003. Last post with that account was two weeks ago. The community is not as active as it used to be but we still do in-person meetups at least twice a year.
I still have my AOL account from the mid-90s. It uses my oldest handle, a nickname from when I was a kid. I still use that email as a spam address, for when I have to provide an email address for some passing thing.
My yahoo email address, created in the early 2000s. I receive a yearly reminder on my current email that it’s about to be deactivated due to inactivity, so I log on to keep it alive. No reason really.
Probably my first account on newgrounds, must’ve made it back in 2003.
I lost the password to the email I registered with and with that any chances for password recovery of said account and a bunch of other stuff of my teenage years.
There are posts on Usenet from the mid-to-late ‘90s under my real name that are probably still around. I don’t go looking for them and hope they don’t come looking for me. About 50% of them are an embarrassment.
Probably my last.fm account, was made in 2005. Everything else before that has died a death, either because I changed services like with gmail or because the service is no more, like with ICQ etc.
I recently started using IRC again but had a almost 2 decade long break between so I don’t think that counts.
an account from July of 2001 in what then used to be a counter-strike forum.
it still exists and has an active user base but luckily has been taken to private mode.
i don’t think even 5% of the active users still play CS.
I was around almost at the beginning of Eternal September. In December of 1994, I posted to a newsgroup that google eventually archived on the web. Beyond that, my eBay account predates y2k. The first purchase I recall was a parallel port ethernet adapter so I could use Arachne for DOS on my 386SLC33 laptop in the university library. I mailed out a money order and hoped this “buying shit on the internet” thing wasn’t going to be a scam.
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I’ll probably still have some accounts on obscure forums I can’t remember. But something I still use fairly regularly is my Human Paladin in World of Warcraft, he’s almost old enough to drink and drive (not at the same time).
I still maintain a Gmail account from their beta test days. I had to get an invite. 2003 or 4ish? Don’t use it for much anymore, but I still have it.
i still use mine to do this day. 25 years of gmail.
I’ve been looking for my first Usenet post in 1990, found a few close to the first, but not (yet) the first.
I would not be surprised if there are older posts predating the internet, stored on the Hobby Computer Club FIDO mirrors .. assuming that they are still in existence.
Random question, but did you ever come across Steve Kangas on Usenet?
A Vincent Foster for Usenet liberals?
I’ve been reading about him over the last few months. Really interesting guy. If things had turned out differently, he almost certainly would have ended up a very vocal present day Fediverse user. Who knows, maybe the entire internet might have ended up a little different than it is today. He certainly seemed to be aware of a lot of things that were quietly happening in America that most people wouldn’t realize for a few decades.
Not to my recollection. I mainly hung out on the comp.* and alt.best.of.internet groups. Together with another member we wrote the original aboi FAQ.
Edit:
Here’s something I wrote about it on another platform: * https://old.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/dx43ew/altbestofinternet_faq_email_on_steroids/
I never experienced Usenet, but seems like I have been hearing it mentioned more and more lately as the fediverse continues to grow. Never really thought about it being like an email chain of comments.
The early internet required so much more patience and attention just to use it for any reason, let alone as a way to communicate back and forth with other people in real(ish) time. We take it for granted.
Just to add some perspective and context to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_oldest_currently_registered_Internet_domain_names
My email address is 26 years old.
I have a URL that’s 30 years old this year and it’s still valid and it still redirects to my personal homepage.
(Bonus: The oldest Internet Archive snapshot of it is from 1997.)
Funny thing that, a personal homepage, I first created one 31 years ago, at a time when it was rather unusual to have one. I still have one, and now it has become rather unusual to have one once again.
Thats pretty cool !
Thanks! 😁
Deleted by author
No, you can’t, I quite enjoy having some measure of anonymity here.
im sorry, i understand
I graduated in 2000 and a buddy bought a domain to host a forum so our friend group could stay in touch before social media took off. We kinda fell off when MySpace, then FB got big, but now that we’ve all abandoned the latter it’s how we stay in touch.
I love this.
I wish I had this
I have a hotmail address that I still regularly use for silly stuff. The earliest email I can find under it is from March 2006.
One of my Yahoo addresses from 2005
I got my first Gmail address through an invite during the beta release in late 2004.
I forgot it was invite only! I remember getting an invite to Google’s social media. I can’t remember what that was called now…
My steam account is OG, circa 2003. September 13, 2003. 22 years of service badge. Use it every day.
the oldest one that I can still log into, probably yahoo mail. late 90s. so probably 28-29 years.
I think the oldest account I can still get into is on 3wheelerworld.com. I still get my birthday email from them every year.
Probably my Runescape account, just hit 21 years.
Gosh, yeah, mine must be of a similar vintage. I’m just hearing now that you can get special 10 / 15 year capes as well
several of my passwords 🥺
Let me guess Password123?
at least throw an exclamation mark on there! i’m security-forward!
Crap forgot about that thanks!
The animations I put on Newgrounds. The Angry Atheist series.
AA gets in a rocket and goes up to heaven to fight God in a katana battle. In the end they both get killed by Buddha.
AA shoots up a church service and get taken out by an old lady sucking his face off with a plunger.
Jesus’s Revenge. The Son of God comes for AA. I think he kills him but then gets run over by a drunk driver.
AA drops a nuke on the Vatican.
Hotmail from 1998.
I’m with you there. I still have my cringe edgy 1998 Hotmail login that has morphed into the credentials for all my Microslop dealings, I never use it for mail, but I have unfortunately had to give it to people professionally during some azure related training and onsite sales pitches.
For good or ill I still use it for mail, hell with ‘em! I just don’t want to go through the hassle of brainstorming all those who have it and then changing it where necessary.
Anything that had that email would’ve been from my teens to early 20’s since I ended up with a Gmail account in like the 3rd wave of beta invites. That was my grown up email, and so anything of value is there while the Hotmail only gets spam and ms updates. But can definitely appreciate sticking with 1 account, since I’ve not swapped emails since my early 20’s for the same reason you describe.
I can still log into my Slashdot /. account, I think. That’s from 1997-98?
Same here. Although that’s not my oldest.
I would’ve said Elfwood, since I posted some cringey drawings there in the late 90’s. Since Elfwood is closed, remnants of my presence still exist on TOR.N (theonering.net). It was a pre-movie Lord of the Rings fan website, which, amazingly, still has Barliman’s chat room. I wonder if my Battle of Fanghorn Forest poem is still there somewhere 🤔
ETA: so in answer I’d say about 28 years old. If you’ll excuse me, I need to drink some Ensure and clean my dentures
I have some Usenet posts from the late 90s that are still there. My oldest actively maintained internet presence is probably my LinkedIn account, which I registered in 2008.
ICQ.
Wait, they’re gone‽
Uh-oh!!!!
I’m no greybeard in comparison to the wizards here, but can still probably log into my webkinz account from 2008. I think they still have a legacy app anyhow lol
I’m sure you can find old forum posts of mine from when I was an internet baby but couldn’t log back in to those, if an account was even required back then lmao
My 24 year old DeviantArt account, probably. Don’t know what I had before that. Oh, and my steam account turns 22 this year, I think.
My somethingawful forum account is 24.
I have a very lonely and hungry neopet somewhere…
Does Angelfire keep websites up after 30 years of no activity?
I have my Gmail account from early in its beta, probably in 2004. I became a Metafilter member I think in 2003. I got my everything2.com account in the late 90s I think, that might be the earliest I still remember.
Email account from the year 2000. Which is TWENTY SIX YEARS AGO.
There’s a Pokemon fan forum that I originally joined around 2004 I believe. They’ve had a relaunch since then, so my current account is “only” from 2009 though. I’m still ocassionally active on there, along with like 5 other users.
My old Yahoo account had emails from 98 or so, I had some AOL content starting in about 94 and Prodigy before that. Before that everything i did was on multiple BBS’s and don’t think any are still going, the last one i looked at was back in 2008 or so and they still had the BBS archives up on a web page.
I am not “present” in the www at all, but my oldest e-mail address that is still working is from 1996.
My livejournal account, my email, and my website are all of an age, though the website is oldest. But my submissions on Z2 are my oldest artifacts on an active website.
Team Internet Paintball from 1994. My member number was TIP#860. Still have the patch on an old set of cammos, if I didn’t accidentally get rid of them during one of the many times I’ve moved over the years.
https://www.warpig.com/paintball/net_resources/tip_faq.html
My Yahoo account is 25 years old I think. My first email address.
I have a 26 year old Whirlpool (an Australian broadband forum) account. It was made in 2000.
If you count Usenet, that goes back 30 years to 1996. It’s not technically the web, but the archives can be found on the web
The oldest one I still use regularly is probably my Steam account which is 17 years old (as of today actually).
Pretty sure its my Neopets, I set it up in my dad’s office before we even got internet at home
I think that website I made for the cern guy is still around.
The wayback machine has a snapshot of my personal Age of Empires 2 and Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds fan site from October 2002. Digging around a bit, the site and its forum must have been online since at least August of the same year. (Edit: if you dig around long enough you’ll probably find forum accounts from 2001 or even older but those old phpBB forums usually only have a fraction of their threads preserved).
The oldest thing that’s still in use is a forum account from September 2003. Last post with that account was two weeks ago. The community is not as active as it used to be but we still do in-person meetups at least twice a year.
I still have my AOL account from the mid-90s. It uses my oldest handle, a nickname from when I was a kid. I still use that email as a spam address, for when I have to provide an email address for some passing thing.
My yahoo email address, created in the early 2000s. I receive a yearly reminder on my current email that it’s about to be deactivated due to inactivity, so I log on to keep it alive. No reason really.
My Yahoo email address is 27 years old.
Probably my Kingdom of Loathing account, my emails from before then died
I still have a Game Faqs account.
My active eBay account is from 1999.
Been visiting http://outpost10f.com/ccc/ since 1999, and it’s still online! It’s an HTML based chat site with Star Wars and Star Trek themed rooms.
Still glorious.
Probably my first account on newgrounds, must’ve made it back in 2003.
I lost the password to the email I registered with and with that any chances for password recovery of said account and a bunch of other stuff of my teenage years.
There’s a short story out there from the days when everyone subscribed to email newsletters.
Skyrama
My somethingawful account is early 2000’s. I can still get into my gamefaqs account too which iirc is late 90s.
Probably my ModTheSims account from 2005.
An account on Yahoo Mail from around 1997. Still logging in once in a while.
same, not sure when i started it though. might be more like 2006 for this particular account.
Online banking since 1999 same bank.
Deleted by moderator
being a clown on something awful was really good times
I have some guitar tabs I posted from the mid 90s I think
There are posts on Usenet from the mid-to-late ‘90s under my real name that are probably still around. I don’t go looking for them and hope they don’t come looking for me. About 50% of them are an embarrassment.
Probably my last.fm account, was made in 2005. Everything else before that has died a death, either because I changed services like with gmail or because the service is no more, like with ICQ etc.
I recently started using IRC again but had a almost 2 decade long break between so I don’t think that counts.
My wizard 101 account probably
an account from July of 2001 in what then used to be a counter-strike forum. it still exists and has an active user base but luckily has been taken to private mode.
i don’t think even 5% of the active users still play CS.
I have an email address and other accounts from the ‘90s that still exist.
I use the email for junkmail and Craigslist.
My original Angelfire website is still around from 1999.
My deviant art account is still around, it’s over 20 years old now. Idk, is xanga still around? Most sites I used are gone now.
My YouTube account is coming up on 20. Probably that seeing as MySpace was wiped.
I made my Roblox account in 2008, I have older accounts but that’s probably the one I could most reliably access.
I was around almost at the beginning of Eternal September. In December of 1994, I posted to a newsgroup that google eventually archived on the web. Beyond that, my eBay account predates y2k. The first purchase I recall was a parallel port ethernet adapter so I could use Arachne for DOS on my 386SLC33 laptop in the university library. I mailed out a money order and hoped this “buying shit on the internet” thing wasn’t going to be a scam.
@dhruv3006 the first time I regisfered this nickname was on PTNet (irc), I still go there time to time to keep it alive, it has over 20 years now