I first signed into the world wide web back in 2001, when my best friend, (lets call her Jose) told me about this hip new thing called MSN. Well she didn’t actually tell me rather I overheard her talking to one of the cooler kids (she was always more popular than me) about it at the end of the school day. The conversation went something like this;
Jose – ‘Cya later’
Ben – 'Cya on msn'’
Me – ‘WTF’ ( I don't even think wtf was a coined term in Year 7)
After enquiring about this new revolution, Jose promptly set me up with a hotmail account, she asked me what kind of username I wanted, she had already chosen jellibeenies@hotmail.com and I wanted something just as cool and innovative as my msner in arms. However, somewhere between clicking on the ‘sign up’ and ‘I agree to this bullshit’ link I was left with the name bigfoot_97@hotmail.com. Over the years this username and others such as
· and my ALL TIME PERSONAL favourite
These usernames have come back to haunt me through many nostalgic conversations held with friendship group, example
‘hey remember msn’,
‘hahah yeah I do….yes i do....BIGFOOOT’
and so on and so forth. Lesson learnt, I now tend to keep my email addresses rather straight forwards and more towards the this_is_my_name@lookingprofessional.com kinda thing.
Anyway, my introduction into the world of instant messaging was quick, fast and mean. I learnt quickly that without ample amount of contacts online you could fall into a deep and dark online depression, forcing you to askjeeves a question or pop in your Dangerous Creatures DEMO DISK. Once I had collected my fair share of online contacts, MSN time became the bomb. My day consisted of getting up, going to school, singing a few praise the lord hallelujahs and racing home to our camel coloured Pentium 1, ½ a gram of ram, crusty keyboard and joystick to boot computer to become the 97th bigfoot of the instant chatting world.
At this time in my household we still had the single phone line contraption going, so that when I wanted to use the ‘net’ no one else could call through. This ended up creating havoc most days within the house, as all of a sudden most of my homework HAD to be done on the computer using the Internet. The only person who caught onto this sudden computing craze, was my living at home grandmother who subsequently was the only one to really ever use the phone herself. As my netting time was cutting greatly into her phoning time, we came to an agreement that I was only allowed to be online for one hour after school and that was it. Ofcourse that dream of hers was shortlived and I she often spent the her afternoons storming up the hallways yelling ‘GET OFF THE INTERNET ELIZABETH’ to which I would respond by snatching the cable out of the back of the computer and informing her that I was never on the internet and that she in fact must be going crazy.
When I think back to my msn days a few things come to mind. Firstly, blocking. What an ingenious function and kudos to the creators of the life saving button. I myself wasn’t a huge blocking user, however I distinctly remember it being useful in my times of need, namely after cowardly insulting my playground nemesis. When Microsoft rolled out the new XP, with it came, the new msn with a ‘add your photo’ and webcaming function. By this time my parents as well as my crazy grandma, had realised that I had become overly obsessed with msn, and had decided to not upgrade what had become the typewriter of the computing world. This computer was by this time so old, that the new and improved msn could not be downloaded. This worked in my parents favour, and decided that as they both had PC’s at work, they didn’t need the function of the household computer anymore. I remember jumping on my friends computers and signing in to my long lost msn page, adding all my new contacts and waiting for my lovers to IM me. Oh the envy I had for my friends who had 24 hour access to MSN, whilst my parents glorified over the fact that was still playing Dangerous Creatures. I even managed to get onto it at school using e-messenger, before the IT faculty caught wind of my treachery. Eventually after two long years of no in house MSN my parents finally caved in and got back online. The day had come where I could sign into my beloved once again, but it was to late…people had moved on…livejournal and myspace had started to creep into the online world.
LiZzIe I want tO have your bAbies!!!!!!! <3
I don’t know what it was about those little orange boxes flashing at the bottom of the screen, but boy did they start something big. In a world where instant messaging has become so much the norm, with iPhone’s and facebook etc, it’s hard to imagine not having it in our lives.I still have MSN on my computer, albeit the mac version, and every now and then I still logon. It’s funny to think it was easy to have from 50 – 100 contacts online at once and now a meek 4-5 remain, with a sad little ‘away’ sign hovering over their names. Like vinyl and high-waisted jeans I hope that MSN makes a comeback like no other and when that day comes I'll be ready. It will be like a sort of retro instant messaging service that indie's and hipster with lather themselves in. Maybe then I'll get back those two year I lost.
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