I first encountered the internet
on a damp and rainy night in late september 1994. I had arrived at university with long hair, a leather jacket and my now long-gone estuary accent, my stuff in two boxes and a suitcase and a cd cassette player.

I had foolishly listed 'computing' among my interests on my halls application when really I meant 'Xenon 2' and 'Championship Manager'. I had left my old Atari ST at my parents' house, and my tv. I'd said that if I needed those in my first year, I was doing something wrong. What I'd done wrong was my halls application, as I discovered when I met my housemates, who liked computers very very much.

We, four of us, went to the union that first night. After two drinks one of them suggested that we, all being computer science students, should go to the computer centre and check out the computer equipment. That was a reasonable expectation, apparently. I tagged along, I wanted to like these people, they were ok, and I knew no-one else. I spent most of my first night at uni almost sober and staring at a sun workstation. We didn't have user accounts, and you didn't need a user account to log onto those.

Sunday we found the supermarket and spent the evening with those 'enrolling-in-the-morning' jitters. Monday we got our passwords. One of my housemates scored a floppy disk with netscape and an IRC client from a second year. That evening after a brief umm and ahh we walked straight past the bar and into the computer block. We met a dutch girl online. She probably wasn't dutch or a girl and likely hideous. One of my housemates remarked that the IRC was 'a bit like being in a pub', which was a good thing. I grimaced. I was doing it wrong.

Tuesday the same, then came wednesday.

Wednesday night two guys across the room call out and asked what channel we were on. One wore a yak coat, the other a PWEI tshirt. They were 'hippy' and 'vulcan'. They said where they were. I followed. They were trolling.

Two hours later me, hippy and vulcan left the building to buy beers and head back to someone's kitchen. There had been a surreal virtual barfight, we had offended most of the world's online mormons and fresh arrivals in the computer centre scratched their heads and wondered why the whole university was now banned from the inexplicably popular channel #england. Hippy reckons he saw a reference to the barfight in some kind on history of the internet once, but he can't remember the title of the book.

I began spending my evenings getting smashed with a new group of people. After that narrow escape I didn't use the internet in the evening for months. I regretted that I had missed the regurgitator in the SU that evening. I eventually became a classicist, and went to vulcan's wedding.
(cs1ca, Fri 23 Mar 2012, 0:06, 3 replies)

what?
Try again.
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Fri 23 Mar 2012, 2:12, closed)

Quite.

( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 23 Mar 2012, 10:14, closed)

The Poppies were
better than Regurgitator.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Fri 23 Mar 2012, 17:37, closed)