Inspired by a comment in another thread, what was the path you took over your life, through the various online social media we’ve had?
By way of example, I started in Yahoo chatrooms, to a little bit of Myspace and private forums, to ICQ and IRC, to no online socials for awhile, to facebook, to 4chan, to reddit, ending up here on lemmy.
I’ve never used twitter, insta, tiktok, etc for any length of time.
If you’d like, your native language and a rough estimate of your age can be included for additional context.
I’m very smiliar. AIM, MySpace, facebook, reddit, bluesky, lemmy. I never used Tik Tok, Instagram, SnapChat, or Twitter.
AIM was a simple time. ASL?
AOL
Yahoo
Sensible Erection
Reddit
Lemmy
Neopets
Nexopia
MSN
Facebook
Reddit
Lemmy/Piefed
ICQ †
StudiVZ †
Facebook †
4chan †
WhatsApp †
Reddit †
Feddit
I did make a video for Instagram once that got several million views, but that was on my employer’s account.
I’m an elder millennial GermanI first got internet access in 2010. Phones didn’t exist in 2010s… well I didn’t have one at least.
So I just… made a facebook to talk with school friends when I’m at home… I only ever had like single digits of people to add… like I didn’t speak much English and hard to connect with anyone that didn’t speak Cantonese (or Mandarin). (still typed English on the chat tho.
Eventually I left nyc and I just deleted my facebook because I think I just didn’t feel close with them anymore.
I don’t think I even ever “posted” much if at all… I just used it for facebook games, which I eventualy grew out off.
Then I re-made an account to connect with someone back in nyc, then later I just feel like its too awkward to continue chatting since we havent talked for months/years (forgot how long) and I deleted it again after just exchanging a few “oh school in Philly is crazy lots of fights”.
Then I spent some time on some game forums.
Then I found reddit. I just scrolled through the top platforms and a pseudo-anonymous platform is exactly what I wanted… being an introvert.
I mostly scrolled, never posted much. Didn’t have an account most of the time, only occasionally made throwaways to comment then nuke it in a month or so… don’t even remember any of the usernames I used.
Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked on June 12, 2023
Gaia, MySpace, Fark, Facebook, Reddit, here
1990s Usenet
Nothing
Reddit
Lemmy
Aim, msn, Xbox live chat, qq. Xanga. Asian fanatics, soompi, digg. Once Facebook came along that was the thing.
Bebo
Myspace
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Bluesky
Lemmy
I guess if you want you can throw in stuff like YouTube and some random MMOs I played, but I’m not counting those. Maybe Skype and Discord if you want.
BBS with FidoNet. Then Usenet and gopher before the web was invented. After that it was IRC, then forums.
When I was in school back in the early days, I tried typing a random “wherearemypants.com” and it led to this forum run by some random guy in Texas for him and his friends. I made an account and just insinuated myself into this group of adults, and honestly, it was the golden age of social media for me. Absolutely nothing was monetized, just people sharing links and chatting about stuff.
Eventually he shut it down and I ended up on myspace>facebook>reddit>lemmy.
Not all of these are social media sites, but this list is my social internet path
Bolt dot com & SciFi channel chatrooms
AIM & Yahoo chatrooms
ICQ & IRC
Soulseek (I count it because I used to hang in the chatrooms quite a bit)
Eyeball chat, then followed friends to Camfrog chat, before both were enshittified
MySpace
Facebook and dabbling in Instagram
Reddit, left after Apollo went offline
Mastadon and dabbled in Snapchat
Threads
BlueSky, still here
Lemmy then Piefed, still here
IRC
ICQ
MSN
Bluelight
Other localised special interest forums
MySpace
Bebo?
Facebook
Reddit
Lemmy
Mastodon
I started with TALK on BITNET. Top that!
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Reddit
Lemmy





