For me it all started back in my high school days, when all we had were dial up modems. My brother and I paid for our own phone line to use for calling around to local BBSes. My brother ran his own board. I believe we always had the kind of modem that you plug the phone cord directly into. I still remember the comments of other users about how someone would knock the phone handset off the modem cradle, and you’d have to sit there listening to the noise because replacing it could cause you to disconnect. Something like that. We would occasionally have events called MUPTs, Modem User Pizza Thingy, where people could gather and talk face to face. Bulletin Boards operated mostly like forums do, posting comments and quoting others in a thread. Games were turn based, you’d have a certain number of turns per day to use. Some of the better games had amazing ANSI art! This was the mid 90’s.
The internet was something you only used if you subscribed to AOL or CompuServe. By the time college came around, internet access was being made more readily available. Somehow we got signed up with an ISP and used Netscape to browse internet pages. I believe the package came with access to Tripod for making your own web pages.
Not only do I remember the “shrines” you speak of, I made a few of my own! They were just a basic description of the anime or game franchise, what I liked or thought about it, and some pics and sound files taken from other sites. I used to browse those sites for hours downloading anime pictures and sound clips.
Chat rooms were a popular thing back then, and I remember I was infatuated with a girl from Sweden in whatever chat room I’d ended up in. I’d get up at 6am to catch her using the library computer and we’d chat for a while. This was before the concept that she might not even be female was prevalent.
Eventually instant messaging became a big popular thing. I don’t remember all the ones available in the early days, but ICQ was the one I used. I met two girls through that program, one I am still good friends with, and another that I dated for about 4 years.
At some point I got my own domain name and moved my stupid little shrine pages off of Tripod (I think I had them on Geocities as well). This was around the time I found ZC, I had a download page for the only quest I made that I actually finished and a link to the ZC site. BTW, if anyone knows where I could find a copy of xyvol.qst that would be awesome. The only files I can find seem to be empty or corrupt. Eventually the site was neglected and the domain name lost when I got tired of paying for it.
Now people just type (badly) on their cellphones and post pictures of their dinner. I put up with it though because there are many people that I would not be in contact with if I hadn’t found them again through Myspace or Facebook.