the internets.

I’m online 24/7, whether that would be checking my status on Facebook using my phone or having a good time with friends playing video games at home; the Internet has always been there connecting me to people. I am an avid video game player, that’s where most of my time goes. When I’m not hanging out with my friends in real life, I can be found on party chat with them on Gears of War 3 over Xbox LIVE. It’s all I do, I just open my laptop screen and I’m already there, same browser open to the recent page I was viewing, it is almost like I never close Firefox.

I’ve been using a computer since I can remember. I was about 5 or 6 when my dad and godfather had one and shown me the basics, web browsing, email, etc. It had a large bulky monitor and a gray tower with Windows 95. All I used it for was to search for video games pictures, Pokémon or Dragon Ball Z episodes, and cheat codes, if I was having trouble with Metroid for NES; and for many years it was basically only that.

I went though a lot of different websites over the years. First it started with the Cheatcc.com or Nintendo.com, and then it moved on to the “kid” sites such as Nickelodeon.com and Disney.com. I still remember those shockwave-based games these sites have hosted that keep me glued to my screen for hours. I remember having a class in grade school that we simply titled, “Computer Class,” and all we did in there was browse the web and play games, such as Oregon Trail and Kid Pix.

At about the age of 10 or 11 at a summer camp, I was talking to a group of kids about general funny things, jokes, games, and of course websites. One website that a kid mentioned would be my hangout spot for about 5 years. He went on saying, “Yeah they make fun of everything there: Pokémon, Britney Spears, everything!” Very intrigued I went on the site later that day. That website is called Newgrounds.com. A site home to numerous flash-based shorts and games, such as Pico Goes to School or the classic, All Your Base R Belong 2 Us. I want to say from that point on, I acquired the “Internet Addiction.”

That website became my whole adolescence, listening to pop-punk music, like blink-182 or Sum 41, drinking Pepsi and eating chips every day, and watching anime and laughing at stupid flash movies and games any chance I can get. I even downloaded Flash to create my own movies, but it just wasn’t meant to be for now. I was so into this site that I really wanted to talk and share my experiences with it, so I made an account and joined the site’s forum, NGBBS. There I would talk with fellow NG users and talk about basically anything. The NGBBS years of my life where the most fun and the interaction with thousands of people were incredible, it felt like a second home; people knew me and I knew them.

Though this was my main site, I also browsed many other pages such as: Gaia Online, Neopets, deviantArt, Albino Blacksheep, and YTMND. Gaia Online was another one of those forum sites that I spent a lot of time on, but it had a fun side to it. You get to have an anime based-avatar and use “gold” to purchase clothing and accessories for it. Then there was YTMND.com, the site for the cheap laugh. A database for user created pages only consisting of a single image or .gif and music in the background. From there I branched out to the often called, “Internet hate machine,” 4chan.org, an image board which has been my current site to talk about random junk and other interests for about 6 years. The website is very easy to navigate, everything is right in front of you and is extremely faster than any forum that I have been to.

Nowadays what I mostly do on my computer is browse 4chan, YouTube, and Facebook or playing online multiplayer games either on my PC or Xbox 360. Although there are times you can find me off my butt from a computer chair, I can ensure you that I am always connected through my phone, looking at the same sites, getting cheap laughs, receiving information, sharing my experiences with others, but in a smaller format in the palm of my hand.