Online History

If my memory doesn't fail me, which happens far too often, I first discovered the Internet somewhere between 1997-2000. Anyways, that was when I was in my early elementary school years in Australia, and my dad sometimes took me to his office at the university where he was getting his Ph.D. I believe it was the old Netscape browsers and Windows 95 days. I really didn't know how to "surf" the Internet, but I think I started out viewing image galleries of my favorite cartoon and anime shows (I especially remember Sailor Moon).

I think it was around 2002 when I really got into being online. That was when I got my first e-mail address at Hotmail, started reading fanfiction, and got onto chat rooms. Funny, I haven't been onto a chat room since then. Mainly I chatted and read about Sailor Moon and played tons of games at the Cartoon Network website - then again, I was only nine or ten.

It wasn't until 2005 that I really started becoming one of those "Internet junkies." It was February and I was in seventh grade, and on school computers a friend kept visiting this online community called Gaia Online. Right now, it's the world's largest online forum/community. I'm considered quite an oldie there - back in the day, Gaia was the best place in the world. Nearly everyone was nice, and I loved to earn gold, buy/trade items, commission art, dress up, go to events, and roleplay. Soon afterwards, Gaia got invaded by a swarm of trolls and dummies. I stopped going there about a year later.

In April of 2005 I made my first website, a shrine to Karasu from Yu Yu Hakusho, my favorite series in the world, hosted by the atrocious Freewebs. You can still find it here, though it's bombed with ads and I haven't updated in years. At Gaia (I was still really into it then), I commissioned a friend to make banners for my site. She recommended me to search through Day Dream Graphics for ideas. That's when I first stepped into the web design world.

Later in November of 2005, I was bullied by friends into getting a Xanga blog (that was before MySpace and LiveJournal became popular). So I got one...and you can find it here, though again I haven't updated in centuries and it's really quite old. Don't bother with my younger stupidity. ^_^;;

After a good few months of avoiding Gaia, blogging crazily, and never updating my shrine, I thought it was high time to make a personal site. And so I did in the summer of 2006 (it's here) although it was quickly replaced in mid-August by my fanlisting collective, Ethereal Roses, at er.buruma.net which is now at fans.afanatic.org. Along the way, I restarted a blog, which can be found at x.erebiel.net. And of course, on August 5, 2007 my amazing hostess Buruma bought me this domain, afanatic.org. And that's pretty much it. :)