marmolita:
When:
if you were up to date your computer was probably running windows 95
there was no standard word processing application (I used Word Perfect, who remembers that one?)
“the internet” was usually synonymous with “AOL” (although some folks used Prodigy or Compuserve)
AOL had a lot of content, including message boards, chat rooms, IM, etc.
fandom existed primarily on newsgroups, mailing lists, and message boards
if you were on AOL, you might find fellow fans by SEARCHING THE PROFILES OF ALL AOL USERS FOR INTEREST IN YOUR FANDOM AND THEN RANDOMLY IMING THEM CAN YOU BELIEVE WE USED TO DO THAT AND IT WORKED JFC
chatting for non-aol users was accomplished with IRC and ICQ (uh oh!)
the best web browser was Netscape Navigator
you paid for internet BY THE MINUTE and it was a great day when AOL changed to a flat monthly fee for unlimited access
you didn’t use the internet for too long at a time anyway because you were tying up your phone line. Or, you got a second line for your computer.
websites involved lots of tiled backgrounds, flashing text, and marquees. Most had a single banner image because graphics took forever to load.
the word “blog” did not exist
fanfiction was hosted on your own personal website or on an archive website someone in your fandom set up. You might have fic in multiple archives.
to share fanfic with people IRL you either had to save to a floppy for them or print it out.
the bulk of mailing lists were on egroups which later was purchased by yahoo and turned into yahoo groups
website hosting services included GeoCities, angelfire, Xoom, and others I feel like I’m forgetting right now
web search was ineffective and fairly useless. You had to search multiple providers (yahoo, alta vista, lycos) which would each give vastly different results, until metasearch came along and consolidated them for you
to find sites in your fandom you would go to one site and see which webrings they were a member of, then look through the webrings. Some people wouldn’t let you into their webring if they didn’t think you were cool enough.
every website with fanfic had layers and layers of disclaimers and if applicable adult content warnings you had to click through to get to the content
we have come a long way in the past 20 years (also jfc I’m old)