I am little more than a chronic net junkie (7 years running). Not a big gamer, not a big ANYTHING. The holy shits that led to this lifestyle happened in very quick succession:

BBS'

Redialing, redialing, redialing, [SWEET MANGLED SOUNDS OF CONNECTION] PHREAKING HACKING ANARCHY TXT'S THAT I'LL READ 5 TIMES AND NEVER USE! After checking out the more nefarious-sounding boards on the freshly downloaded bbs-list.txt, I begin in alphabetical order. As luck would have it, the very first entry is a rare...

HUGELY MULTILINE BBS

30 people online at once? I can sit on my arse all day and night chatting to these saps? Oh man. Hang on, what's this shit...

HUGELY MULTILINE BBS IS CONNECTED TO NET AND I CAN AFFORD TO REGISTER FOR ACCESS

IRC through my MS-DOS terminal prog. #13-17teenz 40 users. Chicks. I get several email addys each day. Develop incredible crush on girl I've never seen.

Eventually there was www, icq, etc. I recall trying to explain to someone in school how completely fucking rad mp3s are (and WHAT they are), failing to communicate this and feeling like a moron.

But nothing besides those first few months has really blown my ass off. Becoming connected (and staying connected) was the big thing. Except for CTRL FUCKING ENTER, WHY HAS NOONE FUCKING TOLD ME AGHHHHH