First got AOL in maybe 1995/1996. That was back during the days of dial up and 1 phone line per house. Where you could be in online chats, then get knocked off because someone called your house. Finding your way into Warez/Server/Zeraw rooms run by AOL proggies like Fate-X and getting the first exposure to piracy. That’s how I first learned VB programmingz Photoshop with EyeCandy, and Bryce 3D in Jr High. It’s also my PC got crazy viruses. This had to be downloaded in from 10+ volumes via WinRAR. The game changer was when AOL finally added download resume so if you got knocked offline by a phone call when the download was at 90% you could simply resume it instead of having to restart. And you could queue email downloads, so you could have 20+ email queued and let it download overnight.

The shit storm hit one summer when AOL user base increased faster than they could expand and it was nothing but busy signals trying to connect. They eventually caught up but it was baaad.

Then came the era of “free” dialup internet services where it was a matter of having some ad bars run whole connected…but there were ways around that. Then About 2 year later cable internet started becoming common.