Staring at a Windows ME screen, watching the flicker of a bulky CRT monitor. The sound of the dial-up connection—those beeps, the static, the waiting. A moment of silence, then the internet arrives.
The first time I messaged someone on ICQ, it felt different. No phone call, no face-to-face conversation—just words appearing on a screen from someone who wasn’t in the room. A quiet, electric kind of connection.
This was before social media, before followers and engagement, before everything became about visibility. Back when you talked to people because you wanted to, not because you had to keep up appearances. Back when the internet felt more like a place to explore than a place to perform.
I think about that sometimes. Not in a nostalgic, “things were better back then” way—just in a huh, that was a different time kind of way. A time when conversations felt more like conversations, not posts waiting for approval. When you cared about what someone had to say, not how many people were listening to them.
Not saying one way is better than the other. Just remembering.
