there was a time when the internet was totally different from what it is today. everything was quite naive. we were innocent as well. users had a lot to discover and surfing the web was such a fun thing to do in itself because you could discover websites, music, games. it somehow felt like you were in a forest and you might be the only discoverer of a particular path. it was all pretty exciting.
i remember when i was about 12 or 13 i was playing this general knowledge game online and you had a live chat section there. while i was playing, i started talking to this guy and before the game finished we exchanged yahoo messenger addresses. after that we were talking for years although we have never met.

all these early years were quite romantic.

there were also some weird parts of the net, which for a young teen seemed very shocking.
i remember that the guy who installed the internet in my house put this peer-to-peer software in my computer, where you could download films and music for free. people were not very educated about viruses, spam or age restrictions at the time. so i wanted to download the new barbie movie, which i heared from my friends had live actors in it. i searched the film in a software called ODC and i started downloading the movie that firstly came up. after i waited for a few hours, i opened the file and something seemed strange. i skipped some sequences to see if this is what i was looking for and i ended up right in the middle of a hardcore sex scene. i got terrified, confused and instantly pressed the shut down button on my pc. i was shocked because i did not know what to make of it. the feeling i got that day still stays with me.

nevertheless, this whole new virtual world i was entering was so different from my reality. it felt weird being able to use the shiny, new, smart technology while my next-door neighbor did not have a running toilet in their house so they improvised something in the garden.
it kind of made me feel like every time i was turning my computer on, i was traveling to a different era and universe. while we were wearing fake adidas shoes made in a dodgy factory which awfully smelled like plastic and they would rip in a few weeks, the girls on the internet had makeup, cool punk or emo clothes, converse and so on.
the girls in the neighborhood would sometimes gather to play dress up games and we were so happy with the outfits we were making as if they were ours. we were imagining that the dolls on the screen were us because we could have never been like that. all we had were cheap fake tracksuits and some "nice" blouses we could only wear for special occasions.