The first encounter with the Internet that I can remember is being given a pair of 5.25" floppies containing various shareware utilities that a friend had downloaded from 'The Internet'.
He was a retired optical engineer that owned and operated the local computer store. I can't remember the context or even what programs exactly were there, although for some reason I think there was a extended memory manager program I needed, but never managed to make work.
My PC at the time was a 8088 with 512K RAM. I still have the motherboard, but I have no idea what I did with the 1MB memory expansion card in question.
This was some years before I actually surfed the Information Superhighway. I read Neuromancer before I was ever connected to the Internet, which set the bar really fucking high for expectations.
1999 to 2019
IRC / ISP provided email.* : Changed ISP.
Webcrawler: Used until Google, which worked better.
Hotmail: Disliked M$, left after sale.
ICQ: Lifestyle changes.
Geocities: Lifestyle changes, never updated my pages after being sold to Yahoo!
IRC - DALNET: Inconvenience from the DDoS war.Wish some of those channels were still around.
Yahoo Mail: Disliked GUI changes, and the removal of free SMTP access.
Google Search: Strongly dislike tracking, search results flooded with ads, and results quality fading.
GMail: Bad interface, slow to load, general dissatisfaction with Google.**
DeviantART: lifestyle changes on my part. Website still seems pretty good.
Ebay: Dislike interface.
Paypal: Nothing but bad experiences.
Metafilter: Still use, and still like.
Google News: What was a pretty good service gradually became worse and worse. No variety.
Hackaday: Gradual editorial changes after its sale have made it less interesting.***
Wikipedia: Dicks. Philosophical differences. Philosophical differences and all those dicks.
Youtube: Ads. Really bad suggestion engine. Its either Alt-Right Radicalization or Clickbait.
Amazon: Still using to buy non-local products. No interest in any of its other tricks.
Blogger: Just checking to see if this is being read.
Facebook: The feed tinkering, the tracking, and Zuck.
Tumblr: lifestyle. Generally enjoyed it, and its interface.
Netflix: Still using, but not as impressed as I once was.
Hacker News: Still using, still useful.
LinkedIN: Useless.
StackExchange: Dicks, and Boss Dicks.
Duckduckgo: Still using, wish the results were better, but GIGO, right?
With Web 1.0 long dead, Web 2.0 a festering shitheap, and Web 3.0 being the Panopticon, I am going to be curious to see how many items will be added to this list. Perhaps I will be able to extend this review, in another decade, on this service; but given the success rate of the above items, I fear not.
"Who will save your souls...from all those lies you told?"
---Jewel Kilcher
* My local ISP hosted its own IRC server, restricted only to its customers. I remember being shown the channel by my girlfriend, and holding my first chat. This still seems a cool idea, and I remember it as being remarkably populated by neighbors and friends.
**I understand the irony of complaining about this on Blogger.com. At some point, my animosity to Google will reach the point that this blog will be extinguished as well.
***Historically, a similar sort of 'en-boring-ing' as the 'Amateur Science' column in Scientific American underwent in the 1990s.
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