it was pretty fun. I think I had a better time than most other kids who were on the computer a lot, even if bad and dumb shit happened. And I'm thankful I built my online skillset early thanks to all that unmonitored time on the computer, like being able to detect if a movie was secretly one guy's fetish project. It haunts me when I see some Gen X person typing with all the ellipsis from a little emo's deviantArt journal.
I guess this experience spans my whole lifetime, so I should divvy it up into eras. Let's go from the beginning.
The first computer I encountered was my grandmother's. I watched my grandfather play Bridge sometimes, but mostly played Dally-Do CD-ROMs and Crayola 3d Castle Builder. The first computer in my home showed up in 2002 I think, I was seven or eight and lucky enough to have broadband. In the early days, when we lived in the apartment, I remember downloading things. Music and images from Kazaa, trying to find cool screensavers on the web, and my dad showed me that program/website that listens for space aliens. He also showed me WinAmp, which I immediately set to work downloading Pokemon skins for. I'm sure he showed me how to burn CDs, too.
Kazaa is what I remember most. I'd type in searches like "pokemon music, scooby doo music, yu-gi-oh music," etc., and generally get movie soundtracks or strange obscure tracks I still don't know the origins of. One time I downloaded an AMV of Cardcaptor Sakura with Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles, and it changed my life. Another time I downloaded a Pokemon AMV set to MSI's Bitches and that also changed my life but very differently. I also downloaded images, which generally went well except for when it didn't.
Limewire quickly became The New Hotness, and I learned how to search for music better. Sort of. I liked to use the "genre" search field, and thought acid (chemical) was generally cool, and was disappointed to find the most prominent music tagged with acid was Face Down Ass Up.
It's so hard to reflect on this era of content because my brain is tainted my by the convenience of today. I've forgotten the frustrated right-click, "Force start," "Looking for more peers...", and the fucking "My fellow americans," you'd get when trying to download a freshly popular song. There's none of that now. For me, if I want a song, I get the file. Sometimes I use streaming if I want to listen to Green Day but don't wan't their entire discography stored on my phone, but mostly I try to keep files of songs I like. And it's so easy.