I for Internet

           It wasn’t long ago, when having a decent dial-up connection was the craziest dream. One that you could talk about with your friends; the key to the unlimited source of the unreachable! You see, those days a connection was just a connection. It was just a tiny stream of tired bits being carried by some even more tired signals, and no one thought it’ll get better. Well, not in Iran!

When I’ve got my first dial-up connection, some 8 years ago, I couldn’t imagine having anything better than that. I used to spend lots of my time in Persian social networks of those days, or as I like to call them, the Cyber Pasturages! I still wonder sometimes, have we done any secret genetic experiences on animals in our country? Because I think I’ve seen some of them using internet several times. Anyway, Webshots is the only English site that I can recall from those days. My browsing habits went on like that for a year or two until the serious social networking came in.

It all started from Tebyan. The most creative Iranian site in the time, featuring lots of elements that could keep you entertained for hours i.e. a rich download section, easy blogging, free E-mail, etc. I thought posting on a site just does not make sense; well, I was wrong. My first post attracted many people: A boring joke revised by me into an unrecognizable new one. By no time I was addicted.

That was alright though; I still hated chat and blogging; two activities known as most time wasting things you could do on the internet, to me. But again, I was wrong. My first Yahoo ID was “Mohsen_15_marmoolak” (Yes, creativity was high!) and actually was of no use to me. But my second ID added another affliction: Chat. It still was not serious for me; I used to mess with my friends just to have fun. But when I started blogging it all changed. Readers started adding me from my blog and soon after that I was waist deep in IDs. I loved it though, most of them really liked my blog and that was cool. But you can’t keep chatting and living together. It was like hell for me. Imagine having a dial up connection and an add list with more than a hundred active IDs. Who’s going to pay the bill? I started announcing certain hours of day for a blog conference. Yes! People would gather in my blog and talk to me through comments or messenger. I felt like a celebrity, but in fact it was nothing but addiction. I was an internet junkie surrounded by a bunch of people like myself. All we wanted was to kill the time. However, blogging helped me a lot. It helped me to learn myself, and my abilities in writing.

But now it’s different. I’m not addicted to chat anymore; I’m not even addicted to blogging like I used to be. But thanks to ADSL, I’m a download addict now and torrent is dope!

P.S: To those who keep asking me why don’t I have a Facebook profile? Get a life and some privacy! I already feel guilty for keeping my Yahoo profile going.