Is this like a digital generation gap or something? I mean, I've been on the internet since the late 90s, but all the people I have as friends on facebook are people I know in real life. (not that I use it much, and mainly started it so I wouldn't have to answer "I'm not on facebook" when asked about it)

I was the same way until a couple years ago when I finally started using Facebook to find shows after I moved to a new town. Now I have like 50 people I know and 350 of their friends who asked to add me. I pretty much interact with a dozen of them tops between reposting content from here to kill time while I was working. Now I'm using it to help while look for a new job. I'm using "friend" because it's the Facebook term, but I understand that there are a lot of younger people who actually consider people they've only met on the Internet their friends, which I can't relate to at all.

We both got onto the Internet in the late 90s, though, which means that at the time we were on the tail end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September - so we don't really have much room to criticize.

Hell, I remember back in '97 or so there was a month or two where I actually thought I was expected to use emoticons.

I've never used Usenet, so maybe I can be excluded from that (even if it costs me inter-nerd points).

I think I fell into that wierd gap where I joined too late to be welcomed by the old communities but too early for regular people around me could relate or understand what I was even talking about.

Still amazes me how I actually spent hours in AOL chatrooms (that were generic at the time, and was more of a "hey neat, I'm talking to people through a computer" interaction)

anyhow, 5 stars for reminding me I'm getting old despite not being out of my 20s

I think the "eternal september" thing can apply to the Internet at large in the 90s really, Usenet just happened to be the cultural heart of the Internet at that point. By the late 90s message boards were already taking over, but they played a similar role while Usenet was already well on the way to completing it's transition into "intellectual property and porn bazaar" (prior to filesharing taking over that role).

I'm apparently pretty much the same age as you, though, got on around '96 or '97, just after highschool.

Actually, I guess I'm 5 or 6 years older than you, I just got a late start.

I want to make a facebook page just to be your friend.

That's pretty much the only good reason to make one.

The "September" thing goes back to the 80s, when "online" was local BBS's and university mainframes. There'd be a rush of newbies whenever the school year started. I was on BBS's so there was another smaller one at the end of the year because of holiday gifts. By the time I got to Usenet, WebTV AOL were what was Ruining Everything.

It's interesting how much of presence Aussies and New Zealand had on Usenet in the dial-up days, with North America and Australia being the only continents with free or cheap flat-rate local calls. People from everywhere else seemed to skew towards university students, post-grads, and govt. employees, who could get away with making £30 phone calls to spend the evening playing MUDs or arguing on rec.arts.nerds.