I bought a gmail invite from a message board. If this sequence of words makes sense to you, you’re old too.
I got an invite to Gmail when I was in university. Sadly I was at inbox zero for quite some time so I don’t have the Welcome to Gmail email anymore. It’s more than likely my oldest active account. I do have a Neowin account that still works from 2002 but I don’t frequent anymore. Macrumors is my most active old forum account, that’s from 2005. I had an ancient AIM and ICQ account but there’s no way I could remember the account details.
Ditto for the AIM and ICQ.
I think I read recently that ICQ was shutting down.
I still remember when AIM shutdown for good. That was a sad day.
I mean you could always make a new account to get the welcome email and photoshop the dates and times to make it look like it’s older. I imagine the look of the email now is different from 2003, tho.
Shiiit, actually that does make sense. I remember when Gmail gave you 10 invites for new accounts and you didn’t even get them right away. You had to earn them over time. So yeah, invites were regularly sold on the message boards I used to frequent.
TIL G-Mail was invite only back then. I am too GenZ to undersand this shit.
A pattern they repeated with Google Wave and Google+, neither of which took off, partly because there weren’t enough people using them.
I genuinely thought G+ could have been a FB killer, if they hadn’t made it hard to join.
Gmail since 2002 or something. Steam account if emails don’t count.
Edit: Wow account could be older than steam account. I honestly can’t remember.
Edit2: Yep, wow account is a 4 years older than my steam. Turns out I lost my first steam account that did not really have any games on it and instead of recovering it I just registered a new one. Doing this research of my own history was a questionable use of my evening but apparently necessary to get it out of my head.
I have an email address and shell account on a SCO UNIX system that I’ve had since 1994.
Words
Translation
Derp derp a durr derpa 1994
(thirty years ago)
Probably my 2004 Gmail account, but that’s pushing the definition of “still use somewhat frequently”. I do still have my email forwarded to my current address, but most senders have been updated with my current address.
I lost control of my Hotmail, AIM, ICQ accounts years ago.
I still have my ICQ. That’s one number burned into my brain.
I think my AIM account is still technically active even though they shut it down. Don’t know what they did with all the accounts.
Uh-oh! Mine was long forgotten.
Didn’t ICQ recently shut the service down? Thought I saw a headline along those lines recently.
Did they? I only log in like every six months or so. :(
Edit: yep. June 24, 2024. RIP 8833052
Oh… RIP 170538332 (I forgot the password for my first one and had to create a second one, and for some reason that’s the number that stuck with me)
Strangely, the oldest thing I have left is a web hosting account by Strato that I opened around 1999. My dad still uses an e-mail adress he got with his first T-Online account when the internet became available for normal households in Germany in the mid-90s.
My Hotmail account, which I’ve had since high school. Oldest email in there is from 2002, but I think I opened it up in 2000.
I still use a Yahoo account I created back in 95 (I think, it might be a little later).
My fark account is old enough to drive in the US. I don’t think I really use much of anything that old anymore.
I had facebook from the time when it still required a .edu email, though I quit that. I lost access to my hotmail account years ago after dropping it in favor of gmail. I had IRC accounts going back into the '90s, but I almost never use IRC anymore (and certainly not on those same networks (assuming they even still exist)).
You’re like the one guy I know that actually made an account on Fark
Usenet account from 1987. And no, I’m not going to post what it is.
What’s “on” there? What can it be compared to at this time?
Usenet was the golden age of Reddit for its time. Before the binary newsgroups drowned everything out and web 1.0 captured everyone’s attention.
In a way, it was a lot like Lemmy. Federated servers all inter-exchanged posts to a giant, global message board of newsgroups (roughly analogous to a subreddit or Lemmy community). Anyone could create a newsgroup and there were a lot of them.
When it was good, it fostered the same kind of genuine conversation that Reddit and Lemmy do when they’re at their best. It was full of memes, too, although that word didn’t exist then.
My hotmail account.
Signed up for it in the closed beta way before Microsoft bought it, was fucking pissed when they did.
It’s my 2fa for most of my games and the emergency email for my other emails.
DNS reseller account I made 15 years ago. Transferred it to my corp a few years ago and still buy all my domains there.
Possibly my Hotmail, although I’m not 100% sure when I opened it, and I converted it to an Outlook email when that became an option.
Most of the sites I used to use have shut down or migrated to new systems, so my oldest account is most likely my ModTheSims account opened in 2008. I do still use it whenever I’m in the mood for some Sims 2 retail therapy.
Facebook, 2004. Gmail, 2005. Still use both of those accounts.
I made my steam account in 2003 and my hotmail address is even older. Likely 2002. Its almost time for my 15 year pin in CS.
My original Gmail account. I’ve had it since Gmail was in closed beta.
My Steam account is older though. Fucking thing is old enough to drink now (2003; from when I first had to use it for Counter-Strike when they took down the WON servers).
Any other 21 year old Steam accounts wanna play some Ragdoll Kung-Fu?
Damn, I have almost the exact same answer. Switched to Steam once WON got taken down (held out as long as I could), and had a friend send me a Gmail invite a few months later.
Only differences are that I mostly used mine for TFC, and my account won’t technically hit drinking age until early next month.
I kinda wish I could say I had like a bottle of liquor I’ve been saving for the occasion, but the idea of a “21-year-old Steam account” genuinely never occurred to me until one day I woke up and realized it was about to turn 18. Made me realize how fast shit moves, and this is just driving the point home…
