USA 1990
CompuServe wasn’t my first online experience. I spent a lot of time dialing in to local BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems), playing games, downloading software, and very, very occasionally, talking to people.
The thing with CS was that —while it was ridiculously expensive— there were tools available that allowed you to jump online, grab the stuff you wanted, and jump back off. And at a scale of hundreds of thousands of users, there was far more content to explore.
I can’t remember the name of the client app I used for forum discussions and GIF downloads, but I used CIM for forum discovery and live chat:
And after doing a quick Google search, I was suddenly reminded that CompuServe Magazine was a thing that existed. It was a weird time, man… imagne Tumblr mailing out a 75 page, paper magazine giving people ideas for how to find Supernatural fanfic.
CompuServe Magazine February 1992 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive