Even though we love to place importance on numbers (and for good reason in some cases), I never really paid much attention to the whole thing... "you should act your age" always came across as a rather offensive statement to me, and one that seemed to want me to follow some sort of magical criteria without ever telling me what that was. I also found it to be limiting by design, mostly because it worked both ways.
I had tremendous arguments with my parents because I used to come home from school being so utterly obliterated by the workload (and the demands of my aching, ever-changing body) as to collapse on bed and refuse to move for a few hours, serving them the perfect excuse to accuse me of "acting like an old man". Then, they would pull a complete 360 and demanded that I "stopped acting like a child" whenever I sat in front of the TV watching (or playing) something that got me bright-eyed and excited or played with my little brother. There was no pleasing those number-loving freaks!
However... I had no choice but to agree with them when they told me that my fourteenth birthday was going to be the first moment of actual change in my life, and it was so daunting as to force me to accept that as a heavy truth. Oh! It would have been so much easier to roll with if it wasn't for the fact that it came with a few curveballs ready to be thrown, including pulling me right on top of the roller coaster just as it was about to head for a bone-chilling dive, a movement that seemed endless and that occurred with terrifying speed. Even though I didn't study in the American system (and therefore there was no such thing as "Middle School" for me), I experienced the same thing that many complain about when they reach the age one-four, the thing that makes so many young adult novels choose this period as their setting: I hopelessly watched as the thirteen years I had already spent climbing the mountain were turned into a downward spiral that deposited me right back at the foot of the food chain: me and my classmates were no longer the oldest kids in the building, but the youngest. That messed with a lot of us in ways that are actually a bit tough to describe, even though some actually thrived in this newly-found "second childhood", most of us just felt embarrassed by the whole thing. We were these juggernauts that suddenly looked like ants amidst giants, the ones people pointly ignored in hallways and that were only acknowledged for ridicule. It wasn't particularly pleasant.
Turns out I sucked at "social chess" behind a screen, too!
And it got worse once our own inner clocks got wound up -- I don't think I will ever be able to forget the moment I actually looked at my fellow freshmen, life-long friends on the opposite gender and realized that they were no longer my "long-haired, squeaky-sounding, giggling companions", but actually really attractive people that I wanted to be with. That turned everything into an extremely awkward attrition war that ended friendships to preserve memories... and it happened across the board, the point no-one hung out with anyone anymore until we were actually past that embarrassing phase, something that wouldn't happen in full for a couple of years.
Because of that, the only real thing I could personally do was turn to some sort of isolatism... and this was facilitated by the fact that my generation was about the first one to experience its growing pains online.
Whether you went to an Internet Cafe (the de-facto hanging out space for a lot of us) or were lucky enough to have a home internet connection, you spent a lot of time online, lurking and participating in places like MindViz just to get a taste of that interaction that really should have taken place offline... Why? Well, mostly because it was far easier to cheat on homework now that sites like "El Rincon Del Vago" and "Monografias" existed (and that caused a lot of arguments with teachers because we didn't delete those sites' printed watermarks before turning assignments in) and the advent of Wikipedia. But also because MSN Messenger and Fotolog accounts were the common currency we used at the time, and it was far easier to talk amongst ourselves through our keyboards rather than by using our incredibly changing voices, which caused a lot of embarrassment (mine peaked like crazy, and eventually made me want to shut up entirely unless addressed directly by an authority figure). This was also easier to do because we had, like, zero ethics and morality when it came to sharing not only our own, but also everyone else's accounts... if you were interested in someone from your class and had a good friend already talking to that person, you could just straight up ask them to share that person's e-mail our "Flog" and get it... which led to an astonishingly complex game of cat-and-mouse, with people changing their accounts once they realized that they were being handed out like candy, and others still getting their hands on those new ones due to their relentless chasing of teenage love. It was... quite the spectacle, and a staple of those years.
Basically what "Te Cuento" looked like... Innocent, isn't it?
It got so bad that some of the kindest and gentler classmates I had at the time actually drew targets on their foreheads by complaining to the school's administration about this site and the effect it was having on our already weakened and divided atmosphere. The school could do nothing about it, of course, but still tried to limit the damage by blocking access to it throughout all computers on its network, which annoyed quite a few people. We didn't have high-speed internet in class or anything (and its usage was heavily monitored), but some people really did make a point out of spreading those rumors within school itself, and so they didn't take kindly to their fun being stopped. And even though I really don't buy this, it was said that the decision to end access to that site (or something posted on it) had led to a massive brawl that saw several students in other classes either getting suspended or leaving on their own.
Like most things, however, the site was eventually abandoned. Its most active users had either left in disgust or graduated, rendering continuous membership undesirable for several reasons. I seem to recall something about people really putting on their Sherlock Holmes caps during the end of the page's popularity and trying to identify the writing style of some of the most vocal trolls in there, but nothing really came out of it. We have come a long way when it came to getting to people behind the screens (not sure that's a good thing, though). There was also an incident regarding students from a nearby all-girls school that really forced parents to intervene, but that was also kept under wraps. Whatever the case, that rather traumatic era of backstabbing and cyber harassment (all-too-often bleeding into the real world) was largely over, but its consequences and lessons were not, which led to a sort of online secrecy and the almost need to avoid people you knew IRL online. Silly as it sounds, paranoia had taken over and many of us just didn't feel comfortable talking with people who could theoretically keep a note of everything you said just to start another fire.
There were so many games I wish I would have tried. This looks sick, man!
Which led to...
Yahoo! Games was the kind of thing that would forever perplex me. Its existence was almost an affront in some ways, and that only made using it all the more enticing.
I don't know if this is still the case (and would be shocked if it was) but there was a sort of "unwritten rule" amongst early internet users of my age: you just didn't make a Yahoo! e-mail account. This was largely because Yahoo!'s main page was so utterly cluttered with shit as to make loading it with a 56K modem utter hell, and that was compounded by the fact that no-one really used their messenger app to communicate -- most people had a Hotmail account and that's what they shared with others. As far as we were concerned, there was no actual reason to go through the trouble of getting an account on that service. The bad simply outweighed the good when we were being billed by the hour (and through the nose) when using our dial-up internet.
Home. Sweet, Macromedia home.
And yet, Yahoo! Games looked like everything we had ever wanted when it came to online fun, an experience soured by that aforementioned message board: it was sort of anonymous but not consequence-free, there were tons of things to do, and it was always (ALWAYS) active. It was easy to jump in during those freezing weekend nights that made wandering the streets with my GF into a no-go and just chat the night away, money burnt be damned (but, to be fair, it was cheaper past midnight, so it largely worked out). I soon became a regular at the "Domingo Lluvioso" domino board and at the pool tables, where I engaged with a few regulars (and many randoms) on disastrous, CAPS-LOOK-fueled, grammar-and-spelling-murdering chats about everything and nothing at the same time, oftentimes engaging people just to see what would trigger the utterly crappy profanity filter (it was always fun when it failed to activate and you had to rush-block someone before they retaliated XD). Laura and I spent countless hours teaming up on Internet Cafes or on our own homes, hacking away at the keyboards and trolling the hell out of the main chat, all whilst playing some pretty intense games on the side. We were actually really interested on the product in front of us and were impressed by how well it worked: it was crude, but not in a cheap way. For a couple of dummies so used to Flash games being as playable as Microsoft Excel, this really looked like the next big step, and we were drawn into the madness of late-night, caffeine-infused chats like tomorrow was a non-issue.
Basically my every weekend for a long while.
I particularly rememeber a couple of chats with a guy from Chile who seemed to be always active and always ready to engage both Laura and I in conversation. He was older than us and looked as green and harmless as they came, often awkwardly joking and then apologizing right after. He was really sweet, and we took a liking to him, even though he could get a bit... clingy, particularly to Laura. We enjoyed playing him, but he seemed to be in it mostly for the thrill of the chat.
I also remember a group of late twenty-somethings that seemed to be online every weekend night and that looked like royalty for us (which is funny, because the fact that they spent their damn Saturdays on the pool game probably meant that they weren't nearly as hot and socially active as they claimed to be) that were really into certain band and openly assaulted anyone who dared defy their alleged greatness. Both Laura and I loved that band, but often felt like baiting them into going on tirades about them once we put blatantly incorrect, inflammatory statements about that group and their music. I guess that's what my parents really meant when they warned about "acting our" age, but I don't know... being stupid, defiant and trollish seemed to be a staple of teenhood.
Things took a turn for the dark once Laura and I were idling at my home PC and, all of the sudden, an MSN Messenger chat opened up... it was one of those guys from the chat, and he was out for blood. We never knew how he even managed to get her Hotmail account (as it was listed nowhere on her profile), but that honestly scared us shitless. A swift block and a rapid log-off from the pool lobby seemed to defuse the situation, but it was suddenly not as fun anymore.
Aw, man! I missed a lot of fun things! Had no idea this was a thing.
So, we did the only thing we could: we made new accounts and went right back, only pretending to be different people for as long as our teen-wired brains would allow (so all of sixty minutes) before going at it again. The MSN Messenger scare never repeating itself, but left as a permanent reminder of when to shut the hell up. Looking back, though, it was probably the first warning of the dangers of the online world for both of us, and also the closest we had ever come to being properly doxxed (a term that largely didn't exist back then).
I don't really remember how long we kept at it, but the novelty seemed to have taken a long while to wear off for us -- as evidenced by the fact that we were still playing on those servers near the end of our relationship. We had grown bored with the whole thing, though, and mostly just showed up when the weather (and our mutual school demands) had grown too heavy to prevent us from doing anything else. And once I got my PlayStation 1 and could actually afford to play against her without having to huddle over a keyboard? It was farewell to the virtual tables and massive chats... there was simply no comparison, specially now that our love for coffee had turned into a love for, eh, SPIKED coffee, which made ragdolling poor Tony Hawk into an art form.
The chat was a beautifully intense thing... You think these forums are messy? Try multiplying them by a thousand and making them real-time!
We still left the computer and chat humming in the background (because my sister had lobbied hard for grandpa to pay for Speedy's "ADSL" connection, so we could actually afford to do so without losing the farm in the process), and we were genuinely happy whenever we caught a DM or were acknowledged in the chat, but our time there was largely over. We were just doing other things now, including shooting the absolutely hell out of each other on Medal Of Honor: Underground and watching Big Brother without actually watching it, roaming like zombies that were both high on caffeine and about to crash on Whiskey. It was stupid, dangerous... and fun.
I like to think that we had finally realized that the dangling carrot was leading us down a cliff, but the reality was somewhat simpler: we just didn't get the same kick out of engaging strangers on bare-knuckled fights to the death over which band rocked the hardest or why everyone should follow a certain trend whilst avoiding others (but I'm proud of ourselves for never getting political on those spaces, because that would have been akin to taking a flamethrower to a TNT factory and pretending to be helpful).
Nothing to add... I'm just amazed that Backgammon was even a thing on this setting.
I think the moment that defined the whole situation perfectly was when I was fresh out of another night of doing absolutely nothing with her and tried to log into my account to check on the chat, only to find out that I had completely forgotten my password. I remember texting her and asking her if she knew what it was, just for her to tell me to try the recovery process instead, which I did... resulting on me forgetting the security question, too. Yeah, that was the incident that made me start saving all my remaining passwords on a leather-bound book that my grandpa had given me as a gift.
It was kind of an anti-climatic ending to a journey that had seen us through the incredibly trying times of adolescence, and that had thrown us from one extreme to the other, often without rhyme nor reason. But in a very real sense, it was also the perfect finale for the whole ordeal: this was about the only time in our lives that we weren't actively fighting a dragon, but were actually riding it whenever it took us. And because we were along for the ride, we explored and discovered a lot of things that we likely wouldn't have find out about otherwise.
What a messy, confusing, frightening, stupid... and glorious time that was.
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