Internet History Archive (2016-06-07)

CD5K > FU > DWB > net

Let's take a trip down to how I remember things happening.

"As for the "glory days" of the Internet, you're living in them.
Things are actually pretty good right now.
After all, I'm still around."
- maddox

1999-2004: The Humble Beginning

I first got online around 1999 or so with the help of NetZero's ad-supported free dial-up service, and used it to frequent Flash-oriented crude humor sites such as Goat's Head, StickDeath, I-Mockery, and Newgrounds.

During 2002, I was in 6th grade and decided to start making my own content, despite not having anything of value to say. I started a GeoCities homepage named WhiteBoard Online (WBO), at a URL based on my student ID number, which hosted various unrelated scribblings and 1 FPS stick figure animations.

I also had a GameCube at the time, as well as its port of Sonic Adventure 2, which introduced me to the Sonic universe. I started role-playing as a Chao with a few users on SEGA's anonymous forums relating to the game, and we spun off into an AIM group in March 2003. I created a second Geocities account to host character bios, recaps, and chat logs.

During this time, I started my first two domain names. The first was a single-page affair hosting a featured animation, and the second was an improved version of the role-play group's GeoCities archive. I also had websites about emulation, Transformers action figures, Starcraft, and an (admittedly shallow) original setting known as Evil Village: Empire of Evil. The role-play group kept going until I lost contact with the only other remaining member in December 2004.

2005-2009: Flash for Trolls

A New Frontier

In 2005, I started experimenting with more in-depth animation, with intentions of joining the Clock Crew as MMS Clock. I opened Newgrounds and SheezyArt profiles and began posting to them. I later met MolotovGlock, came to understand the Glock Group's mentality of producing low-effort movies, and even made some of my own as SaltyJelloGlock from January 2006 onward.

Prior to being accepted into the Glock Group, though, I had a forum of my own known as the Sphere Squadron. It survived for about six months despite having just six active members and only making an intro Flash and one collaboration. But, it was a fun hangout before I moved on to better things.

On 2006-02-09, RoflMuffinGlock noticed that he had been given a cameo in one of my Molotov Time Trial parts, and let me into the group despite my lack of skill. I am grateful for that, as being in the group gave me reason and opportunity to improve. In tribute to his generosity, I created the character LollerCupcake on 2006-05-10.

The GG forum was a fun place to come home and post to, at least until e-drama started killing it, which led to the website being taken offline by its administrators in August 2006. I started my third domain, The Brain Leech Archive, in November 2006. The name was based on a continuing inside joke and story between my acquaintances and I in geometry class. It hosted some games and stories I was working on at the time, as well as some of my aunt's poems and tales. I abandoned it three and a half months later in favor of working on Socom-related activities.

Socom Squad Sucks

After the Glock Group died, I was contacted in December 2006 by a few others who wanted to revive it. We later decided it would be better if we formed an original group, and went through a few names before deciding to be the Socom Squad (based on the H&K Mk23 USSOCOM pistol). It started out very simply, with the original five members (Pineapple, Raspberry, Gold, Mad Hatter, and myself) having a blast on the forums but not making much Flash.

I started my fourth domain, LollerCupcake Industries, on 2007-02-09, putting various things on it such as funny MSN conversations, some of my older work, and an FLA library for the Socom Squad. Between February and August 2007, the SS changed forums seven times because administrator accounts kept getting hacked. The quality of the webhost for LollerCupcake Industries had also gradually deteriorated, so I felt the time was right for change.

On 2007-07-04, I registered a Socom Squad domain name, as well as Impure Creation for my personal stuff. However, we didn't start using the site until August, which is when the group made its (then-)final forum change. In a similar vein, Impure Creation had nothing on it for a year because I couldn't create a layout I liked well enough. No, really. See for yourself.

If you're interested in the full history and lore of the Socom Squad, I've posted it to its own seperate page. The quick version is that everything ended on 2009-01-27, when Pineapple pissed me off by deleting all the posts on our current forum, and I grew tired of managing a group he seemed intent on destroying. The decision was made to let the domain expire in July, and a temporary forum was set up where I lashed out at everyone for five lethargic and unproductive months.

2010-2014: Return to Shadows

After the Socom Squad collapsed, I no longer had a reason to keep frequenting Newgrounds, so I instead turned to lurking on the MSPA forums and TGchan. Those two sites, with their vast amounts of original fiction, were huge sources of inspiration for me in the development of CDFU. I often refer to this (post-SS, pre-CD5K) period as "the long silence", as I pretty much dropped all forms of online communication during the Ultraverse's development.

I started working on the Ultraverse in January 2010 as a project to merge all of my fiction into the same universe. How it became what it is now has already been covered in a dedicated article. At the start of 2012, I lost interest in all other communities as Reddit and YouTube became my primary sources of online entertainment. That remains the case to this day, and now we're here on CD5K, which I've been working on since April to August 2013 (depending on which files you look at).

2015-2016: Hello, hello?

Okay, so I was poised to wrap this up and get it online, right? And then Five Nights at Freddy's was released. I feel deeply into the theories and lore of that series. Before I could even register what the hap was fuckening, I had spent three months working on some fan-characters, inspired by following the Tumblr RP community around. I'd put too much creative energy into this to simply discard it, so shortly after the second game got released, I hatched myself a blog to roleplay as these characters.

Because I'm a collosal dumbass with extremely poor time management, I've basically been on there full time since March 2015, instead of finishing this up. But, perhaps that was for the better. Had I not waited, I may have never changed the name back to Cybernetic Demise 5000, which is so much better than 88 Megabyte Network.

Hey, speaking of older websites, here's all of mine that I've saved:

Here's to another decade of excellence!