[suddensleep]

This reminds me of my first Geocities website: a full repository of KoRn's lyrics to date.

It's not that this didn't exist elsewhere on the internet (indeed it did, as of course I used these other sites as source material), but nowhere seemed to have the exact red-text-on-black-background look I was going for at the time.

The most excruciating part of this memory is not that I worshipped a nu-metal band, but instead that I hadn't yet discovered the magic of copying and pasting text. That's right: everything, from the lyrics themselves to the HTML tags, were typed manually by yours truly into the raw HTML editor.

I shudder to think how quickly I'd be fired today if I hadn't learned how to properly use a modern keyboard.

[art0rz]

When I was ~12, the spacebar on the family computer broke. We didn't have a lot of money at the time and a new keyboard was a luxury we couldn't afford. The only way to enter a space was to paste it! So when booted into Windows, I'd find a space in a file name or a document, copy it and I'd paste it when it was needed (I just started learning how to code so I needed it often). Upshot of this was that nobody in my family wanted to bother with pasting a space every time, so I had a lot more time on the computer.

[mratzloff]

Imagines young suddensleep meticulously typing each lyric...

Boom na da mmm dum na ema

Da boom na da mmm dum na ema GO!

So... fight something on the... dum na ema

Fight... some things they fight

So... something on the ...dum na ema

Fight... some things they fight

Fight... something on the... dum na ema

No... some things they fight

Fight... something of the... dum na ema

Fight... some things they fight

Part of me...

Oh...

[Kuiper]

I actually had a similar experience as a kid reading fan fiction for the Legend of Zelda games. I wanted to share the fan fiction I was reading with friends at school, but my family's "internet computer" had no printer, and our "printer computer" (an old Laser 486) had no internet, so I had no way of printing the stories I found on the internet.

Had I understood the concept of saving web pages (or even copy and pasting text), I could have stored the stories I wanted to share as plaintext files, put them on a floppy disk, and then transferred them to the Laser 486 to print. The idea that the text could be transferred from one machine to the other didn't really register with me, so what I did instead was to read Zelda fanfic online, then rush upstairs to the other computer with enough of the story still fresh in my head and re-construct the stories as best I could from memory. Usually, I tried to imitate the style and structure of the original fanfiction, but sometimes I would inject my own personal style or intentionally change details in places where I felt like my own imagination could improve over what I recalled of the original story. The longer I did this, the more I found myself re-writing others' stories rather than aiming to simply reproduce them, sometimes to the point where my "imitation" could barely be distinguished as an attempt to copy.

I started writing fiction professionally in my 20's (which I'd consider to be a fairly young age), and I think a big part of what allowed me to go pro so young is that under the Malcolm Gladwell "10,000 hours of practice" model I ended up getting most of my practice in pretty early (at the time not even acting with the intention of practicing fiction writing), so perhaps my inability to copy and paste text was ultimately responsible for kicking off my career as a storyteller. In retrospect, re-writing fan fiction was the modern equivalent of apocrypha (non-canon stories) repeated and passed down through oral tradition.

[exolymph]

This is so endearing. I love your younger self's commitment to the cause of KoRn.

[milesvp]

I actually still force myself type out anything that's important enough for me to know it or understand it. Text, code, doesn't matter. Some things I'll even write by hand if I really think it's important enough for me to remember.

[magissima]

Personally I can't think of anything that warrants that treatment more than KoRn lyrics.

[degenerate]

A.D.I.D.A.S.

[pmarreck]

Don't hate yourself for liking nu-metal.

I used to be a hardcore industrial fan

[pfarnsworth]

I loved Limp Bizkit.

There, I said it. Now I'm too embarrassed to listen to them except in the privacy of my own car. "Like a CHAINSAW! Skin your ASS RAW!"

[pmarreck]

Dude, like what you like. Fuck the fallacious appeals to shame from others.

Circa 1988 I was sitting in the high school cafeteria listening to very early techno on my big fat Walkman knockoff and obnoxiously large headphones. Acquaintance rolls up to me and says "Lemme listen." I hand him the headphones. "This is good but I could, like, only listen to this in a club." My response? "Your loss."

Years later, I discover Deadmau5, and then the whole electronic music scene that I had been blissfully listening to for years without giving a fuck ex-fucking-splodes. I could not believe it.

Just like what you like and fuck haters.

[bdcravens]

Amen. Recently bought a car that came with XM Sirius, and I've rediscovered a lot of old hip hop from the late 80s and early 90s. Nothing like pulling up to an intersection blaring Jump Around or Fresh Prince (before he "became" Will Smith lol)