[raydev]

I was only aware of a few households that owned a computer in the late 90s/early 00s. And only one had reliable dialup.

My closest friend got DSL in 2000-ish. But again, it was because his dad worked from home occasionally. No one else in my large extended family or friendgroup was online in any significant way.

Among my peers at school, I think most of them had heard of AIM by that point, but most didn't have screennames.

Personally, we couldn't afford a PC at that time.

[detaro]

Ok, fair point, 2001 is early. But you only need to give it a few years for that to change, and didn't need some fundamental new thing from there, it "just" became more widely accessible.