Posted on 06/10/2010 8:38:54 AM PDT by Scythian
Scythian - Since Dec 29, 1998
I've given my opus a few times but always came a crawlin' back. I figure if they go by "join date" we old timers will go first ...
So any active Freepers out there have joined dates more ancient than mine?
So many!
In 1 day?
We could also do old time memories:
Don Morgan’s Ash Alerts
Eschoir
Don Morgans cadre group self destructing (I called it the Night of the Long Knives)
DITHF (a recent thread discussed this at length)
Alamo Girl’s archives and the effort to get a printed copy to everyone in Congress.
MrConfetti Man’s picketing, running a laptop from Congress with a live Bob Barr update. (a wonderful Freeper in the arms of the Lord)
The WaPo Lawsuit and all the heartache involved for Jim and Clarity in the aftermath.
The ins and outs of A+Bert, OWK, Storm Orphan, and others from that era.
Arator’s self destruction when the Brigadeers efforts went to nothing for Pat.
All the early Anti-Freeper paranoia.
I did the same thing. Rush was talking about the FReepers at Free Republic going nuts about the recount, so I found this place. It took a while for me to sign up.
Arrowhead1952
Since Jul 23, 2003
Seems to me the demise was drinking, drugs, age, or all three, in combination.
wasn’t there another fraudulent poster who claimed to be in Poland, posting in broken english, and claimed all these tragedies like car accidents killing family members etc. i don’t recall the name or how he was unmasked, but i have some recollection of the saga.
11-28-97, sign up number 51.
I’m sure that’s going to burn a few people here.
joined in 2000, under a different name. jus prior to the election.
All your base are belong to us
LOL, glad to say I don’t know who holds that record.
AFreeBird
Jan. 10th, 2000
But I first signed on under a different SN around Jan. 3rd, 1999
Hi Bob, good to see you again.
Sorry, I didn’t join until 6 years and 7 days ago.
3 Jun 2004.
Ain’t left yet!
U 2
Oh ya, Alimo Girl, man those names makes me feel old ...
Drudge broke the Lewinsky case in 2008?
March 15, 1998. Hard to believe it’s been 12 years!
I’m sure that’s going to burn a few people here.
I'm the reason you had to put the "J" on your name. I got up early that day and got in at number 43. :=)
JHL Jun 29, 1999
In those days you had several places to go ~ one of them was AOL, so we signed up and discovered they had some discussion boards. My wife joined up as one of the first members of the one that became known as "the pod".
I found Doonesbury ~ which was one of the first open sites on the internet. You didn't have to go through a service like AOL or Compuserv to get to it, and you didn't need to try to figure out the various "net" text boards left over from before the internet started oozing into existence.
It was 1996 and we were having our Fall Marketing meeting at the USPS training center up in Potomac MD. I recall I got a nice "bonus" (ha! a bonus so nigglingly cheap that you private sector people would call it a "tip"). I went onto my AOL site (through Erols) and found a reference to FreeRepublic on Compuserv. They provided the "numbers" for the URL (we didn't all have "names" for our websites in those days. There was some sort of portal and I tried linking. By December of 1996 with the assistance of my eldest son we achieved satori with a crossover to the earlier FreeRepublic site through Erols (he worked at Erols in fact, and this wasn't a trivial matter ~ more a work of genius at that time).
Anyway, I got a name at FR, not an ID# (which makes me think we were one of the earliest users at the open site), and by some time in 1997, when Matt Drudge went on the net with his Drudgereport I think we went through the first major transformation and were on again/off again as a website being referenced through Drudgereport. That continued to early 1998.
People were all the time bemoaning the fact that Drudge kept dropping our FR name. I think Jim was overwhelmed with the incredible number of signups so we weren't suffering for readers or participants.
Then they had everybody re signup!
That's where my 1998 signup info comes from.
In 1997 I LOST my URL to link to FreeRepublic for a couple of months. I panicked!
I vowed that "I will never be delinked again" ~ and stored it all over the place ~ and then next thing you know all the internet search sites started carrying everybody's everything so you couldn't possibly lose your link.
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