NIN Internet Message Boards in the mid 1990s. Where you there? I was!

[atomobile]

Hello fellow NIN fans. My name is Louis from California and I have been chatting on NIN chat rooms since the mid 1990s. Back in the day, I had AOL and we had a small (compared to now) NIN chat room. I made friends, like my friend Mike from New Jersey who I lost touch with 20 years ago. Where are you? Anyways, did anyone here belong to those groups? That was the only source to finding out what Trent was working on outside of NIN (production work, remixes, etc). Things have sure changed in 25 years! I remember calling fellow internet NIN fans on the phone to chat about NIN and worrying about long-distance charges.

[TheBang]

Are we only talking AOL here? I vaguely remember visiting a nin chat room on AOL in 94/95. I think I felt it was probably banal and pretty useless, because I did not visit regularly, although I was participating in other AOL chat rooms. There was also a lame NIN message board on AOL, which I was moderated on after calling someone a scheissekopf.

I remember the best discussions around then being on alt.music.nin, and #nin on IRC (forget which network) to a lesser extent.

[Leviathant]

I started "The Ninternet Chatroom" on the BeSeen chat platform in 1995 or 1996, and campaigned to get fan sites to link to it, rather than each having their own chatroom. I was on alt.music.nin (and had the tshirt, and the bumper sticker), and of course, DALnet #nin99, but never really jibed with the first #nin IRC room that was popular at the time. Probably had something to do with me being 15, and that crew mostly being college age, and way, way more cynical than me. I might have jumped into the AOL chatrooms as well, briefly, but don't remember much about them.

As for Mike from New Jersey, it's not ringing any bells for me.

[M1ke]

I used to read the newsgroups back then, but I didn't post on them.

The only ones I've ever posted on are this one, and the old nin.com forums, back when they existed.

And I've never been to New Jersey, so I'm not the person you're talking about either.

[Erneuert]

I became a fan around 2003, right as the whole nin.com weird box crap started to come to an end, I miss that aesthetic. Hell, I miss the WT typewriter aesthetic. Little hints and clues are what make us.

[Failure]

I used to post in various NIN threads on Prodigy back in like 1995/1996. The whole system was antiquated….you would have to search for a topic and things were constantly changing. Moderators would kill entire threads when people got contentious and everything would sort of start over. OG internet trolls were something to behold in those wild wild west days. I can’t say I recall what I posted under (and I certainly don’t remember any of the prominent posters’ names). I do recall being way younger than most folks.

I joined ETS in 2004….prior to that there was a pretty barebones forum called “NowImNothing” that ran from maybe 2002-2006. Was lame though; maybe 10 regular posters.

[Jon]

What was the Canadian NIN message board that existed around the Fragile-era?

[Failure]

Pretty sure that was NowImNothing. I remember there was a planned meetup at the Air Canada Center (2005), and then the site was dead a couple months afterwards. Not sure if they had been around since The Fragile years though. I do recall exchanging PM’s with a couple individuals, and they were mostly Ontario based.

[Toadflax]

I used to post in various NIN threads on Prodigy back in like 1995/1996.

I remember the NIN Prodigy board being my first experience with online forums. I remember someone posted as Media Maven, and that's about all I remember.

Oh! I also remember being on there with people trying to decipher the lyrics to The Perfect Drug in 1997 and that we stupidly thought the lyric was, "the yellow goes straight through my heart."

[TheBang]

I joined ETS in 2004….prior to that there was a pretty barebones forum called “NowImNothing” that ran from maybe 2002-2006. Was lame though; maybe 10 regular posters.

This one? Doesn't look like it was very active.

The owner tried to monetize it by charging $3/month at one point and then trying to sell the whole site.

[TheBang]

The ruins of the NINternet:
https://www.pondbrain.com/thf/pgs/links.html
https://www.csh.rit.edu/~jerry/old/nin_ri/links.html

It's a shame that fan sites aren't really a thing anymore.

It's amazing though that Jason Patterson has somehow kept his site encased in amber for 26 years. If I went through all my old bookmarks from that era, I'm sure not a single one would work except that one.

[versusreality]

In the early 2000's, I used to post on the forum Perfect Isolation. It was a cool place, was in touch with many of the posters there for a while, including some phone calls and even met up one at a Ministry show in 03. Can't believe that was 20 or so years ago now. I was just a teen.

[ninhead]

Miss you, love you, my SLS peeps.

[Pyract]

Ah the feels from this thread...

A few years back I put some of my favorite NINternet sites into picture frames:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BeV8fD5FtwJ/

A post shared by on Jan 01, 2017 at 12:00pm PDT

(I don't know how to embed instagram posts...)

[alfonso99]

Seems like salvation and nineinchnails.net= Pure gold

[amplific]

Jesus Pyract, I'm so envious and jealous of that for some reason. Way more than folks show poster collections.

[WorzelG]

I remember seeing the post about the Prodigy boards some way back and, being British and having no clue what they were I actually thought it was a forum for the band, The Prodigy. Didn’t help that one of the responders was called Keith