Chixe

The internet.

@ozone42,

I remember being maybe thirteen or fourteen when my parents got a Compuserve account. They set up an account for me because the service offered some "teen" hangout with a message board and chat room. Then somewhere down the line America Online came around, and that changed the whole picture. But I don't remember being into the Internet at age fourteen. It was just something cool my parents had that I liked to use.

digg.com I was there during version 1.0, it was stupendous. the Game No One Lives Forever before version 2.

@michael,

I'm not familiar with digg.com-- what is the site all about? But with the site, what about it makes it so good that it became popular? That's what I wonder sometimes. The things we really enjoy why do they attract a mass media of people to even be considered popular, like Facebook.

cristinam: digg is a tech news site wherein which users can submit stories and users can vote so that they may reach the homepage. in other words any news story has the potential to be publicized.

in the old days digg had a lot more obscure awesome stuff, and I know I'm going to sound like a prick for saying this but the grammar was better, and now there's a lot of the same when it comes to stories

i still use it to passively bookmark things, the nytimes and most mainstream newspapers have digg buttons.

@michael,

For bookmarking sites, I used to use a site call Magnolia... but after awhile the site blended in with the other social bookmarking sites out there, like ht ever so popular "delicious" (and I don't even know where the periods go either) site. I think in order for a social bookmarking site to stand out, it can't be like the rest or else it blends in. Plus, with the more popular sites, around the blog world, everyone's got the same sites bookmarked so it's not like you're really discovering anything new.

iPods. I was the first person at my school to buy one (a second generation Mini) and within a week two other people had an iPod. :)

@winnopeg,

I owned the first iPod ever too. And then everyone had iPod's. Then of course like everything else, other upgraded models of the iPod were created and "the first ever iPod" was extinct.

RSS.

@leilathomas,

I've got RSS everything on my Safari bookmarks. The most important RSS feeds to me are the news and my "required reading" section that is filled with the feeds of the various blogs I read on a daily basis. I think RSS is great because if you're a frequent checker of a site, instead of visiting that site 24/7, you can subscribe to the feed and your browser or what not tells you when there's something new to see. It's a good thing.

Blogging. I was doing it before it became a household name.

I was also hating MySpace before it became cool to hate it.

Manga and anime

There are a few artists that I used to listen to before they became popular and were not played on radio stations. Few months after that I got sick of them because everyone started liking the songs and they started to be played everywhere and all the time.

Radio stations ruin songs by playing them too often.

Penguins. I've been fascinated by penguins way before the craze came with the assorted movies.

@a_romig: I knew I overlooked the most important thing. Penguins. But are they a big thing?

The internet for me. I also remember using MySpace when it first came out, yet not one person I know used it so my account was stagnant for a while. This was before it was a huge clusterfuck that it is now. Then it blew up.......and I still didn't use it.

Another thing was those Nike rubber wristbands. I used to wear those quite a bit in mant different colors before they got all huge and everyone started wearing them, and every company made some type of them for random causes (most popular was the Live Strong). Then the trend died, but I still wore them cause I liked them, not cause it was a trend, and I just recently stopped wearing them in exchange for a different type of bracelet.

With the recent media craze with the movies & marketing, they've become more popular and in the public's eye since a couple of years ago. Some people have asked me, "Oh, did you start collecting these when you saw the movie?" (referring to my collection at work) I always have to give them a "Pfft! Started collecting way before then." My personal obsession.

The Lord of the Rings series. Obviously, I need to qualify that somewhat.

Certainly, the books had had some fair amount of success long before the movies; but clearly, the series has become monumental with the release of the films. It's now possible, I think, to see Tolkien fans in two schools: old school and new school, the new schoolers being, of course, the ones who jumped on the Hobbit-Elves-and-Dragons-Oh-My! bandwagon after they saw the movies. Indeed, many of the "Tolkien fans" who became as such post-movies haven't even read the books. Bah! You're not a true Tolkien fan if you've not slogged through the mustering of all the armies in Return of the King.

I particularly enjoy things that are no longer popular, such as early 20th century art, early 20th century music, writing with a fountain pen and wet ink that needs time to dry, playing my violin, using photographic equipment that is manual and non-digital. I guess I was born in the wrong era. :-)

Harry Potter. I've a couple of friends who said the books were not cool ... and then the movie came out.

Dungeons & Dragons

They Might Be Giants

Okay, neither are popular yet...just you wait...

TMBG has been around for 20+ years now and has always floated below the radar, I think they must like it there.

@josh,

Never seen "Lord of The Rings" before. I don't think I'd be too into it. The fantasy kind of movies never really caught my interest, same goes for "The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe". Yeah, separate movies, but to me it's the same.

House music. :)

That is, popular state side, anyway. I was really getting into electronic music my freshman year of high school, which was 1992-1993. At first trance but quickly moved into house and breakbeat (which eventually became drum n bass). Then I come to LA for college and I find everyone's suddenly into trance, which IMHO was the "entry level" electronic genre of that day because it's all hyper (more upbeat and psychedelic than house) and the only way the kiddies knew how to appreciate it was with a tab of e. It was really annoying, actually. And so while I used to scope out tiny house parties in the midwest, here there were huge massives and it totally blew up. The crappy compilations sold at the music store and the only name people knew was Oakenfold.

It is eerie how similar we all are. I've never been into digg, but I like pretty much everything else mentioned in this thread.

b-more house. being from DC, thats mostly what we heard in clubs a weekend. now every electro artist and their mother is using the b-more style house beats.

digg, was on the site since the first day it was launched, been an uphill downhill experience since then.

also, ipod, still have series 1 ipod, that thing was massive.

@cristinam: Narnia / Lord of the Rings aren't the same at all; quite different stories, settings, etc. However, they were written by two really good friends. :)

It's also interesting (regardless of how off topic it may be) that the Narnia series is heavily laced with Christian spiritual themes, and indeed, is in many areas quite allegoric. On the other hand, Tolkien generally hated allegory, and was often put off when anyone tried to say that the War of the Ring was an allegory of the 1st / 2nd World Wars.

Anyway. :)

@Ozone42: What can we say, great minds think alike. /cliche...

@Ozone, all of your base is belong to us 9rulez. Clonez warz.

DDR, CD Buners (1x speed), anime, myspace (if you can even count a 6 digit account number is "early"), ruby on rails

DDR would be the big one I'd guess. I'd been running DDR sites and playing it for years when it finally came out in the US. I guess you could add Guitar Freaks to the list too, which is the precursor to Guitar Hero.

Breathing

Alex,

Breathing has been popular for millions of year as far as I can tell...

Ozone: No way, you're into that too? I totally thought Breathing was a niche thing...that's so crazy!

Once it gets popular I'll probably stop doing it, can't blend into the crowd....

Big earrings. Doorknocker earrings. Colorful earrings.

I've been wearing them since I was still in elementary school. No lie.

The movie, The Boondock Saints. Just by chance, though - I happened to blindly rent it when it was brand new (VHS, baby). And hip hop. haha

Blur, David Gray
and pink boxers-- they're cool, right?