[MBTI General] Reminiscing on my strange childhood...can you guys relate?

[fecaleagle]

The other day I was reminiscing on my childhood (I'm 25 now) and one aspect that I found amusing in retrospect is how weird some aspects of it were and I'm wondering if any of you (most likely INTJs and INTPs) can relate to my experiences.

One thing I became obsessed with early were computers. They just made sense to me from the get go. We got our first computer in '96 when I was 9 years old. Within a few months I had become proficient with Windows 95 and the blazing-fast internet Within a year I had intuitively taught myself basic HTML/flash along with some Visual Basic programming and had a website with "appz" and hacks and what not haha; I think I had a movie and game review section as well, all for my probably non-existant fan base.

I even signed up for those “get paid to surf” websites where an ad banner sits on the bottom of your screen as for as long as your are active on the internet you were paid 50 cents an hour or something (which was actually worth something back then). Of course, I wrote a program that both hid the banner and tricked it into staying active all the time even when I wasn't on the computer. I ran multiple ones of these and made a ton of money...I sure would get pissed when our phone rang though! Sometime during all of this I was banned from AOL for figuring out a way to impersonate AOL employees in chatrooms. Of course I figured out some loop hole and proceeded to use multiple 1000 hour free trials repetitively for a couple of years, never having to pay for the internet (which I find weird since it was my parents who paid for it so why should a kid care about saving money on internet?) When those trial offers stopped, I hacked Netzero to run just like a regular ISP so I had more free internet for a pretty long time. By 8th grade I had an eBay account and was making some good money buying cheap things at the flea market and selling them for profit.

So thinking back, this seems like really strange behavior as a kid. But maybe some of you guys have a similar experience? Overall I feel like I was a pretty normal kid. I loved playing and watching sports (although I started gambling with my father and a friend on NFL and NBA games at age 11). But otherwise I went through a phase of pretending to be a spy, played with pogs/yoyos/Magic the Gathering along with performing magic tricks, playing tricks on my friends on AIM, video games and of course POWER RANGERS! I was so obsessed I even wrote a Power Rangers story, but I think this was like 3rd grade or something. I was so hyper that I hardly ever read or studied though, but managed to get alright grades. I got straight A's one time in 7th grade in exchange for a Nintendo 64 with CRUISIN USA from my parents which I was obsessed with.

I look forward to hearing from those who relate and hope you can share similar stories!

 

[Xyk]

Nope, I think you were just a freak of nature.

 

[guesswho]

Nope, I think you were just a freak of nature.

Yea me too. I pissed in the woods a lot.

 

[InTheFlesh]

Your life would make an interesting premise for a movie/book, though I can't say I relate. All the energy you put into the internet I put into reading and whatever my main interest at the time was, which seemed to shift every 6 months.

 

[NPcomplete]

Nope. I read a lot, day-dreamed, watched too many cartoons, annoyed my sister, invented games and came up with schemes to get rich so I could get my own spaceship.

 

[Rasofy]

By the time I was 12 I was kicking everybody's asses on Age of Empires 2, does that count?

 

[A window to the soul]

I didn't start programming until I was in college. As a kid, I spent most of my time outdoors.

 

[Tallulah]

Nope, but I think it's cool you were able to do all that. You were like the Doogie Howser of the internet.

 

[fecaleagle]

Nope. I read a lot, day-dreamed, watched too many cartoons, annoyed my sister, invented games and came up with schemes to get rich so I could get my own spaceship.

Haha apparently I was trying to get rich as well. I don't remember what for though. Probably video games. I also used to buy Warhead sour candies in bulk and sell them individually at school in 7th grade. Man, what ever happened to those things?

By the time I was 12 I was kicking everybody's asses on Age of Empires 2, does that count?

Sweet! I played Age of Empires 1 every now and then, but never got really into it.

I didn't start programming until I was in college. As a kid, I spent most of my time outdoors.

That's cool. I spent a ton of time outdoors as well. I was either on the computer or playing outside. I liked playing quarterback in football with my friends and loved coming up with crazy plays. Also I liked creating variety of capture the flag like games. I used to love being a leader as kid, now...not so much

Nope, but I think it's cool you were able to do all that. You were like the Doogie Howser of the internet.

Haha my family still thinks I'm really really into computers as a result of my childhood, no matter what I tell them.


Man it feels nice to get some feedback about my childhood because I've never told people that I know about it.

 

[Xyk]

A more serious answer: during my childhood, I collected Ty beanie babies. I had a complex governing system as well as an economic system that was based both on democracy and prowess in physical combat. They had Dragonball-esque powers, and at various points, stats in a homemade rpg type game (pen and paper, not digital). My ENFJ older brother did very much of this with me, and helped a whole lot in fleshing it all out. They often faced world-shattering crises, and lived in a second universe, (after one got trashed somehow. I played through it, but I don't remember now), called the Biverse. I built them structures and vehicles and weapons out of k'nex. All designed by me or my brother with no help from any corporate instructions.

 

[NPcomplete]

Haha apparently I was trying to get rich as well. I don't remember what for though. Probably video games. I also used to buy Warhead sour candies in bulk and sell them individually at school in 7th grade. Man, what ever happened to those things?

I know I wanted a spaceship at some point because I wanted to visit The Little Prince. Then there was the time I wanted to have lots of adventures a la Jules Verne and Tintin...

In any case, I don't think I've changed all that much.

 

[bionic]

Hahahaha... sounds like my childhood on the interwebs as well. I miss AOL. I used to think of the internet as a chessboard. Still is in some ways.

 

[Almost]

Hahahaha... sounds like my childhood on the interwebs as well. I miss AOL. I used to think of the internet as a chessboard. Still is in some ways.

It's not the same ='/

 

[Rasofy]

I remember back when I was about 8-9 years old, I used to be a freak at soccer cards gambling. I don't know the name in English for that game where the objective is turning the card using only the palm of the hand...
Luckily my school was big, otherwise it would have been hard to find people to play with me.
I remember having earned 5 complete sets of cards (about 60 cards each) that way hahaha
The cards were like this:

I'm not sure if Coca Cola had something like that in US back then(1997)

 

[fecaleagle]

A more serious answer: during my childhood, I collected Ty beanie babies. I had a complex governing system as well as an economic system that was based both on democracy and prowess in physical combat. They had Dragonball-esque powers, and at various points, stats in a homemade rpg type game (pen and paper, not digital). My ENFJ older brother did very much of this with me, and helped a whole lot in fleshing it all out. They often faced world-shattering crises, and lived in a second universe, (after one got trashed somehow. I played through it, but I don't remember now), called the Biverse. I built them structures and vehicles and weapons out of k'nex. All designed by me or my brother with no help from any corporate instructions.

Haha beanie babies, those were ridiculous. I collected some too, in hopes of them appreciating. It sounds like you had a cool system going with your brother.

I remember back when I was about 8-9 years old, I used to be a freak at soccer cards gambling. I don't know the name in English for that game where the objective is turning the card using only the palm of the hand...
Luckily my school was big, otherwise it would have been hard to find people to play with me.
I remember having earned 5 complete sets of cards (about 60 cards each) that way hahaha
The cards were like this:

I'm not sure if Coca Cola had something like that in US back then(1997)

Ah gambling as a child. I can definitely relate to that. I was really into soccer as well (AC Milan FTW) and had a small collection. Something about cards was definitely fascinating as a kid though...me and friends used to collect car cars and race them

 

[goats]

apart from selling things on ebay, OP you remind me quite a bit of myself as a kid...

 

[uncommonentity]

I spent my childhood on IRC comic chat trading pornography with grown men that I stored on floppy disks. I wasn't even jerking off to the stuff. I just liked to see how much porn I could collect. I guess that's where my archiving/library talent was founded. I used to spend hours searching for and downloading every single user-made comic chat character. I'd always be searching for how to play games and entertain myself. Shockwave was the bomb back in those days. Evil Dave, DC8P and early newgrounds and such. Whenever my friends were over we'd pose as a woman on yahoo chat and get horny old perverts to do ridiculous shit like lick their own elbows and punch themselves in the face because we thought of it as amusing. I soon got into downloading and archiving my favourite tv shows on a 56k connection. Waiting hours to download terrible quality captures in .rm format. Then came Napster & Kazaa. Comic chat was losing its edge and I found out I could not only download and listen to music on my computer, watch my favourite tv shows but also download unlimited pornography. This obviously took the edge off of the magic off of file transfers. I got into emulation, animation, video editing, graphic design, programming, music production and pretty much found out everything a human could possibly do on and with a computer. Not out of boredom but curiosity. It just kept snowballing from there. Going outside to play just didn't compare to the excitement and knowledge I could extract from a machine. Instead of hanging out with 3 friends in real life I could communicate with a thousand friends online. Friends kept inviting me to goof off outside but I was no longer interested in anything but riding the knowledge tube. I did the whole free internet thing aswell. In essence, I turned into the fucking internet. I consider it to be an open ended travel guide to life on earth. The internet is like a diary written by the entire world and to explore it is to learn. You yourself are only one person capable of learning a single quantity of lessons from your own life experience. Where as the internet is a connection to multiple. To me, it's the quickest way you can grow and expand your mind other than sitting in a library all of your life. What holds the internet in higher regard to me than reality is that more people open up behind a screen than they do face to face. It eliminates the time and trust you have to earn for someone to tell you what's really on their mind. I'd dig real life more if people would stop being so sugar coated in it.

 

[Octarine]

I remember I once had to pay about $1500 in US income tax (I'm not American) as I didn't send in the tax forms in time. That messed up my summer.
I never got into any sort of real trouble though... Being sent a threatening email to stop using the keyword 'ebay' from lawyers representing Ebay doesn't count.

 

[kissmyasthma]

My mom tells me I used to play a lot of educational computer games as a toddler and was really good at using our Mac for my own purposes, but I've never been a computer wiz or anything. I taught myself some HTML when I was 9 or 10, but not much else. i spent most of my childhood reading, watching movies and cartoons, reading, and reading some more.