Dan+Harmon

Growing up was a blast I had four brothers and we lived in two neighborhoods. I was born and started life in South Philadelphia, living in the city was awesome me my brothers and cousins would run around playing and hanging out. We were out from sun up till the when the street lights came on. When i was about 11 we moved to Downingtown Pa, about a half hour outside the city. At first i hated it but soon learned that the woods just offered more room to get into trouble. We were normal kids we LOVED video games and TV, and would watch or play at any chance we could get. Unfortunately our parents were not about to let us sit around inside for hours on nice days. While video games were probally the first bit of media I remember the one that had the most impact on my life was the internet. I remember very distinctly the first time i ever encountered the Internet. I was in elementary school at the time and the librarian was trying to explain comp-u-serve to a group of probably fifteen twelve year olds. The purpose was to show use that we could take a virtual tour of the San Diego zoo. All this "tour" amounted to was a very simple website with very pixelated pictures, we couldnt tell if the animal was a lion or a rhino. The page load time was amazingly long and the content was lacking, but I remember thinking it was the coolest thing I ha ever seen. A few years passed and the Internet grew faster than Jacks magic Beanstalk, AOL and instant messenger was introduced and the internet changed for me forever. This was the first time I remember thinking that the world was completely completely connected. I spent hours after school in the comming years chatting with friends, chatting with strangers, playing games, making websites, pirating music and movies. My older brother is a tech. junkie and was imediatly obsessed with the computer tand the internet. Because mike was such a fan my family was one of the first of my friends to be connected to the internet. Everything was fine untill my mom decided she wanted to learn how to surf the net, she made herself an AOL profile/ email and started exploring the web. My mom received a spam letter one day in her inbox and decided to open it, inside was an ad for a porn site which caused my mom to completely LOSE IT! My mom blew her top and actuallly tried to pull the phone line out of the wall, my mom is the most calm lady in the world this was the first/last time i have ever seen my mom react like that. I guess she was having a “moral panic //(Livingstone, 2002)//.” After that day it took me and my older brother about a month to convince my mom that the internet wasnt just a porn filled zoo. We even taught her how to use the parental settings so that she would feel more comfortable.