How and when did you first stumble across the lamented ATS?

[Stealth Blimp]

This will be my last thread for a while. I don't want to abuse this privilege but I'd be fascinated to learn how others were first introduced to that great forum?

For myself it was in 2008 in a cyber café (remember those?) I didn't get an Internet connection in my residence until 2014. Before this I was living with an elderly female relative and had no personal computer. I had to rely on accessing the Internet from public libraries and cyber cafés. I was searching for information about UFOs when I was directed to ATS. I was immediately struck by the presentation of the forum and the green text (is my memory playing tricks?) and black background. I didn't actually become a member until 2013 preferring to just immerse myself in threads before this. I wasn't a prolific poster and made a few comments on a thread about George Adamski who has always interested me despite being an obvious fraud (or was he?). I stopped posting altogether for personal reasons in 2013 but continued to read the forum at regular intervals for many years afterward.

[Rigel4]

2003-2004 i think .. had a login but lost it.. 

I made  another account around 2010 i had good vibes there until the Trump monsters arrived

[Maxmars]

Please don't stop making threads...  

The community which inhabited AboveTopSecret was substantial and the threads and creations there are priceless tome at least.

When I found ATS I had already consigned myself to a reality where my questions and interests were always going to be "out of bounds" in many social media places...

ATS was a haven for me.... not just talking freely, but actual talking... not bot's offering me discounts on viagra, no streams of adolescent mischief posts, or entirely non-sequitur exchanges passing as dialogue...

It took me a while to see how that formed... How Simon Gray started the whole idea... and why it persisted... I think it 'could have' continued ... but what I think is of little consequence...

ATS will never again be exactly what ATS was - at least for me.  

Still ... maybe... That database can be restored for access... at least, I would like to think so.
It would be even better as a repository with a kick-ass front-end... but hey... that's the stuff of engineering wizards.

[Mantiss2021]

If I remember correctly, it was sometime in late 1990...maybe 1995?

Then again, it was so long ago I can't really say for sure!

[KrustyKrab]

It was around 2005 for me.  I found it doing some research on 9/11.

[Byrd]

1999, during the great Y2K scare.

I was working as computer support specialist (programming, recommending hardware and software, teaching) at a municipal government and dealing with a number of administrators with rather overblown ideas of the kinds of disasters that could happen (note:  I had been programming for more than 10 years at that time and knew that programmers were well aware of the issue and had been for some time and were generally writing code to take care of the issue.)

Reading the concerns of people at ATS gave me a chance to get ahead of the panic.  It was quite useful.

Later, I used it to verify a bit of individual research (linguistic changes in someone who was genuinely suicidal) and (with permission from ATS admins) mentioned it in a paper on how systems of justice evolve in online spaces (BBSs, Mushes, Mucks, etc, etc.)

[Stealth Blimp]

If I remember correctly, it was sometime in late 1990...maybe 1995?

Then again, it was so long ago I can't really say for sure!

I had no idea ATS had been around since the mid-1990s?

[ElitePlebeian]

I think around 15-20 years ago. I had seen ufos flying over and I suddenly remembered I had seen ufos before when I was quite young. Then I started looking online for answers. For me those experiences are evidence governments are hiding something and from there on I started questioning a lot of things and reading ATS on a daily basis.

[David64]

I think it was late 2007. I was browsing for info on UFOs and somehow got directed to ATS. It was a gold mine of information on many different subject I happened to be interested in, written by some very astute people.

I lurked for about 6 months and signed up in 2008.

[SteamyAmerican]

I was a member for over a decade, probably a decade and a half really. It had been around well before I stepped foot on the playground. The old days were great. Before it was infiltrated by elements that wanted us to piss, scratch, moan, and focus on politics and only politics.

Not sure how I found it or why. But it was a gem. Truly. Right away I realized a lot of straight shooters from all walks of life (that clearly knew a $&*^~load more than me) carried a shared curiosity about our world, its, “history”, and the general nature of reality.

i was probably sniffing around for info on Bigfoot if I had to guess. Maybe the inconsistencies of 9/11. But it was clearly a trove of the esoteric & unusual. Until it was flooded with misbegotten stories we are fed and told by those that deem us too stupid to advance our species by way of giving out true info to the masses. Call me cynical and jaded….

I truly miss that place. It was wild. There were many people I admired and probably pissed off all at once. But yeah. It’s a hole in my heart now that it’s gone. And some of the magical and strange folks that lurked there too.

RIP ATS