Showing off online in the late 90s

Hi guys! Long time lurker here! For various reasons I've been thinking a lot about my past recently. I guess reading forum posts here on spandexparty.com is one of the reasons, and of course getting older is another. Not sure if anyone is interested in reading my story, but here it is: I'm a guy in my early 40s living in Europe. I'm gay, and happily married to the man of my dreams. Back in the late 90s, when more and more people started going online, I felt this need for wearing lycra and showing off. Of course, back then, things were a lot more difficult. Cameras were analogue, computers were (kinda) expensive and social media wasn't really a thing. Still, I was fortunate enough to have a computer, and a special graphics card that let me feed images from my old camcorder to the computer. Voila! I could share stills and short videos, albeit of very poor quality compared to today. So the experiment started... I signed up for a free web page from Yahoo (Geocities) and posted my first few pictures. I was probably wearing black lycra shorts, and the lighting was bad, so it was difficult to spot my bulge LOL. I have no idea how the word spread, but I started getting more and more visitors to my site... I remember being amazed at the statistics, and seeing visitors from all over the world. I guess there was a real shortage of online pictures of guys wearing lycra back then, because I don't think I had a particularly nice body (I was on the skinny side). But I was young, and I was horny. I never showed any pictures of my face, but guys were still checking me out. I remember loving the attention, and I got lots of e-mails from guys telling me how they loved my pictures. I started posting more, and one guy even offered to send me a pair of white lycra shorts, so my bulge would show better on the low resolution pictures. I accepted, and it kind of took off from there. I started buying used stuff from eBay and posted more pictures. I even posted some short videos. At some point I think Geocities took down my page, because of the material. There wasn't ever any nudity, but it was still sexual. After Geocities I think I found a new home for my collection of pictures, although I don't remember where. I bought a digital camera, and experimented a lot with lighting, angles, you know, the same thing instagrammers are doing today to make themselves look as attractive as possible. I think I got the hang of it, and I guess I was becoming somewhat of a "name" online. At least that's what it felt like. I posted pictures of myself wearing mostly running tights, but also speedos and lycra shorts. I remember one of the last things I did was having competitions where guys could enter and win my used lycra clothing. The thing to remember here is I never did anything for money, and I never earned anything from ads or product endorsements. I was still loving the attention, but at some point I decided to close down my site. I think it started taking up too much of my time, and of course younger, hotter guys started posting their pictures, and I remember being fine with that. Some of them even told me that I inspired them, which is kind of cool to think about. A couple of years later I started posting pictures again, I guess at this point in time flickr was the big thing. I still got some attention, and I remember enjoying it. I may also have gotten some real life action out of it, which I of course enjoyed :-) I also posted some very innocent lycra themed videos on Youtube, but they were a lot more strict back then, so they were removed within just a few weeks. A few years ago I finally met Mr. Right, and we got married! I have to say that lycra and spandex are not a big part of our life. He knows that I enjoy wearing, but he's not particularly into it himself. And that's not a problem to me. We are not in an open relationship, so being monogamous is more important than lycra fun. Of course I still look at pictures and videos online (after all, I am here on this site), but I can't say that I have the same passion for wearing as I used to have when I was younger. And I don't have the same need to show off like I did. Sometimes I run across my old pictures online (even though I deleted most of them both online and from my own hard drive), and it feels a bit strange. Looking back, I guess I'm glad I did what I did, but somehow it also makes me feel a little bit empty inside. It was a lot of fun getting attention, posting new pictures, checking my e-mail etc. but it wasn't exactly the road to eternal happiness. I guess today's youtubers, instagrammers and OFers will realize the same, with the exception that for them it could be the road to financial independence. Anyway, I just wanted to share my story from the "pioneer days", maybe some of you will find it interesting. Have a nice summer, and stay safe everyone!