Some days I think I would gladly go back to BBSes. The medium was so raw and exciting back then, in a way the modern web has never recreated with all its bells and whistles.
I missed the days of BBSes but I did run a Hotline server at that same age of 12 or 13, for quite some time. I still have SyQuest and MO disks full of the server archives. I also still have the notepads full of IPs for servers and my login/password for them. I was online earlier than that too (1992), but I completely missed (or even ignored) the whole world of BBSes sadly. To my young self, the full-color high-res web seemed far superior to the 80-char dot matrix printouts from my friend whose older brother was finding neat stuff from BBSes. It turned out I could generally find all the same stuff on the web, and then some. What I didn't realize I was missing was the community/networking, especially locally. Hotline was amazing, but due to it being internet-based, there was definitely not any sense of "familiar local crew". That said, I still have friends I regularly talk to that I met from Hotline back in ~1997 onward.
True but we could do what nobody else in the world could do. We had chat, file sharing, forums, multiplayer games and more before everybody else. BBSers felt like the elite and nobody else understood it.
There was a low barrier to entry. Anyone could start a BBS. Since there were so few, any new BBS would have a flood of new users, making them successfully very quickly.
The Internet rules, but we lost something innocent and good from those times. Discovering a BBS was so exciting - new games, new filez and, most importantly, new friends! A lot less toxicity and higher quality interactions.
BBSs were a very varied scene and experiences doubtless varied a huge amount. That's true with online communities in general but the BBS scene may have been even more varied than most.
Also even ten years ago, the heyday of BBSs was 20-25 years in the past. It's hard to reconstruct things from that relative distance. For example, I was looking at Boardwatch Magazine archives and what I find only goes back to about 1993 when a lot of BBSs were on the cusp of transitioning to ISPs.
I missed the BBS phase. I vaguely remember sitting on the floor in my parents room playing with some sort of IBM-Compatible computer, but my real days were the DOS and Windows 3.1 days.
I'm fairly certain I didn't hit the Internet at large until the Windows 95 days. However, I have very fond memories of Usenet and IRC. I am glad IRC is still around, but I still miss Usenet. Even after Eternal September, Usenet was just amazing.
Anytime I'm forced to use literally any website forum, I'm reminded just how far back we've fallen. Usenet clients were amazing. I could quickly and easily catch up on posts in groups I was paying attention to. I could quickly and easily find new groups for literally any interest. Access to a fast server was included in almost any ISP subscription.
Web forums are just so painful to use these days. Especially since there are 400 forums for a particular topic that are all very disjointed.
I am so glad my teenage hijinx did not survive the transition to internet and I feel deeply sorry for children today. Sooo much cringe.
The inherent locality of BBSes was pretty nice however, sure there were some long distance users but most people on most boards were local. I recently rediscovered this photo where 16 year old me recreated the on-login BBS quote wall by asking BBS friends that came over to sign my wall: https://nt4tn.net/photos/wall.jpg
It's been a few years since I've talked to anyone I knew from the BBSes (moving to the other side of the country no doubt contributed, some of them have died, etc) but they hung on longer than anyone else I knew as a teenager.
I enjoyed BBSing in my youth and appreciate that BBSes are still around. But two factors that are missing today are 1. BBSes were local to me (reflecting the people in my city) and 2. It was “hard” to find then and connect to them.
BBSs were much more personal and local than the internet. I remember going to local board (BBS) parties where you met the face behind the avatar. Online games, chatting with sysops, downloading filez... Those were the days.
I'm so old, the first time I connected to a different computer was through a 300 baud modem. The Internet didn't exist yet, just BBSs. The local BBS scene was a blast. I'm still friends with several people I met back then.
In all the years of gaming and "internet"-ing since then, there is something intangible about the experience BBS systems and these types of games provided that hasn't been achieved since. I know some of it must be simply rosy-goggled nostalgia, but I can't shake the feeling that there is something material that made the BBS experience awesome that didn't quite translate over to the "internet" as we know it today. I remember that BSSs used to have "picnics" and stuff where everyone met up in real life (I couldn't go because I was too young, but I still appreciated the sense of community that grew around those.)
There was a sort of "liminal" phase of the internet that I've never seen anyone even mention in these types of articles, as well: the "Freenet" era ( http://cfn.tangledhelix.com/history.html ). It was sort of halfway between local BBS and WWW. I wonder if the emergence of the Physical Web or the like might bring about a resurgence of some of this "local"-ness the web lost as it outgrew its origins.
It took me several years of exposure to see the point of the internet. I had been running my own BBSes for quite a while by then.
We already had email more or less, at least in ways that mattered. And the experience was non-commercial and personal, with operators putting a lot of time and effort into their quirky online worlds.
Some of it's still around if you go look for it, but I can't shake the feeling that we lost something worth keeping.
BBSes had soul. Everyone was excited to be there. Most everyone was an enthusiast. We had chat, forums, filez, online games before everyone else. Nobody outside of that world had any idea what we all were doing.
We are of a like mind, I see. There is a part of me that misses the level of exclusivity BBS's offered, and that part of me continues to try to find online communities that scratch that particular itch (recommendations welcome).
However, there is another part of me that is glad this new Internet is so much more accessable. Don't get me wrong, I abhor the pervasive marketing, corporate fingers in everyrhing, and all the bloat that comes with it, but if I just focus on the fact that so many more people are even getting a mild, watered-down taste of why I love computers so much, that makes me a bit happy. Computers connect us, and during a crucial time in my life where I was feeling woefully disconnect from my peers (socially excluded, perhaps?) the BBS and newsgroup communities were there to welcome me.
IM-ing (in its then form) with "Sleepy" in the Netherlands (me in the U.S.) in 1987. Locally in a development environment in oh, '82, '83.
Sneakernetting SEDIT from an employer, a state over to campus tech support, who welcomed it.
Due to my circumstances, I missed most of the BBS phenomenon. But I experienced plenty of "we're in this together" in other venues.
Early Google was magical. Quality, helpful pages and sites at the top of the results.
"Early" Web bulletin boards had "real", de facto (by the general capabilities and sophistication of the time), often helpful anonymity (including for "survivors" of various sorts), and focus all too often missing from today's milieu.
Now -- trying not to sound elitist, but rather just particular -- the noise and banality washes out the quality that was once much more evident and prominent.
The extant Net is lost to the general population and the organizations that seek to control it and exploit it. Fine, for what that is, I guess -- today's television.
But not what I want.
And, free and cooperative communication (even in and supporting lively but intelligent and informative dispute) I also find to be essential to a functioning society. And to those who really move that society forward -- technically and otherwise.
The increasingly gated, panopticon fiber and IP address internet is less and less suited to serving this.
I also spent a ton of time on BBSes, pre Internet. A few of these developed into early dialup ISPs. One thing I really miss is the "community" aspect. Local message boards, etc. That is all gone now. The closest thing you can find is maybe a subreddit or Discord, but it's not the same. The community and locality aspect is gone. You can't even meet a weirdo on Craigslist anymore.
For many people, the Internet of today is basically interactive TV.
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