[mooxie]

I feel very fortunate to have been around for this part of internet culture. Chat was so different at the time; this part especially stuck out to me:

>Our MC Skat Kat posted from the persona of this fictional MC Skat Kat, regularly referring to Paula Abdul as his girlfriend. Everyone simply accepted this.

You would see the same essentially-anonymous users every day, and there were users with known-unlikely stories - this is before catfishing as a concept was part of the lexicon - but they were just accepted. Did I think that I was talking, at 13, to Demi Moore about Bruce Willis's latest movie? No, I did not. But someone got online every night to just shoot the shit and pretend to be Demi Moore, and they were just one of the gang. No one believed them but no one tried to prove them wrong, either, because they were otherwise a good citizen. It was surreal, but at the time human interaction in real-time over the internet with strangers WAS surreal, in itself. No one could prove or disprove anything without a lot of work, so people just tended to shrug at wild claims.

I know that newer generations are all experiencing their own forms of social-media-ingrouping that they will feel just as nostalgic for, but it truly was a unique time.

[mlyle]

> I know that newer generations are all experiencing their own forms of social-media-ingrouping that they will feel just as nostalgic for, but it truly was a unique time.

BBSes, MUDs/MOOs, Usenet, things like this, and even EFNet had things that don't really exist in the same way very often anymore (not every one had each of these things, but..):

- A broad optimism about technology and communication using technology

- Reasonably small communities. Even during EFNet's simultaneous 100k peak (of which many were bots), there were probably 30k truly active users and a few thousand people feeling deep ownership of the network and community. It was more like a medium sized town. (And now it's like that town after most people have moved away).

- A shared culture (coming from the smallness of the communities).

- A broad focus. Subreddits are small; discords are small; etc. But in these other places you'd run into and talk to the same people about many different kinds of things. You might have a discord group of a few dozen friends, but it's not likely to be a semi-exclusive social channel for you for many topics.

- Local ties. Especially with the BBS.

- Blurry lines on anonymity. Purely anonymous, distant connections morphed to real life ones far more often than today.

[giantrobot]

> A broad optimism about technology and communication using technology

A big part of this in my mind was the novelty of it. It was actually a whole new capability for people.

In 1977 if you loved Star Wars maybe you could talk to your friends about it. If you didn't know anyone that felt the same about it you were kind of stuck. If you were lucky you might have a sci-fi convention nearby you could attend. Magazines might give you some interesting details but it wasn't a conversation.

This was the same in 1987 for most people. Unless you had a 1) computer 2) modem 3) BBS client 4) a local BBS that was affordable to call that let you talk Star Wars 5) the knowledge to do all that you were stuck with few options to talk Star Wars.

By 1997 the average Star Wars lover had a lot more good options for talking Star Wars. You no longer had to hope a local BBS had good Star Wars options. The Internet gave everybody on it global reach. Your homepage could declare your love/hate of all things Star Wars. You could get e-mail or guestbook responses to stuff you wrote.

If you were just getting into Star Wars in 2007 there had been at least a decade of existing discussion and web pages about Star Wars. It was just assumed people on the Internet were talking about Star Wars and you could jump into any of those discussions. The same was true in 2017.

The 1997 time frame was really the first time that idea was true. It was enpowering to just be able to write stuff about a subject and publish it in a globally accessible way. Normal people never really had that ability before. It was also very much "on the Internet no one knows you're a dog". A 15 year old's fan page about something existed alongside a 30 year old professional writer's fan page.

[mlyle]

Sure-- I agree with all that. And I mean, I've benefitted from the new thing: being parts of groups of 50 people assembled worldwide hacking on one thing because it's interesting or whatever where you'd never have a critical mass on a local board.

But there was something about having consistent groups of friends online. It stayed around on the internet for awhile after mass adoption, but really started to dry up around 2002, and then the rise of social media hastened the demise.

[washadjeffmad]

Man, I lived on EFNet from 99-04. Our channels were subject to near-constant coups and hostile takeovers, thwarted by a steady rotation of automodded teens in timezones across the globe.

I don't remember how it was orchestrated, but someone always gave us a heads up when a netsplit was imminent to help retake lost chans.

More fun than MMO raids or time limited events, for sure.

[progmetaldev]

I remember when my local BBS started letting you type emails. You would write your email, type the address to send to, then everyone's emails were sent out in one batch in the middle of the night. At the time, I was absolutely amazed. That and logging in to play Legend of the Red Dragon in full ASCII color!