[jasonwatkinspdx]

Yeah, broadband basically killed the LAN party scene as well.

As a teenager my friends and I got into hosting occasional LAN parties. The very first were so we could play Doom deathmatch over serial connections lol. But anyhow it was something I really liked.

When I moved halfway across the country I didn't know anyone. I googled around and found the local major LAN parties. I went to one that was hosted every couple of months in a union hall, with around 200 attendees. At the first one I ended up sitting next to a group of chill folks, and they let me know they did their own dozen person party every other Saturday.

So I started attending that, and it resulted in several life long friendships. We've all changed, grown, moved, had kids, etc but most of us are still in touch. Even for the folks that moved away we meet up every summer or two and do a canoe camping trip or such.

Now, to be fair, I've made life long friends purely on the internet as well, but I do miss those old LAN party days. It was a lot of fun staying up until dawn playing rocket arena et all over and over.

Also to be fair the LAN parties were not hospitable to women, especially the larger ones. On the rare occasion they did try it out they'd get hounded by the least socially aware idiots in the room, and no one else really did anything about it (including myself, as I didn't understand these dynamics at that age).

These days with discord and everything some of that vibe is back in the purely online context, but still I don't think there will ever really be anything like those in person events.

[sonicanatidae]

LAN parties were cool, imo and led to interesting things like this pic that's been on the interwebs for a very long time.

https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/duct-taped_gamer_1.jpg?width...

I still have a 48-port Cisco Switch that we used for these, back in the day. It's 10/100, so that far back. ;)

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Yeah, we never taped anyone to the ceiling but that was very much the vibe of our regular little 12 person group. The host lived at his parents house (college student) and they had an addition on the side of the garage that we packed into.

A big deal for us was pooling money to buy a 24 port 10 mbit switch back when those were new and fancy. Such a huge improvement over having to shut down the whole party and redo coax connections because one person in the middle of the line wanted to leave early.

[sonicanatidae]

I was the IT connection. I worked with the gear daily, so it was easy to borrow gear or just MitM it when it was headed for the dumpster.

I kept it because memories, but it's a big ass rack switch, so it may go the way of the dodo someday.

[mikrotikker]

We had women at our LAN parties in the 2000s, usually GFs or girls from the friend group. Not many played games so they'd just hang out and socialise amongst themselves or maybe play a console if there was one. So much fun.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Yeah, the only woman that showed up to that smaller dozen person regular event was my gf. Once.

I kinda understated what I was saying in the above because I didn't wanna get hounded by the basement dweller crowd, but the reality at the bigger events was pretty ugly. The only girl that ever showed up was the daughter of one of the organizers. Only a couple women showed up otherwise.

One story I can mention is from a different party I went to in a town not far away. This was a big bigger of an event, around 300 people and only run once a year. I only recall a woman showing up once.

That event held a 1v1 quake tourney with a modest cash prize. This woman was good. She smoked everyone easily. This was a bit of a shock because a couple people at that event had competed at quakecon and such.

The entire time she was at the event there was this mob surrounding her PC of... well, imagine the least socially aware and hygienic dudes that would show up to an early 00's LAN party. Didn't matter what she was doing or trying to play, they endlessly pestered her and tried to chat her up. If she walked across the room to get a coke you could see half the room openly staring at her turning their heads. Stuff like that.

Unsurprisingly she didn't return for the second day or any future event.