Do you miss it? How long have you been online? Is everything different than it used to be?

In 1993-1994, I was part of a fairly cohesive circle of online friends. We called each other on the phone, some of us met in person, and we were really close. I haven't been that close to anyone online since ... for instance, I never give anyone my phone number anymore. And the online interaction is very different, as well.

I kind of got burned in a small way, but I think the real problem was that nothing was ever the same as those Prodigy bulletin boards. Are there just too many people online now?

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Answers

I was a gigantic prodigy (or *p, as we crazy teens called it) geek from about 1991-1993. At the time they were doing a flat rate, so I was able to spend hours posting to various bb's in the Alternative Music (which begat Modern Rock) section.

We gave out addresses and phone numbers to each other, sent each other mix tapes and bizarre packages, called each other at 2AM, and even snuck around (I was 15-17 then) to visit each other.

One of the people I became close to turned out to be massively clinically depressed, and it started to scare me. It got to the point where I feared that the next time I called him/emailed him/whatever, I'd hear from his parents that he'd been put in an institution or actually succeeded in killing himself.

So I stopped doing *p/consorting with my e-friends, cold turkey. And since then, I haven't allowed myself to become close with anyone from online.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

My first computer was a little 286 I bought in 1992 for $100 from my company (cheap bastards, they were upgrading and refused to just *give* me the damn thing). I got online with CompuServe and still pay $10 a month for the account (I'm a sentimental sucker).

My first group of online buddies were a bunch of Northern Exposure fans in the TV forum. They would actually meet up in Roslyn, Washington once a year. Two of them ended up getting married near me (in romantic Frankenmuth, Michigan). I still have printouts of some of their more interesting communiques ("Twas the Night Before Christmas," Chris-in-the-Morning style). I never did meet any of them in person.

I re-learned DOS and had a dot-matrix printer. While I miss the yellow blinking cursor on a black screen, I love the visuals that are available now.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Ah, the good old days of ASKII Art and Bulletin Boards. Yeah, I remember them well...when conversation meant Fidonet and games meant Usurper.--Al

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Oh, Maggie, the Modern Rock boards were where I hung out, too! I got there just before or after they ditched the flat rate, can't remember. It came back eventually, but too many of the old guard had left by then, and it was never the same. (Not that I was "old guard" ... I felt like a newbie until the day I un-subbed for the last time.)

I used to hang out on the Modern Rock boards (mostly a topic called Lonesome Punk Guy ... long story) and the ska boards. I'm all weepy and nostalgic now. We did the weird packages, mix tapes, and 2 a.m. phone calls, too.

kuad02a@prodigy.com, that was my last account there. I can't remember my first one.

And I've just realized that *P (we called it that, too ... I think it was supposed to keep the censors from seeing that you were dissing the company on the boards) was not my first online experience; I was already calling local BBS's by then. My first internet experience was a Delphi account in early 1994, but I hated usenet and unsubbed after a few months.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Yes, everything is different now online from how it used to be 5 or 6 years ago, and everything changes, and it's not always for the better.

I just finally cancelled my CSi account last week. I made many friends there, met many of them in person here in the City and in Germany, and it was great at the time. Once Csi was bought by AOL though a few years ago, it started to decline pretty quickly.

There are still some good forums and people there that I miss, but I just don't have the time or money to subscribe to more than one provider, and I can't put my whole website up on CSi anymore, so I finaly let Csi go. But I dunno, I may sign back up.

I've only met one person face to face from a web forum in, and he has become a good friend. In general though, I agree that the interaction seems a lot different than it did a few years ago, and lots of people have been burned (I have too a few times, but I try not to let it make me close myself off to new people), and the intelligence level of many forums on the web is pretty low, in my experience.

Your little board here is an exception to that, o

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Oh, I just recalled that my first online experience was with GEnie-- yeah, text-only! My mom & I would log on to get into trivia contests on the chat lines. We were really good, too. Though our handle of Goldilocks & Mama Bear provoked the wrong kind of attention, I think.

I guess one takes mother-daughter bonding where one can get it.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I got my first computer around 1987 and after I got a modem I used to dial into bulletin boards that seemed strange, like christian ones. I was just a spectator, though, I never did any chat.

Now I find similar kinds of odd things on the Web.

I've been a member of the Well for 7 years now. It's an "online community" of mostly interesting people. I've actually met some of them in person though I haven't become what I'd think of as real friends with anyone. I'm going through a disenchantment phase right now, though, realizing that I've been using it as a substitute for meeting people and seeing them in meat space. That's not what it's good for- it's a gateway to face to face stuff, not enough if that's most of one's social life(and I'm guilty as charged.)

I'm in awe of all you early adaptors. I was a COBOL programmer in the 80s and was just amazed that anyone would want to have a computer at home and do stuff with it after doing computer stuff all day. And what if something went wrong?? What would you do???

When Macs came out suddenly that world seemed accesible, and now I'm almost a power user.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Things have definitely changed online since the "good old days" of all-night chat sessions. When I moved down here to D.C. (to take a job I found online), I hardly noticed that I didn't actually have any friends here. After all, I was still up all night chatting with the same group as before.

That was the same group that sent me checks, Western Unions, and just plain cash in the mail when I got laid off (still knowing precisely almost-no-one here). Kept me in Ramen and peanut butter while I looked for a new job.

And, having lived with a guy I met online for almost five years now, I can't imagine even thinking of such a thing now. I wouldn't give out my phone number and address (which I did dozens of times, at least, in '94 or so) now, let alone take off with a virtual stranger on a random spontaneous trip to the coast to meet other virtual strangers.

But...in '94 it worked, and I'm glad it did. I don't think it ever will again, which makes me a little sad. Now the random guy and I just IM each other from our offices at opposite ends of the house, and it's almost like it used to be, but much lonelier for all the millions of pe

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I like the internet just fine, but it ruined the BBS world, and there isn't a good replacement.

Well, my first online experience would be in 1992 or early 1993, calling a bunch of local boards. I mostly just played around, downloading files and playing games. I would always go and pick up the new CCN at the beginning of the month, and scan the BBS list for any new local boards.

In 1993 I started calling Changeling, a local pagan-oreinted board, and participating in PODSNET boards. I never actually met anybody from there, but I taked to a lot of interesting people from all over, though I never gave out any personal information (There were a few scary people to avoid). As soon as I became attached to it, it died. I met a few sysops that year, but didn't actually make any friends. Then I started calling another board run by an aquaintance. I got attached to it, had a lot of friends on it. Then he shut it down.

In 1995, I tried calling the Compass Rose again (after a few years since my last try). (I did have real internet access at that point, which was great for talking to friends scattered at schools across the country, but not so much for random conversations.) I could go online whenever I needed to talk to someone, and the chances were good that there would be someone nice there. I met a lot of people, actually a large portion of my current circle of friends is from that board. But it died in 1996, and I haven't found a replacement.

For all the things I like the internet for (I can find files much easier, I can find almost anything I want, or at least a lead for it. there's always something to do or read.), I still really miss the cameraderie of local boards. I've found some semblence of it in mailing lists, but it's not the same. There isn't a place to go and say "Lyons in 10!" at midnight. No place to go where I can find people I know at all hours.

But I can still spend many hours online. (I think I'm becoming attached to the internet, so prepare for it to shut down.)

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Ahhhh the good old days. Starting in 1992, I became a Mush Head. I still pop by to visit my old haunts now and then -- but for the most part it's a "lifestyle" I'm glad I got out of.

Being addicted to Mushing garnered me my first group of online friends and membership in an online community, but it also made for problems in my real life, when traipsing off to meet strangers I'd only chatted or roleplayed with online interfered with other RL commitments.

Text only interface on the Vax machines late at night in the labs ... getting a Unix account and learning basic Unix just so I could install tinyfugue and run more than one world at once.

Heh.

And from all that arose my career as a web designer ...

Go figure.

I too Beth, am chary of giving out my personal information to folks online now.

I don't give out my home phone number -- the one I usually give if I give one at all is my cell phone number. I got a PO Box and all of my websites are registered to it, not my actual address.

When people want to send me stuff, or I'm sending stuff to other people, I use the po box as the address.

Can't be too careful -- especially when you keep an OLJ.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I was a closet modemer from the years of 1989 to about 1993. It was much like having a penpal.. if anyone found out that you spent your nights chatting with Bill from Cold Winter Knights instead of watching the football game, you were doomed!

I remember the noise that my 300 baud modem would make when it connected... ahhh...

I remember the first time that someone (a sysop) "broke into chat" with me when I was online... Scared the whole-y crap out of me! It was a romanticized moment, to be sure... it was so fascinating and wonderful to be talking to someone I'd never met before...

It wasn't quite so romantic when I saw said person in person... (Bill of WEB something... I bet you know who I'm talking about xeney..YIKES!)

I don't miss the BBS days much... though I do enjoy the occasional bragging right of being able to say, "I've been online since 1989!" I'm an icon now, instead of a nerd who hides her face in shame.

Woo hoo!

--stasi
http://www.sweetpeas.org

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

Actually I'm not sure I know that Bill. I do know two Bills from Cold Winter Knights (my very first BBS ... sniff) but they're both very nice. One of them posts here under his secret identity, which isn't very secret since everyone knows it.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 1999

I KNOW IT! I KNOW IT! I used to be a regular on his board, even. Neener. (=

And stasi! She's the one that got me started on all of this back in the days of 1994? 95? What was it?

stasi actually saved me from AOHELL. I was on there for about a month or something before stasi turned me onto the local boards. CWK wasn't my first LOCAL board, but it was my first CIT board. I miss it. =(

I miss all of them, really. Phoo.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

Well, as long as we're having an old-school Sacramento BBS misty-eyedness-fest, I might as well join in.

Technically I had pre-Sacramento modeming experiences: the message board on a PDP-11 minicomputer at Humboldt State in 1988, and a couple very-long-distance calls to the Steve Jackson Games Illuminati BBS (and an old Sacramento BBS called Gamer's Grill) from Humboldt the next year. But I didn't actually own a computer and couldn't afford the long-distance charges so I never got that into it.

In 1993, I bought a 2400 baud modem for my Macintosh (which I had purchased the previous year) and started calling local Macintosh Hermes/WWIV boards and the local Citadels: ShapeShifter (which is where I think I first encountered this modemer named poison ivy who later changed her handle to exene but everyone called her xeney for short--or was it CWK?) and Timestream and the Ocean and Ren and Erif's boards and, of course, the GREAD GHOD OF THE CITADELS (in my opinion) Hypo Luxa's Erik the Half A BBS. Not to mention the original incarnations of media-dekay (now an online webcit, emrl.com) and Earl's Castle and AWOL (the only board I ever got kicked off of) and my own little self-destruction exercise BRAIN UNIT, which I shut down earlier this year once I got sick of it once and for all.

I never got into TCR or any of the chat boards, since I am far too long-winded to try to communicate in one-line blitters of conversation (like you haven't noticed that already) but for a while there an awful lot of my friends were modemers, and my current circle of friends still features a lot of old-school modemheads. I've been on & off USENET and a couple mailing lists since 1994, but never really got into it much except for alt.slack and the occasional token appearance on alt.gothic.

Oh yeah, I still have a big ol' printout of the room from CWK entitled "Ways to irritate people" or something, featuring exene, talysman, barnabas collins, yellow dragon, lazarus, tanzen, sai, laureli, Madame George, Kankennon, Aleq, etcetera. It's a hoot.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

Oh, Jetrock, now I'm all sniffly and sad. I remember when she was Madame George! (Before that she was Avalon, wasn't she?)

As for poison ivy/exene/xeney, I was actually exene on both Shapeshifter and CWK, but I forgot my exene password on ShSh the second time I called, so I went with poison ivy instead.

I have that file, too -- it was called "Things to Fuck With." I deleted all the names, and I just uploaded it. Warning: it's a huge text file, probably amusing only to former Sacramento modemers!

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

Oh, yeah, and I never got kicked off AWOL, but I did get "spoken to" by a sysop. An adult board that doesn't allow the word "fuck" -- who'da thought?

I always thought the sex stuff on that board was really goofy, but some of the political stuff was fun. That's where I met our friend Curly Surmudgeon, by the way.

I miss Brain Unit, and I really, really miss Poprockit. (The BBS, not the web site ... I just linked to the web site for the hell of it.) There was a point where there were only about six people calling Poprockit, and it was a really fun board. Good intelligent discussion.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 1999

Oh god, AWOL!

I had my first lesbian experience through meeting someone on that board.

Oh my GOD! Last time I saw that AWOL girl, she was shopping at Wal- Mart with her new woman. HA!

I forgot all about her (Sloane if you happen to remember...heh) and AWOL... AWOL parties...fire and ice... Bandersnatch... ei!

-- Anonymous, August 31, 1999