Users of the 80s/90s that came of age during this period, what has been the lasting impact (benefit/damage) of bbsing? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jennyiread · 2020-02-08 14:04 I started out in the mid '80s but my experience was limited to one node info and warez boards that I used to download text based games as I wasn't interested in much else until the 90s when I got more social bbs' in the early 90s. Even then you couldn't explain to most people what it was and of course, now, even though people are less hostile to concept.. they're unable to grasp the concept. Obviously, that creates unique and lasting bonds. but right now, more than nostalgia, it's just feeling like a cult I can't quite escape.. mutualy trapped in a regressed static innerspace... unless I move completely off the grid or have a more apt midlife crisis and move to a completely different field than just being on the peripheral of tech.. where a few of them have risen to the top. itthe world rather feels too small sometimes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- euphraties247 · 2020-02-08 14:30 File transfers. Back in the day my favorite BBS's were the religious ones (CCUG!) where there was little to no moderation of files. Probably from inexperienced or totally checked out sysop's that installed the latest and HIP thing, and basically forgot about it. It was always amazing the great warez to be had at the most unlikely places. I kind of miss that low bar to discovery, it was there in FTP sites, but the vast majority of those are long gone. That said getting used to box hopping and insanely slow transfers made me more adept to sending things through other hosts, to never touch the disk. Even to this day I go through shitty security with either z-modem or even UUENCODE. Yes, it's fun to take a program that'll simulate key strokes, and point it at a remote session and type out a binary into that 'secure' system. Just as my favorite thing about Windows is the .NET runtime with it's almost always included c# compiler. What an underrated gift from the gods! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- anras · 2020-02-08 14:48 I was cosysop of a couple of BBSes. One was a MajorBBS (later Worldgroup) system with a T1 that was pretty popular in the local area in the 90s, and I met about 30 real life friends through it. My first two girlfriends were from the BBS world, even. I'm still in touch with around half of these friends via social media, but only still hang out with a few at this point. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- impreprex · 2020-02-08 14:52 I personally can't think of an answer for you, OP, but I would like to say that I miss the days when things were a bit more simple. We were on the cutting edge of something huge (the internet going mainstream) at the time, but we didn't know it yet. Still, I actually miss the single nodes/phone lines, the ASCII art, the slow downloads, people picking up the phone and screwing up your connection, etc. Don't get me wrong - I love what we have going on today, but there was an element of mystery and excitement back then that seems to be gone these days. That's just my take on it all. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- the-crotch · 2020-02-08 16:23 I recently went googling names from back in the bbs era and it turns out the weirdo who used to creep on us teenagers is on the sex offender registry now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- speeb · 2020-02-08 20:06 I came into things right around 1990 as I went into high school. Met some folks, went on a date, but I'm an introvert and didn't stay in touch. Tinkering with my own BBS and calling all the local boards was how I spent nearly all my free time at home. It eventually led me to go to school for web design. Quickly realized that working with clients wasn't for me. But now I've started down the path of a Salesforce admin and I have to say that it gives me the same feeling that I got devouring VBBS documentation and configurng my board. It's really amazing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2020-02-09 00:27 I think communities are weaker now because of their size and because of easy pseudonymity (deactivating and creating new accounts). I don't like the fact that on reddit, I recognize very few names, and I don't have a context for a person's personality when I read what they write. (Anyone reading this recognize me?) There is also too much redundancy on the Internet, so it is hard sometimes to find active communities. Even here on reddit, we have far too many retrocomputing subreddits. For some reason, people have this weird neurosis about dividing communities into smaller and smaller interest areas (Some Discord servers border on absurdity) and arguing about what is and is not technically on-topic. What a drag. Bulletin board systems seemed to be more about building communities around people who shared an interest, rather than just interests themselves. The topic drift of good bulletin board systems made them more colorful, and it made it more about people and human beings. On the Internet, you go off topic even slightly and there's some weird neurotic who is going to hit the ceiling because you posted about your new salt water aquarium on his fresh water aquarium forum. This is the biggest loss: it's not about people, it's about "content" alone. I guess there's Facebook but then you need to use Facebook, and ugh. If there is any legacy to bulletin board systems, it is logging on to read my favorite people. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MockNessMonster · 2020-02-09 00:46 I miss the local connection. Now I can talk with someone on the other side of the world easier than I can my neighbor across town. We frequently met in real life "Pizza Parties" and made new friends. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- this_here · 2020-02-09 03:04 This may sound crass...but I miss when every mouth breathing troglodyte wasn't online. There was something to be said about having the technical knowledge to find and connect to a bbs in the quality of content back then. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ebookit · 2020-02-09 04:54 We had BBS events a few times we went to Six Flags. On the Ninja rollercoaster two younger BBSERS were in front of me in line. During the Ninja ride they released sugar and salt packages into my eyes. I didn't find it funny but they did. The Warez always went faster trading floppy disks at BBS meetups than downloading files. Just fill up a shoebox with C64 1541 floppies and trade them with your friends. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mylittleplaceholder · 2020-02-09 05:25 I started calling BBSs around '84 (junior high). They probably encouraged my interest in computer engineering and networking. Communities were much smaller and close. BBS pizza parties weren't unusual and I still have friends from them. Rules were easier to enforce (such as posting ads in wrong place). I still somewhat expect that same community and familiarity with online groups so I didn't get the appeal of trolling or the amount of fraud. So, made friends, learned to like computers, and had high expectations for the Internet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jennyiread · 2020-02-09 05:53 I wasn't ready for meets at that point. so it was either spending the day downloading or waiting for radio shack to get something new in. later I'd go to a few user meets but I was socially retarded for even a bbser. . . we had three main social boards - a majorbbs that attracted the casual bbsers that would never delve too deeply into the scene - it's selling point was having multiple nodes, live chat and games that at the time were only compatible with majorbbs software, a custom board where all the forums were locked except for it's own clique.. naturally, they dominated the local bbs meets and an ol' renegade for all the other misfits. . that had a bit of everything. the last two could probably be described as future programmers vs future engineers. or addicts vs behavioral disorders ​ and a lowly renegade for the stereotypical misfits ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jennyiread · 2020-02-09 05:56 same with mine.. though it kind of ended up as near-incestuous dating pool. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jennyiread · 2020-02-09 06:03 the trolls were of a higher quality, too. ​ and conversations just flowed.. even if they were mostly about nothing though I think some people put more effort into their taglines than their posts. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ebookit · 2020-02-10 02:08 We had mostly WWIV DOS BBSES and a few FidoNet and TRS-80 MTABBS. I didn't hand out on the multi-line BBSES that much because they were pay only and sometimes full of snobs. A BBS that asks for a SSN I would avoid, because they bill you for each file you download. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- james9681 · 2020-02-10 21:40 For me, it helped me figure out what I wanted to do in life...BBSing was just magical in the mid 90s, and it hyped me up and led me into a great career in IT. Still like tinkering with BBS stuff to this day! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Annatar305 · 2020-02-11 03:16 It seems like there were a few driving factors that made BBSs a unique experience: 1) Long distance calls were expensive, so most people were bound by their phone bill and a single phone line, and thus their local calling area and one BBS at a time. Contrast this to being able to send any number of TCP/IP packets anywhere in the world simultaneously. 2) For the most part, multitasking wasn't a thing for the average terminal program user, so you had to give your full focus to the BBS you called. Contrast this to today's endless notifications and browser tabs. 3) Anonymity wasn't really a thing either -- you obviously had the Sysop's phone number, so you knew something about them. And any BBS worth its salt did voice validation, which meant that, push come to shove, people could be held accountable for any sort of egregious behavior. Contrast this to who knows who (or what) is lurking on the other end of that Facebook or Twitter account, and the general lack of accountability and moderation. 4) It didn't really occur to me until just now, but for the most part, things didn't escalate as quickly. How much of that was due to people just having different attitudes, or just the fact that messages didn't have any sort of real-time turn around, who can say? So if nothing else, I feel like I'm sort of haunted by the memory of a system that, however flawed and slow, was still better in a number of ways than what we have now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2020-02-16 20:24 >" it's just feeling like a cult I can't quite escape.. mutualy trapped in a regressed static innerspace... unless I move completely off the grid or have a more apt midlife crisis and move to a completely different field than just being on the peripheral of tech.. where a few of them have risen to the top. itthe world rather feels too small sometimes. " what ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jfalcon206 · 2020-03-06 02:56 I think GrandMaster 'Ratte said it best in the BBS Documentary of what the legacy left behind in 80s/90s in that we switched from a collective within the BBS to a consumer of the Internet in that we're served content now rather than creating or living it. BBS's relationships were greatly local unless you found ways to call Long Distance regularly or set aside money out of your personal budget to pay for online time within a commercial service such as Compuserve, Genie or QuantumLink. So those local relationships were local get togethers usually hosted by the Sysop of a particular system. For some, it also lent towards what some call 'Software Piracy' where the GT's would also become "SwapFests". People bringing their computers and software collections and boxes/bags of floppy disks to copy among each other without the hindrance of a slow modem connection. Other GT's would be like group bowling or planned activities like a scavenger hunt with prizes being additional daily minutes or file credits... etc. One could do a similar community today but like the disappearance of the physical phone book, it gets harder to find in bigger cities.