BBSes were the anti-Instagram if you think about it reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chungleong · 2023-03-23 13:35 I was reminiscing about my BBS experience the other day. One episode sticks out from my memory. I was a regular user of a BBS in San Francisco. I had befriended its sysop. One day he decided to drop by my house. I forgot the reason. I think I had brought some hardware where at a swap meet and couldn't get it to work. He wanted to see if there was something he could do. It was a weekend afternoon. My parents were sitting at home. They completely freaked out when they saw a huge bearded Mexican dude standing at the front door. My mom wanted to call the police LOL. I was somewhat surprised since he sounded like a computer nerd in chat. And he was a computer nerd (maybe "hardware enthusiast" is a better description). Just didn't fit the stereotype. BBSes were in a way the polar opposite of social networks of today. We got the chance to know who people really are without the slightest clue what they look like. Now people spend their days staring at photos of total strangers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- catnapspirit · 2023-03-23 13:57 I remember my mom driving me to a software swap meet (I must have been 15, I'd guess) at some dudes house with a bunch of overweight nerdy total strangers who were also somehow some of my best friends. Good times. To this day, I still can't believe she allowed me to do that and even took me there herself.. Edit: I remember now, there was at least some pedigree to the meet up. It was through COCUG, the Columbus Ohio Commodore Users Group. Everything was an UG back then.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jstormes · 2023-03-23 15:08 My Friend Matt and I ran a BBS back in the 80's. We had a party for everyone to meet. BBS were a much more local and enthusiast phenomenon. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYY821nv4rc&t=2414s](https://www.yout ube.com/watch?v=FYY821nv4rc&t=2414s) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mcasao · 2023-03-23 16:00 I befriended many people that I would not have in any other scenario. Good times. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2023-03-23 18:18 Same here; I met a lot of people from BBSes in person. A lot of this had to do with long distance charges. You wanted to avoid them, and while some cheated the phone company, others just kept to local boards. There were a lot in my area. I'd set my autodial to just cycle through my address book after school until it connected. In any case, because you were dialing local, the people you were talking to were local, and much more accessible. I also had a much more substantial picture of who people were. They tended not to be random faces in the crowd, like it is with much of the Internet. I've actually had a hard time finding smaller communities online. Everyone seems to want a global audience. That has its advantages, but something has been lost. And the more vague an online person is, the easier it seems to be for others to dehumanize that individual. When you know you might have to face someone, it's probably going to have some impact on what you say and how you say it. For me, the social aspect of "being online" isn't as fun as it used to be. I do love the surfeit of resources and information though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chungleong · 2023-03-23 18:25 BBS users regularly meet in real life, didn’t we? Can’t say the same about consumers of social media. They sit alone with their phone, flipping through AI-generated newsfeeds. If they would just put the thing down and go bowling alone, they’d experience a serious improvement to their social life. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jak_from_Venice · 2023-03-23 18:56 Reading the comments I cannot stop thinking the main difference was that: they were Users Group, people interested in the same topic. Not the focus is becoming an influencer and I find it very sad ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grixit · 2023-03-23 20:10 I was in Orange County in 1985. I met maybe 30 people from the various local boards i frequented. This was at picnics and similar get togethers. But i knew less than a dozen by name. By contrast, i was already interacting with a much larger number whom i never met. This isn't new. For as long as it has been possible to have indirect communications there have been people who had social relationships without any face to face interactions. It's just that it is cheaper and more accessible now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- llahlahkje · 2023-03-23 20:13 A multiline chat board I was a regular on had regular meetups and many of the people I met are still friends to this day. It led to me hanging out with a wide variety of people that I would've otherwise never encountered which was something that was far less common in the early 90s. After it shut down (it was too expensive for the SysOp) I set up a single line board and it had a very busy forum community and we had smaller meet ups from time to time, as well as making the then- equivalent of zines. Honestly the closest I've come to that "meet-up" experience since then was with my Warcraft guild -- we played together for years and eventually started meeting once or twice a year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IAmRootAtDBZ · 2023-03-23 20:49 The next thing that I name the end of it's going to be user group. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmine45 · 2023-03-23 21:15 Yep, I remember BBS parties when we would meet in person. First when I was living in the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh, then later in Fredericksburg, VA where I now live. I met my best friend at one of those and we're still friends nearly 30 years later (he was my best man at my second marriage). But I agree, we had both young kids and adults at those parties. Wish we could still have those sorts of things. It was a different world in 1995 than 2023. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chungleong · 2023-03-23 22:12 You agree with you completely that the limitation due to high cost of toll calls to a large extent underpinned the BBS culture. We didn't know it back then. I remember how excited we were when me and a sysop friend (different person) got FidoNet working on our BBS. Finally we weren't no longer confined to just our city! We can communicate freely with the entire continental US! The possibilities! Having lived "the future" the last couple decade I have to say, the future sucks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chamfered_corner · 2023-03-23 23:06 livejournal had similar connections and in-person meetup potential, at least in my town. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dialsoft · 2023-03-24 00:13 It was social media. I had parties with hundreds of people that would show up. My board was primarily a chat system so it was super social. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- recourse7 · 2023-03-24 00:42 Some of my first girlfriends were made from local bbs meetups. it was a great time in the early and mid 90s for a dorky teen. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ebookit · 2023-03-24 07:12 We met for Six Flags, we met for bowling, there was a dating service BBS door, it was fun. Today we don't meet up anymore we just post Memes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zeamp · 2023-03-24 11:43 Dave? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TheBr0fessor · 2023-03-24 17:37 My SYSOP in Fremont got busted with cp 😐 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TheBr0fessor · 2023-03-24 17:38 Put a few of those loser meets in perspective. As a 14yo I was oblivious, but looking back as an adult… ssshhheeeeeeeeeeshh ---------------------------------------------------------------------- csmende · 2023-03-24 19:28 This is almost exactly how I met my lifelong best friend. Except it was my girlfriend having the panic attack when we met in person the first time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmine45 · 2023-03-25 15:50 Whom are you asking? Me? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Rattlehead71 · 2023-03-25 16:23 I ran a multi-line TBBS back in the 90s in the Reno Nevada area. We had some really great users, parties and meet-ups. I met the girl who would become my wife on a BBS. Will be married for 26 years this May! I really do miss the local community we built. We had all types of people that became friends (or more) who would otherwise never have glanced at each other in real life. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Team503 · 2023-03-26 20:16 It's a combination of three things: 1. It was local almost by definition (as others have said, LD charges) 2. Anyone skilled enough to use a BBS in those days was by definition an enthusiast 3. BBSes were small; even the multiline systems could only have a few people at a time connected, meaning that you were realistically talking about communities in sizes mostly under Dunbar' number. In short, we self-selected for intelligent people with similar interests that lived in the same area, then gave them a way to interact that masked their real identity (gender, age, race, etc), and kept the total number of the community to an amount that it was possible for everyone to know everyone else personally. It's was a small, local community of like-minded people. The opposite of most social media these days. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chungleong · 2023-03-26 21:15 There was less self-selection back then, I would argue, than today. BBS users were generally above average in intelligence and were drawn to the Roddenberrian vision of a world where people aren’t judged by their racial or class background. We all loved TNG. Aside from that there was no other like-mindedness. People regularly argued about things. God knows how many flame wars I’ve been in with Amiga users. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Team503 · 2023-03-26 22:06 Dude you literally just argued that we self-selected back then. And we did. Just connecting to a BBS was way beyond the average computer user's ability, and most people weren't computer users back then. Sure, we fought and argued, we weren't homogenous, but we self- selected for smart, nerdy people who like to tinker on computers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chungleong · 2023-03-26 22:15 Well, yeah. I said that while was self-selection then, it’s not as strong as what we find today. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Team503 · 2023-03-26 23:27 Well, you'll have to be more specific. People divide into groups more strongly now in some ways, and less in others. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nahkampf · 2023-05-02 08:34 Veteran of the early 1990s (both normal bbses and the elite scene for a while), and I loved that. The world opened up and you could talk to all these people on roughly the same level (I was 12 when I started but these grown ass nerds were tolerant, helpful and mostly polite). Naturally I made friends and we had BBS meets, copy parties etc in real life, so I got to meet a lot of people that way in a way I think parents would maybe be quite hesitant to today. That thing of getting to know people from purely text continued on with IRC for me, and I kept up active IRCing for more than 20 years (and also formed some lifelong friendships that way).