were any lainons around in the early 90s scene? i feel like i may be
a little older than some of us but it may also be that i'm just not
into the same areas of entertainment.
i came across an onion address a couple of days ago that had a lot of
ezines from the early-mid 90s and it brought back a wave of nostalgia
mixed with some embarrassment for how angsty a lot of it was. it was
fun to see the results of exploration and to also see what we got
wrong. it felt like an age of invincibility.
i grew up in a nearly-rural area in north america so i was slightly
behind the technology curve. my first computer was a tandy 1000HX
with a set of minix disks. i was able to learn minix and dos with
that machine until i picked up a 486 and an acoustic coupler second
hand as well. that led me to bbs'es around the height of fidonet,
which led me to the text based internet.
our phone systems were older so many of the hpvac files i found still
applied to my area and i spent a lot of time snooping around places i
didn't belong to meet other maladjusted kids, form groups, and produce
our own texts.
somehow over time, all of that faded away. while i carried jobs in
tech and studied tech in school (i currently do infosec related work),
i somehow became disconnected with modern tech. i almost feel like
there was a second wave of eternal september or perhaps i just ran out
of time and couldn't find the old haunts anymore.
i don't have nearly the time and energy i once had. i've started a
family and i carry a couple of jobs but i still prod around the edges
of the wired that i'm able to find, looking for pieces of those
cultures that once prevailed.
where did those communities go? what did they evolve into? what
is the current curiosity fueled technical front that's not been
commercialized?
i feel like some image boards, especially lainchan, have a little bit
of that vibe left in them and it's been a lot of fun consuming
threads.
i also feel like maybe the signal to noise ratio is higher these
days. people are more technically inclined and there are tiny
computers all around us. we definitely live in a cyberpunk
dystopia. back then the curious and creative were easy to find
because there was a larger divide between "us" and "them."
to wrap up my rambling, a quick summary of
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