I think I agree that it's the localness of the BBSes that made them so special for me. When I was in middle school, the BBSes were my social group. The games we

I think I agree that it's the localness of the BBSes that made them so special for me. When I was in middle school, the BBSes were my social group. The games were a fun way to waste some time, uploading games for credits in bytes you could download, but the conversations were the best part. I went to BBS parties and hung out with the people-behind-the-handles in real life. It was always such a shock to see how someone differed from the way you imagined them to look. When I got to college, the BBS scene instantly created a whole new set of friends for me. I don't know how I would have gotten to know people in that strange place without it. Then the internet came. Suddenly, all by favorite BBS boards were synchronizing their posts with other BBSes across the country. Our little conversations of 5-10 people suddenly exploded into hundreds. It was too much. My posts got lost--or worse, I once got the notice of some sysadmin in another state who didn't like my politics or my language and demanded my local sysadmin deactivate my account. I fled to some other locals-only BBSes, but things were dying. Then Gopher, WWW, and Usenet came along and the BBSes vanished as everyone rushed to build web sites and post comments for all the world to see. I telnetted into the cavebbs.homeip.net and it was a nice brief bit of nostalgia. I'm not sure if this is something we can recapture, but I hope it gets a bit of historical footnote somewhere.