Count me as yet another person who would likely not be here, commenting on HN, without discovering BBSes and falling in love with the merging of hacking, design

Count me as yet another person who would likely not be here, commenting on HN, without discovering BBSes and falling in love with the merging of hacking, designing, and community. I ran a heavily, heavily modded Renegade board in 412/724 (Pittsburgh) with some good distros into the art and demoscenes in Europe. Nearly every free minute of my life back then was related: drawing ANSI, tracking MODs, trying to figure out how to get Lightboxes to work with Renegade, playing LORD and hanging out with other users from around the Pittsburgh area. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been a curious teenager in a time when BBSes were a thing, and the web as we currently know it was born.