> claims that was the state of the art in the middle 1990's The blog does not claim this, full stop. The author says "before anyone I knew had an Internet conn

> claims that was the state of the art in the middle 1990's The blog does not claim this, full stop. The author says "before anyone I knew had an Internet connection", describing a personal experience, presumably during his childhood or teenage years ("I just had it open during the night, so that my parents could use the phone line during the day"). Why attack the author's personal experience and anecdotes? fwiw, my own experience mirrors the author's exactly. In my area (Philly) there were around two hundred single-line hobbyist boards in the mid 90s, meaning ~1993-1997. It was not a "fading retro thing" quite yet, and as a teenager I didn't personally know any frequent internet users until at least 1996. For historical context, Yahoo wasn't incorporated until 1995. Internet Explorer v1 was released in mid-1995 and wasn't even initially bundled with Windows 95. Widespread home internet adoption took a couple years, and (at least in my area) dial-up hobbyist BBS's only started to dwindle in the late 90s, while the commercial ones (many-line majorbbs/worldgroup systems) transitioned to become dial-up ISPs. For another data point, I developed a couple BBS doorgames from 1999-2003. The BBS scene was definitely dying off at that point, but nonetheless I still sold several hundred registrations for my games during that period.