I got my feet wet in the BBS world during the mid/late 80s, when I bought a Commodore-branded model 6499 modem for my C64. Unfortunately it allowed only 1200/75

I got my feet wet in the BBS world during the mid/late 80s, when I bought a Commodore-branded model 6499 modem for my C64. Unfortunately it allowed only 1200/75 bps and 300/300 bps links, but all services I could try it on were either payware or of no use to me, also there still were no interesting private BBSes around, so I put it in a drawer and eventually sold it to someone else. A few years later (early 90s) the experience has been much better with my Amiga 500 and JR-Comm and later Terminus programs, 2400, then 9600 and 14.400bps, and of course Zmodem. The number of local BBSes in the meantime had grown significantly, and Fidonet was a thing. I met lots of interesting people online, arranged pizza and copy parties at our homes (back then we didn't even have a copyright law), some of them became also my colleagues and am still friends with them after all those years. Unfortunately the cost wasn't trivial: hardware aside, just a few years back we still had flat local landline calls, so for example 4 hours spent chatting or transferring files on a BBS would cost about nothing, but as soon as it became clear that an army of people was getting ready to spend hours online every night, the then only national phone company decided to introduce timed fees. I still recall my parents screams about my phone expenses, and luckily I had no girlfriend back then (of course, I'd say) otherwise they would probably have killed me:). The difference with today's social networks? Here's one: Latency! Back then there was no such thing as flaming someone and expecting a reply within 5 minutes; most BBSes had a just few phone lines, sometimes only one, so that the recipient should find a free line to connect, download his messages, read them offline, then upload the replies, or doing all online with other delays. On Fidonet it was even worse, of course, its nature allowed people on different BBSes (nodes) to communicate, but the price to pay was waiting for all those nodes to link each other at night to exchange posts, which meant that your post sometimes could need 2 or 3 hops (=~days) before reaching the destination, especially if between different continents; same with the reply. That would surely not discourage epic flames, but one had to be really really motivated to continue in such a way.