I missed the boat on those paid online services because my family was not in a position to pay $X per month for such a thing. Even scrounging up for my 8-bit A

I missed the boat on those paid online services because my family was not in a position to pay $X per month for such a thing. Even scrounging up for my 8-bit Atari and 300bps modem was tough. So I cut my teeth on people's little basement-hosted BBS's first, and didn't experience anything multi-user until some of the big multi-line BBS's popped up.