5 ms·

I remember showing up at my first LAN party, ~20 years younger than my online friends. They just couldn’t believe I was actually 13. They were really nice. One

by sshine 3y ago

I remember showing up at my first LAN party, ~20 years younger than my online friends. They just couldn’t believe I was actually 13. They were really nice. One woman had a son my age that I went to a music festival with when I was 20. Another got me my first job as a programmer. Somehow I just don’t see that kind of stuff happening nowadays; sending your kid off to some unknown destination with his PC to sleep in a gym hall with some strangers from “The Internet”. Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both.

j45 3y ago
The interesting thing that you point out to me is the indirect mentoring / support from someone ahead of you in tech you received simply based on mutual interests. Sadly there's a lot of segments where juniors want to learn much on their own, often re-learning lessons of the past that could have been put towards more meaningful progress for them in hindsight.
- intelVISA 3y ago
  Sometimes it is a necessary experience for them.
  - j45 3y ago
    Totally. There's plenty of necessary experiences that are shared.
- theyinwhy 3y ago
  I prefer learning myself as it leads to finding novel solutions.
  - j45 3y ago
    First principles learning is critical for sure. Being able to navigate first principles concepts and learning to use them gets to what's novel is more a little quicker.
huytersd 3y ago
This seems specific to your family. My family would never allow that unless they knew the parents of atleast a few people at the place I was sleeping over.
- hypercube33 3y ago
  In North Branch MN there was an old movie theater with the seats taken out and tables setup - The BattleShack. parents would dump kids there and they'd be there for days or weeks just gaming and hanging out at the Denny's in town. My buddy had a workshop addon to their house where the same thing would occur. Summers around us were just a solid LAN Party.
lmm 3y ago
> Somehow I just don’t see that kind of stuff happening nowadays; sending your kid off to some unknown destination with his PC to sleep in a gym hall with some strangers from “The Internet”. Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both. Parents were sane back then, it's today that they've gone crazy. They watch too much news and keep their kids caged up, and end up doing far more harm than what they're trying to prevent.
- SlightlyLeftPad 3y ago
  The massive irony here is that the internet itself has become a much more dangerous place for kids than itself or going outside ever was. Particularly when it comes to mental health, parents don’t let their kids go out but the same parents put no parental controls or at the very least, screen time limits on their devices.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    I'm happy to report that the internet is still safer than what "going outside" meant for me as a kid. Mostly we were blowing things up or seeing which roofs we could get on. All that freedom was good for my head though, so I'll give you that one.
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      I'll argue that blowing things up and seeing which roofs you can get on are a lot healthier than Facebook.
  - sshine 3y ago
    > the internet itself has become a much more dangerous place for kids There used to be a joke about the Internet: Where men are men, women are men, and kids are FBI agents. It seems that this is no longer true, and with the massive influx of kids, that itself has increased risk. It wouldn't make much sense to be a child predator on the Internet in 1998. There just weren't that many kids.
- 3y ago
hobs 3y ago
Haha I had this exact experience, we showed up for a Halo lan party (the original) and we were 15 and 16 thinking that we'd be driving out to the burbs to play some games with some people our age, we met on a local LAN forum board. We rang the doorbell and an "older" man answered the door, and we were confused and said "uh we're here to see ____" and he was like "That's me." For context all of our lan parties up to this point were us schlepping tube tvs around to various basements of our friends houses, occasionally getting to mooch some pizza off of someone. Instead, we walk into the huge suburban house and there's four rooms with gigantic flat screen televisions setup for 16 player madness and the entire place is filled with adult couples, the men came to game and the women to socialize and cook and have fun. They had an entire table of snacks and drinks and everything you could ever want as a wee gamer. We were so blown away but they were super nice and didn't make us feel too awkward. When the game started they asked us how good we were, "uhh, we beat legendary" - they laughed and put us on the same team for the first round. The second round we were not allowed to play on the same team, turns out the kids can game :) We made long term friends and ended up scrimming and hanging out with people 20 and 30 years our senior, a total blast and yeah, I don't see me hanging out with 16 years today.
- kennyadam 3y ago
  When I was 19, I used to meet up with people of all ages from various torrent trackers (we were all staff from various sites, forums, affiliated 'radio' stations, IRC channels, etc.) and it was awesome. People paid for me to fly to Amsterdam with them to hang out with even more people and I think the oldest was a guy in his 50s, but back then we were like, I don't know, Internet People and that was what we were centered around. I miss those days like crazy now.
Jare 3y ago
> Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both. Back then, I can't imagine parents letting their daughters do that either. The kind of freedom to roam at 12yo that you describe was what allowed me access to people and computers we didn't have the money for; but I've always been very conscious that my sisters would have never been given that kind of opportunity.
- distances 3y ago
  My sisters definitely did have the same kind of freedom I did. Say, my little sister took her first intercontinental flight (with two plane changes I think) alone around age 14.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    I mean, that sounds a bit stressful for her, but eminently possible. Can't say I'd have liked the idea when I was 14, but I was capable of it.
    - freilanzer 3y ago
      I still don't particularly like the idea.
    - distances 3y ago
      Yep not sure if I would have been up for it either at that age. She's always been much more of an adventurer than I would ever want to be.
  - sshine 3y ago
    I took my first 300 km train ride alone at the age of 7. My parents told me the name of the destination train station, and that my grandmother would be waiting on arrival. The train staff knew I was travelling alone and checked up on me a few times and gave me free drinks. Two years later the train stopped being a direct path, so I had to switch trains halfway. I remember all the little unknowns made me very anxious that I'd get lost somewhere. For example, they changed the second departure platform so it didn't match the one on my ticket. And the departure platform was located elsewhere on the train station, not in direct connection with the national lines. When coming back, I remember they'd announce my city as the next stop, and then I'd see these other city names fly by. I remember thinking "They must have forgot to stop!" because I didn't understand that those city names were suburbs of the capital city that I lived in, and that the national train went directly to the train station. 30 years later I still remember all of these. It all worked out fine. This was before mobile phones.

by sshine 3y ago

j45 3y ago

The interesting thing that you point out to me is the indirect mentoring / support from someone ahead of you in tech you received simply based on mutual interests. Sadly there's a lot of segments where juniors want to learn much on their own, often re-learning lessons of the past that could have been put towards more meaningful progress for them in hindsight.

intelVISA 3y ago
Sometimes it is a necessary experience for them.
- j45 3y ago
  Totally. There's plenty of necessary experiences that are shared.
theyinwhy 3y ago
I prefer learning myself as it leads to finding novel solutions.
- j45 3y ago
  First principles learning is critical for sure. Being able to navigate first principles concepts and learning to use them gets to what's novel is more a little quicker.

huytersd 3y ago

This seems specific to your family. My family would never allow that unless they knew the parents of atleast a few people at the place I was sleeping over.

hypercube33 3y ago
In North Branch MN there was an old movie theater with the seats taken out and tables setup - The BattleShack. parents would dump kids there and they'd be there for days or weeks just gaming and hanging out at the Denny's in town. My buddy had a workshop addon to their house where the same thing would occur. Summers around us were just a solid LAN Party.

lmm 3y ago

> Somehow I just don’t see that kind of stuff happening nowadays; sending your kid off to some unknown destination with his PC to sleep in a gym hall with some strangers from “The Internet”. Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both. Parents were sane back then, it's today that they've gone crazy. They watch too much news and keep their kids caged up, and end up doing far more harm than what they're trying to prevent.

SlightlyLeftPad 3y ago
The massive irony here is that the internet itself has become a much more dangerous place for kids than itself or going outside ever was. Particularly when it comes to mental health, parents don’t let their kids go out but the same parents put no parental controls or at the very least, screen time limits on their devices.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I'm happy to report that the internet is still safer than what "going outside" meant for me as a kid. Mostly we were blowing things up or seeing which roofs we could get on. All that freedom was good for my head though, so I'll give you that one.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    I'll argue that blowing things up and seeing which roofs you can get on are a lot healthier than Facebook.
- sshine 3y ago
  > the internet itself has become a much more dangerous place for kids There used to be a joke about the Internet: Where men are men, women are men, and kids are FBI agents. It seems that this is no longer true, and with the massive influx of kids, that itself has increased risk. It wouldn't make much sense to be a child predator on the Internet in 1998. There just weren't that many kids.
3y ago

hobs 3y ago

Haha I had this exact experience, we showed up for a Halo lan party (the original) and we were 15 and 16 thinking that we'd be driving out to the burbs to play some games with some people our age, we met on a local LAN forum board. We rang the doorbell and an "older" man answered the door, and we were confused and said "uh we're here to see ____" and he was like "That's me." For context all of our lan parties up to this point were us schlepping tube tvs around to various basements of our friends houses, occasionally getting to mooch some pizza off of someone. Instead, we walk into the huge suburban house and there's four rooms with gigantic flat screen televisions setup for 16 player madness and the entire place is filled with adult couples, the men came to game and the women to socialize and cook and have fun. They had an entire table of snacks and drinks and everything you could ever want as a wee gamer. We were so blown away but they were super nice and didn't make us feel too awkward. When the game started they asked us how good we were, "uhh, we beat legendary" - they laughed and put us on the same team for the first round. The second round we were not allowed to play on the same team, turns out the kids can game :) We made long term friends and ended up scrimming and hanging out with people 20 and 30 years our senior, a total blast and yeah, I don't see me hanging out with 16 years today.

kennyadam 3y ago
When I was 19, I used to meet up with people of all ages from various torrent trackers (we were all staff from various sites, forums, affiliated 'radio' stations, IRC channels, etc.) and it was awesome. People paid for me to fly to Amsterdam with them to hang out with even more people and I think the oldest was a guy in his 50s, but back then we were like, I don't know, Internet People and that was what we were centered around. I miss those days like crazy now.

Jare 3y ago

> Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both. Back then, I can't imagine parents letting their daughters do that either. The kind of freedom to roam at 12yo that you describe was what allowed me access to people and computers we didn't have the money for; but I've always been very conscious that my sisters would have never been given that kind of opportunity.

distances 3y ago
My sisters definitely did have the same kind of freedom I did. Say, my little sister took her first intercontinental flight (with two plane changes I think) alone around age 14.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  I mean, that sounds a bit stressful for her, but eminently possible. Can't say I'd have liked the idea when I was 14, but I was capable of it.
  - freilanzer 3y ago
    I still don't particularly like the idea.
  - distances 3y ago
    Yep not sure if I would have been up for it either at that age. She's always been much more of an adventurer than I would ever want to be.
- sshine 3y ago
  I took my first 300 km train ride alone at the age of 7. My parents told me the name of the destination train station, and that my grandmother would be waiting on arrival. The train staff knew I was travelling alone and checked up on me a few times and gave me free drinks. Two years later the train stopped being a direct path, so I had to switch trains halfway. I remember all the little unknowns made me very anxious that I'd get lost somewhere. For example, they changed the second departure platform so it didn't match the one on my ticket. And the departure platform was located elsewhere on the train station, not in direct connection with the national lines. When coming back, I remember they'd announce my city as the next stop, and then I'd see these other city names fly by. I remember thinking "They must have forgot to stop!" because I didn't understand that those city names were suburbs of the capital city that I lived in, and that the national train went directly to the train station. 30 years later I still remember all of these. It all worked out fine. This was before mobile phones.