Ooh it's close; I used IRC back then too. It's Usenet. It was
   the Facebook of its time. It's still around but it's VERY
   archaic. == Yeah, I used mIRC too. Never liked the others. I use
   FB like IRC most of the time. It's the closest thing to 'chat'
   we have nowadays, unless I want to dive into gaming chat rooms
   or Twitch which I don't tongue emoticon == I remember Yahoo
   chat. Had voice too. That stuff is all still around but it's
   hiding in the gaming networks. Now you have mumblechat and one
   or two others, and one of most popular places for a similar
   experience is Steam. They have a pretty sophisticated and
   easy-to-use system. The main difference is that it's tied to
   gaming rather than standing by itself. = Google plus *had*
   public hangouts when they first started. They were pretty
   awesome. I met hundreds of random ppl face to face, 9 in a room.
   Made lots of friends I still have. But of course, there's
   problems - always problems, and they slowly dropped the public
   hangouts and now it's a little more 'friends only' type of
   thing. My early era was PC-Link in 1989-1995. It turned into AOL
   at some point [same company, different names]. I went to two
   conventions for PC-Link, one of them in Allentown PA. Met a few
   hundred ppl.. back in 1991 I think. One dude had Cerebral Palsy
   - never even knew it 'til we met him. But yeah - I think you
   were in the heyday of trolling. == But yeah, I don't worry about
   it. Kids of today will be saying, "Remember Google? Why you kids
   don't know what it was like before your fancy neural implants.
   Why back in my day..." == ikr. the way I look at it: if your
   modem ever made noises and tied up your phone lines, you MIGHT
   be one of the early ones. I started with PC-Link and dialup BBS'
   but to me, the whole 1990s upto about the mid 00s are a good
   range for ppl who will understand the same kind of stuff.   =
   Same here. My first was half duplex 300 bps, then 2400, then
   14.4, then 56.7 and I WAITED SO LONG for something better. So
   much better today tbh. Internet is still too slow for me tongue
   emoticon == 571ll c4n'7 b3l13v3 y0u 607 4 50n6 - all I got was
   this documentary [1]http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/ ... one of
   the guys working on it wanted me to be a part of it but I hated
   the idea of cameras and stuff... I just ran a few dumb bbs'....
   I never actually saw the documentary. I'd much rather have had a
   song to represent that time-frame. == Yeah it's true. I remember
   the first fidonet/internet email gateways. I had internet at
   college already (1990) and used IRC even then... but it wasn't
   'til... umm.. Galacticomm came out with this MEGA multiline
   (very expensive) BBS software that you started to see IRC leave
   the exclusive Internet only world and enter into the BBS' as
   well. It was a nice linkup. Now the DOS folks could chat with
   the college folks... and then the Windows mIRC folks joined in..
   then the BBS began to fade away as Windows 95 turned to
   Windows98 ...and all of the Windows telecom programs were really
   crappy. That kinda killed it really, but the newer Internet
   software like the browsers, mIRC, wsFTP, etc available for
   Windows was *much* easier to use and could do a lot more than
   the old DOS stuff. == Oh you gotta go ipv6-only to find anything
   interesting. It's in such a primitive state still that hardly
   anybody's on it. I hardly ever go on it 'cause I have to
   reconfigure stuff but when I do, there's all sorts of
   interesting gems hiding around there. == Also, look through the
   Internet Archive. They REALLY don't care about copyright and
   they're trying to archive EVERYTHING despite copyright stuff, so
   you can find all kinda of stuff on there. ==
   [2]https://archive.org/details/software They also got some good
   emulators going for some REALLY old school stuff. Also, some guy
   in Germany has Win95 working in a browser that you can go to.
   It's not the same of course - but I think it's pretty awesome
   that people are trying to bring the past into the present as
   much as they can. == yeah, I lost interest in tor really quickly
   too. I'm glad it's there for ppl who need it but I have all the
   software I need right now to do whatever I want for now and Open
   source usually has something for me. ah yeah Twitter. I wrote
   one of the first interfaces for Twitter - the only console based
   one I think - back in 2007.
   [3]https://simplify3.wordpress.com/2006/12/10/hello-world/ I was
   pretty proud of it. Worked great for a few years, but it was
   mostly a programming project 'cause I wanted to get on board
   with the 'new thing'. VMWare is awesome. I have a bunch of stuff
   on an external hard drive I plug in sometimes. Once I ran an
   ancient BBS through the Internet via DOSBox running on a VMWare
   Win98. It was a pain in the ass to set up but it finally worked
   and I had a few friends telnet into it. Did that, hm, last year
   about this time. My internet connection is DSL still. I'm cheap
   and it's serving a 12 person house full of computers, phones,
   gaming devices and stuff just fine. We could go cable but the
   difference isn't worth it yet. One day it will be. == THAT'S
   freakin amazing and no, I didn't know that about the ping. It
   makes a LOT of sense though thinking about how it works,
   especially if it's going through matrix transforms within the
   video card but even without it, yeah - I can see why. THat's my
   mind-blown moment of the day! I always liked setting up meeting
   places for ppl. Last big project in that
   was[4]*http://www.planetminecraft.com/server/kens-142-creative-server/
   running a Minecraft server (from 2012-2014). I started it for my
   nephew but really, I was enjoying it more. 24/7, ended up with
   27,000 unique users which wasn't bad for a 33-user at a time max
   in the game, and it was always pretty full. I made it creative
   and THEY made it roleplaying too... so it was kinda cool having
   this whole mini society on my $400 laptop on Wifi on my back
   porch over DSL. The thing ended up almost etching my HD, so I
   had to shut it down. They still ask me about it sometimes..
   tracking me down on social networks. I make vague promises of
   'someday', but yeah, I'm kind of like the dad in the Lego Movie.
   Oh well tongue emoticon Maybe one day I'll set it up again for
   them. == ooo looks like transhumanism. I try to stay away from
   transhuman stuff. I get WAY too into it when I have. I gotta
   keep my head clear for my own future predictions - but yeah, I
   could easily get hooked on that. [I'm careful with my
   addictions: I get obsessed. A MC server for my 7 yr old nephew
   turned into a huge project that lasted 2 yrs.... a couple of
   Vines one day has grown into 14,000 Vines over 2.5 yrs and
   counting... so yeah, I can see why that site has the pull it
   does!] ==

References

   Visible links
   1. http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbsdocumentary.com%2F&h=SAQHLjTRN
   2. https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2Fsoftware&h=5AQGbyB4S
   3. https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsimplify3.wordpress.com%2F2006%2F12%2F10%2Fhello-world%2F&h=AAQElgW7f
   4. http://www.planetminecraft.com/server/kens-142-creative-server/