Before the rise of social networks people used forums to hang out on the internet, and before the internet as we know it even existed,people used Bulletin Board Systems (or BBSes) to communicate. I was never part of a BBS, but I have read Underground, a book by Suelette Dreyfus and Julian Assange about the birth of hacker culture. The first hackers used BBSes to talk to each other on the web, and hacking and technical differences aside, they hung out on the web in the same way my friends and I did on forums.
Forums and BBSes were systems generally provided by an individual so that people could talk to friends and strangers on the internet. You would post a public message, other community members would answer, and discussions would arise. Your value as a member depended on what you posted: as long as you had your own style and the stuff you shared was interesting, people would converse with you.
Unlike social networks, those communities made it easy to be anonymous, because you only needed a nickname and an email address in order to post. Those communities were also more tightly knit and more tribal. If something about one your virtual communities bothered you, you could file a complaint, go somewhere else, or roll a forum of your own.
Life was rough on my teenage years: there were troubles at home, I was in the closet, my classmates and I never clicked. But when I was on the internet I felt that I could be myself without having to suffer for it. Thanks to internet forums I met people who are still with me to this day, and I learned how to code.
My teenage safe havens, however, are now long gone. I used to worry about new generations not knowing about BBSes, or forums, or about how people interacted on the internet before social networks were a thing. Thanks to Digital: A Love Story (Christine Love, 2010) and Guilded Youth (Jim Munroe, 2012), my worries have been put to rest. Continue reading Love in the Time of BBS →
