BBS Nostalgia
by Wayne Cole
I was sitting around reminiscing with friends the other day about the age of the BBS. I was filled with nostalgia for the days when I would dial into 12 boards every night and spend hours posting. There were threads on any topic that you could possibly come up with and text games for every genre. I remembered the disappointed feeling that would come when I logged on only to find that a topic didn’t have a new reply since my last visit. The BBS community seemed to be about having a sense of belonging more than anything else. You felt like you were a part of something that the every day person had no idea existed.
When you went to a BBS everyone knew your name. It might be a handle, but it was you nonetheless. It didn’t matter how popular you were in the everyday world. You could play games with these people and just generally hang out. There was a mechanism for file sharing so you could post pictures or files that others would find interesting. The best part though was that you could talk about anything you wanted and someone would probably be interested.
The days of the BBS suddenly became numbered, though. With the spread of the internet, new communication technologies started to eat away at the popularity. The idea of a small, local community suddenly gave way to national or international chat rooms. These had none of the small charm of the BBS and were all about instant gratification. My collection of boards slowly shrank from 12 down until there were none left still running. It was sad to see these go, but to be honest by the end they were barely echoes of what they once had been.
As this wave of nostalgia hit me I suddenly came to an obvious conclusion. The BBS didn’t die; it just migrated to internet forums. Internet forums provide all the functionality that a BBS ever did. If you need information on a specific topic there is a forum out there dedicated to it where people will have no problem telling you everything there is to know about that topic, and just like on the old BBSes, some of it will even be accurate. These very forums have proved that local events can still occur.
It seems like such a simple concept, but I for one had never really made that connection until now. So in the new age of Twitter, texting, Facebook, and generally the second age of instant gratification communication technologies, I can’t help but worry about the future of this technology that has taken the place of my beloved BBS. It is important to remember though that the BBS didn’t die — it just evolved. It was my own unwillingness to accept change that kept me from seeing this. If it happens again and someday forums don’t get traffic anymore, there will be another technology to fill that need.
Like you, I miss the old BBS days. There’s something nostalgic about listening to the modem “song” as it connected to somebody else’s home computer running World War IV or Renegade. But as you noted, most of that is still readily available on the internet — quicker and more feature-rich. I can still find nerdy forums and play Legend of the Red Dragon. One of the St. Louis BBSes (Fire Escape) even went on to become a fairly major web community, though the website appears to be outdated and mostly busted now.
The only thing I think is truly gone is the locality of it all. The neat thing about a BBS was that anyone on there was likely within driving distance. Even when I was young and unemployed, meeting up with these people on a semi-regular basis was not out of the question.
Sure, Fear the Boot manages to put on a convention that pulls a pretty good cross-section of our community. But I think it’s almost the exception that proves the rule. There are other internet communities that pull off cons just as big or even much bigger (PAX anyone?), but most people I meet on the internet I simply cannot and will not ever shake hands with.
I wonder if that’s also part of the reason there’s a lot more trolling on the internet than on the BBSes. Yeah, it happened, but courtesy certainly took a hit for the worse when 2400 modems dialing your neighbor got replaced by high-speed taking you across countries and continents. Greater distance = greater anonymity = greater a**hole potential.
I grew up in the post-BBS age and I can’t really fathom what could possibly make BBS’ better than what we have now. The lack of locality represents a great opportunity for, for example, non-natural english speakers to get real use and training of the language.
As for trolling-frequency, part of it might be the incredible difference in the amount of users compared to the BBS days and part might be ascribed to the general feeling that you don’t have to be as formal and courteous on the net anymore, a feeling I can share. After all, you don’t put on a suit every time you go to school*.
*Unless you live in * where formality has not yet been abolished.
If you hanker for the days of BBS, there’s still one of the biggest internet BBS’s in the UK running, just telnet or ssh to mono.org for all your bbs needs. :)
Login to ssh or telnet with username “mono” and you won’t be prompted for a password and then you’ll get the BBS screen where you can login as “guest”. Guests are limited in what they can do though, so go to http://www.mono.org/application.html to get your own free user account.
Here is a quickstart guide if you feel a bit lost: http://www.mono.org/help/general/newtomono.html
Enjoy… ;)
– Pete. (Yes, that’s my username too…)
WWIV is still available these days, as a telnet-based BBS system. Sadly, the documention leads a lot to be desired, so I don’t have a Legend of the Red Dragon or Pimp Wars game running off my server at the moment.
Yeah, those were fun days. Ascii graphic games and navigation by keyboard. I remember getting introduced to it, by an older friend that was in college. It seemed way out there at the time. Since it wasn’t common knowledge and only a small subset of people (even of geeks) used it. After that came browsing the advertising free internet with Mosaic. A big jump for sure. Thanks for the story.
Gorkamorka,
I think the other aspect of the more-trolling, less-friendly internet is that in the BBS days, those people you were writing to on the other end were people in your town…
They might know your friends; they might be friends of friends; you might run into them socially; they weren’t faceless anonymous people who one could be an a**hole at will, because your actions had social consequences in your own life. If you were a jerk, people around you found out you are a jerk. There is a social pressure not to be a total jerk because one could alienate one’s own friends, not just random strangers.
On the net, there are no repercussions for being the biggest jerk on earth. No one knows you; you know no one. Changing your identity is a matter of changing a forum handle (or email address in extreme circumstances).
As for the “why are they were better”, Dan hit the nail on the head. I hear what you’re saying about communicating to a world-wide audience, but the small, local audience for BBSes meant that you got to know the other active users, not just online, but offline as well. I have friends that I’ve known for over 20 years who I first met at 1200 baud. Some of them attended my wedding even though I now live several states away. There just isn’t that sense of close-knit community on internet forums, even location-based web sites don’t seem to be able to gather that kind of community (not around me, at least).
Fear the Boot is the closest thing I’ve found, which is a shame (for me) in the sense that the large part of that community is based in the central U.S. and I’m way out on the East Coast. I’d love to be able to come out to FtC3 and hang out with this awesome group of people, but realistically, it’s not likely to happen.
Hopefully, some of you will be at Origins 2010!
wow… I don’t even know what a BBS is…
one reason why I do hate acronyms…
BBS = Bulletin Board Service
They were online communities that came prior to the popularity and accessibility of the internet. Typically someone local would run the software on their computer and have a modem hooked up to a phone line dedicated to the BBS. You’d dial the number from your own modem, connect, make your posts, and then hang up. The really fancy ones might have 2 – 4 modems so multiple people could be on there at once and chat live.
The ones with multiple modems were great because you were much less likely to get a busy signal.
I remember having to yell out that I was dialing in so don’t pick up the phone. Nothing worse than reaching the end of an hour long download and having someone pick up the phone right before the end.
Keep in mind that back then an hour long download was probably about 800K… probably less!
wow, this brings back memories.. and you pinned it down. we knew who we were online with…. or would at least meet them at some get together, whether or not we liked them was moot, we *had* to look them in the eye at parties or restaurants. of the multi-line boards in dfw we had gatherings at least once a week, often times more.
oh, and wayne… ZmoDem baBy!
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