Gregory's Server@ajroach42 @neilhimself Mastodon reminds me of the days when I spent hours entering ASCII to make a pretty BBS on an old 8086 that connected to others over landline with a 300 baud modem. That is not a critique. It is a love letter. Those days, we used computers to connect humans — not to market them or to them. It was about sharing information and authentic conversations. I can hear the soul of the internet again here and it is beautiful.
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@erinleary @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself Time for a speed-run through the Usenet Cabal, Fight-O-Net, the Morris Worm, the Green Card Lawyers, IRC k-lines, and all that? I am here for all that. @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself right!?!?! I loved the bbs i ran. Wildcat i think it was called! I did NOT love 300 baud @DMSCreations The advance planning was tough — had to stay busy waiting for the page to load over the landline and pray no one needed to use the phone. @mimibadass omg. Call waiting!!! Lol. I would get sooo mad. Hahaha Hubby called the modem connect sound the musarra mating call because when someone connected to the bbs id drop everything and go see who was visiting @DMSCreations @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself The first useful, as an author, port for me on the Internet was GEnie - that network was huge and pretty much did what newer ones do, but slower. @DMSCreations @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself Same time frame as COMPUSERVE and the AOL tribe. I still have a sealed AOL disk to load it and sign on :) 3.5" @DavidNiallWilson @DMSCreations @ajroach42 @neilhimself Oh my. I had forgotten all about GEnie. Is this old age setting in? @mimibadass @DMSCreations @ajroach42 @neilhimself Lol. I sold my Star Trek novel because I happened to be in an SFWA forum on GEnie when John Ordover announced the Voyager novels. I remember, also, the day I made a 2400 baud connection directly to Larry Segriff and sent my Werewolf story - and had an acceptance within an hour. That was still the days of sending in manila envelopes with the SASE for replies. Game changer. @DavidNiallWilson @DMSCreations @ajroach42 @neilhimself It is deliciously exciting being here for this. Those of us old enough to remember the birth pangs of the Internet and it’s awkward half-sibling, Social Media, can’t help feeling like we’re reliving those days — only we are wiser. I am praying this version keeps space for us weirdlings instead of letting the homogeneous army of influencers paint it all gray and shiplap the hell out of it. @mimibadass @DMSCreations @ajroach42 @neilhimself Same. ... I was also on Twitter from nearly the beginning, ended up being reported and banned for an innocuous post and had to start over. It's way too much sometimes. @DavidNiallWilson I am personally excited to start over here. Elsewhere in my life? Not so much. But I am and will and will have to again and again. That’s the essence of living. The trick is coming back stronger each time. You seem to have that part down. @mimibadass Yep. Was late 2021 when I realized I could still fix my writing career, but it means starting as if I was no one. The only advantage is, I've been writing a long time and I can do it... so that's working out slowly. Very humbling though. @DavidNiallWilson I’m in a rebuilding phase, too, having been devastated by Google’s algorithm for a second time. It’s horrifying at first, but then you realize it’s like the universe shouting at you. I’m still decoding the message — but I’m no longer shouting into the void. I’m listening. What’s it telling you? @mimibadass It's telling me that there was a tipping point I missed, where the most important writing I'd done was older than the readers I needed... if they don't remember me for all of that, it's time to create something even more memorable. @mimibadass Already doing it. Have sold several stories this summer, have a novella with one publisher and a commission for another, and a novel nearly done. My new collection is due in January. @DavidNiallWilson @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself 2400 baud is what i ran.. @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself I think it would behoove us to remember that the old internet that you're reminiscing over was stolen from us. And the same thing will happen to the fediverse if we don't make an effort to keep it this way. I don't know how to prevent a gradual corporate takeover of the fediverse, but I'm ready to help however I can. @astonedape @ajroach42 @neilhimself @mimibadass It comes down to the conscious ding out of our time and attention. Promote and engage in real human connection. Ignore and block the bots. Do not feed the trolls. Withhold your time and attention from corporations seeking to monetize or market this space. These were the rules before, but we kept making exceptions. We are smarter now. We know the pitfalls. Starve the negative. Feed the positive. Be a connector not a consumer. @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself I really appreciate this framing. I'm enjoying the sense that people are here out of curiosity and a desire to explore, rather than simply to promote something or gain followers. ❤️ @siobhyb @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself I have yet to see an account on social media that was just there to promote something that manated to do so successfully. Here for people first. @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself And no screeching modem sounds or taking a nap while you wait for stuff to download lol @mimibadass @neilhimself @ajroach42 and BBSes are still around, isn’t that cool? I’ve connected to a few over the years.  @mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself I ❤️ old school BBS's, and 🍺 this reference. To think you had to dial up another BBS to converse, not just 'toot'. @noahfence (There’s a hiccup in the ether, so my previous Toot may or may not have gone through.) 🍻 @mimibadass No, it came through quickly. I'm impressed with the federation of messaging on this. @noahfence No, no. I’d written one about how we’d put a load of wash on or take the dog outside while waiting for a BBS to load. Now we lose our shit if a site takes longer than 0.5s to first interaction. “Progress.” @mimibadass Crap, now I'm sorry I missed it. I'd also spent a few dozen hours crafting ASCII menus for a dial-up BBS back in 1989 (?), and was trying to remember the name of software I was using to run it on my Macintosh SE. @noahfence I don’t remember what I used, either. Mine was on an IBM 8086. That thing kept my apartment warm all winter (and summer). |
@mimibadass @ajroach42 @neilhimself I was saying something similar to my youngest last night, thinking of the early days of distributed computing. Everything old is new again.