In the east bay (primarily - Contra Costa County, but there was an offshoot (maybe two) down towards Dublin/San Ramon), there was a multi-line chat BBS known as Popnet. The main office was in Walnut Creek, socials were a regular thing, online chat and games were an important part of socializing. It was custom written software by the father/son team. If I recall rightly, they even had an online version of Diplomacy (the board game). I still have friends from that era.

It's interesting to see Dementia was based off of WWIV. The WWIV BBS software was well written and easy to update/customize/modify. TML, Innerdot, and others were amongst those that ran it in the 80s to early 90s.

Interestingly enough, I actually feel like the BBS days did more to foster social interaction than "social networks" now. They were (unless warez sites) hyper local. In the east bay, we had regular pick up tackle football games (going from several a year in the early days on 1/x year in the 2000s) that ran for around (maybe more than) 20 years. Many of those involved are still friends.