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Comment by 01100011 | Hacker News Reader

I'm almost 50 and could say the same except instead of phones and tablets it was console video games and a personal computer with internet access.

Kids definitely have a different(extreme.. worse..) experience today, I'm not going to argue with that. But I think I was 5 when I started going long stretches of the day with no parental involvement and large amounts of device time. When I was 12 I got a modem, and was suddenly exposed to porn, online socializing and trolling, underground culture, pirated games, etc. For large stretches of time it was basically all I did outside of poorly performing at school.

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"Almost 50" and "got a modem at 12yo" doesn't add up...

48yo today means you were 20yo in 1995, so already an adult by the time porn and pirated games were a thing?

Not trying to gotcha, but I'm left with the only possible conclusion: you spent your university years exposed to porn, trolling and pirated games! :-)

It does somewhat add up. I'm 42, and got our first 33.6k modem around 13-14yo. And we definitely weren't the first ones in my relatives.

You know how much trolling, pirated games and porn predates the internet as you may know it? Just take a look at the BBS scene and Usenet... yeah, it may have been very low res titties but alas... ;-)

There were modems in the 70s, you were just connecting to BBSes, not AOL or local dial-up providers. For porn, I'm sure the BBSes had it, but there was also Leisure Suit Larry by 1987 which was widely pirated and known for its unique age verification system:

http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.htm...

In 1987 my grandparents bought me a commodore 128d with a 1200 baud modem at Toys-R-Us. I got online with Q-Link and then discovered BBSes and then quickly discovered underground BBSes.

Around 1990 I started getting on the Internet via a hacked dial-in of a local UC school for which I was eventually caught, charged and did probation for (along with other computer crimes). I had 3(or 3 1/2, I forget) years probation where I was supposed to avoid computers but eventually violated it with a dumb terminal and modem I got cheap(my computers were confiscated when my parents' home was raided).

Thanks for sharing. I wasn't aware underground BBSes in 1987 had much "porn and trolling" to be suddenly exposed to as you describe. But you were an actual hacker, parents house raided etc. These details add weight to your version of events! I on the other hand only wished I could use my commodore for hacking WarGames-style, but you actually lived the movie!

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