I ran a BBS in the 90s, nothing big but it had a small local community, some of them just users (lusers) and some of the sysops of other boards. I only had one phone line but call waiting would just kick the user off if I got a call. It was really easy to one up, I was running Renegade but there were quite a few different systems that you just basically turn on and you're up. I spent way too much time customizing each menu with ANSI art for each menu and trying to pimp out the UX. There were multiplayer games and file boards and message boards and you could live-chat with the sysop or other users if the board had multiple phone lines. My buddy called long distance to Kansas to some warez board to download a paint program and ran up a huge phone bill. It was magical and so much fun. Internet still has not achieved that kind of decentralized p2p in the mainstream. Plug a Raspberry Pi into your cable modem and build your own little board, give access to whoever you want. Would be pretty cool to me, but I don't know if I'm just old and nostalgic or if anybody else would actually want to do it. But yeah, wild wild west was the best.

What I feel the most sadness for is that I will never be able to share with my kids the magic of 90s internet. It feels like the classic bluegrass song "Old Home Place". The place I came from is gone and it is irreparable. The internet was a pristine wonder that is now a dilapidated strip mall.

Perhaps you’re not fully appreciating the 2020s right now?

I regret selling my multiline BBS instead of pivoting to dialup ISP, but it was pretty clear that BBSs were not going to “survive” after 96 or so.

Ran them since the early 80s and really loved the “online communities” we had. Difficult to recapture that experience in today’s environs.

What exactly would you have done differently to appreciate the magic?

Most BBSs can be accessed by telnet now.

What's stopping you?