In the early 90s, when I exhausted the handful of dial-up BBSes that were local to me in rural #Vermont, I somehow discovered a dial-up library system at a local college that ran #Gopher and #Telnet. From there I found Diku #MUD, perl #MUSH and #ISCABBS. These were my first online communities and I still know people I met in them. The web barely existed and most users were academics and hobbyists, not corporations.

#Mastodon reminds me of those times, before AOL and #dotcoms screwed it all up.