The Cellar - View Single Post

breakingnews · 02-25-2005, 08:29 AM

I touched on this in a message to another forum. The thread, "Classified Information," was about aspects of our lives which we lie about.

The crux of my post was the fact that many people do not know how much of a web nerd I am. I still have friends, some of whom I've met IRL, from the inordinate amount of time I spent on IRC and on random BBS boards. I learned HTML and had a Web site up and running before most of my peers even knew what the Internet was and its purpose (porn, porn, porn). I briefly was into multiplayer games and clans and all that nonsense. About 95% of funny stuff I circulate comes from the several forums where I lurk, yet I usually tell people that "a friend e-mailed it to me." I have a hard time admitting that I've dated through Craigslist and Friendster.

You folks here understand and think it's no big deal, but with my friends, this kind of stuff just doesn't jibe. It's weird and hard to explain, considering how much time my friends and I spend online chatting with each other and looking at ridiculous Web sites. But embracing this kind of dialogue in this sort of community is way off the radar of most people. My point is that these forums are the new coffee shops, the new place to learn about what's going on in the world and discovering things both on- and offline.

This phenomenon is extremely odd among my college friends. At Emory we used FirstClass Client, which is more or less a BBS with a GUI. I met many of my friends through random conferences created by people I knew (via numerous, "Oh, you're going to that party? We should meet," messages).

02-25-2005, 08:29 AM	#5
breakingnews Q_Q Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: somewhere in between Posts: 995	I touched on this in a message to another forum. The thread, "Classified Information," was about aspects of our lives which we lie about. The crux of my post was the fact that many people do not know how much of a web nerd I am. I still have friends, some of whom I've met IRL, from the inordinate amount of time I spent on IRC and on random BBS boards. I learned HTML and had a Web site up and running before most of my peers even knew what the Internet was and its purpose (porn, porn, porn). I briefly was into multiplayer games and clans and all that nonsense. About 95% of funny stuff I circulate comes from the several forums where I lurk, yet I usually tell people that "a friend e-mailed it to me." I have a hard time admitting that I've dated through Craigslist and Friendster. You folks here understand and think it's no big deal, but with my friends, this kind of stuff just doesn't jibe. It's weird and hard to explain, considering how much time my friends and I spend online chatting with each other and looking at ridiculous Web sites. But embracing this kind of dialogue in this sort of community is way off the radar of most people. My point is that these forums are the new coffee shops, the new place to learn about what's going on in the world and discovering things both on- and offline. This phenomenon is extremely odd among my college friends. At Emory we used FirstClass Client, which is more or less a BBS with a GUI. I met many of my friends through random conferences created by people I knew (via numerous, "Oh, you're going to that party? We should meet," messages).