Textfiles, intended to be transferred from BBS to BBS and user to user, were the longer-lasting legacy of the 1980's, but a much more fluid portion of the boards was the true lifeblood of the culture: the messages. Every BBS has a number of message bases where users could post about whatever they thought to discuss; debates, rag wars, advertisements, and boasts all played out the same dramas all over the country and the world. When you logged onto a BBS, and started reading the bases you had access to, you could get a sense, almost immediately, of what the "character" of the board was. Some were dictatorships, some were insane asylums, some were office buildings.
In the files below, you will get a glimpse of these wonderous worlds that affected mine and others' lives, and the steady stream of mind-to-mind communication that shot out of a thousand nighttime modems.
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Description of the Textfile |