Old, weird, and alternative online spaces

[Sofly]

Oh hey hi

When i mention "online space", you probably have a clear idea of what that could possibly mean; Twitter is an online space, so is youtube, and facebook, and this very forum and the many others out there, but i'm sure you probably know there's more to it

However, when i talk about "online space" i'm not necessarily talking about websites, i want to dedicate this thread to the probably not that numerous spaces that preceded even the oldest of websites, and i feel there's no better place to begin than with the BBS

BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) began in the 80's, when a blizzard in California inspired a computer club to think of a way of communicating using their computers, the solution?, using the Telnet protocol and a bit of creativity to create a virtual Bulletin Board where people could post what they needed and communicate with each other

Over time, that primitive technology evolved, incorporating instant messaging, e-mail, and even games; all accompanied with amazing ANSI art. Sadly, as you can imagine, once the web, e-mail, and the likes became more available to the average person, BBSes fell into obscurity, although you can still visit some with a client such as SyncTERM and a directory such as the Telnet BBS guide

If you want to learn more about BBSes i highly recommend the Back To the BBS documentary by Al's geek lab, it's really in-depth and interesting

Is there any other example of a weird or niche online space you want to talk about?, personally i want to investigate more about Gopher and Gemini, but if you have any other examples, feel free to talk about them 

[BinaryDigit]

Ohh thank you for this. I discovered the web in the late 90s and never experienced the BBS. I'm going to watch this series. 

I used to love IRC, which is still around today - many folks going back to it or bridging it with discord, matrix, and slack. But yeah when I think 'old online space" I always think of IRC <3 I have a slack channel going with 3-4 users which all of us who used to chat in the same IRC channel back in the early 2000s! We all finally met in New Zealand back in 2018 or so

[Numberedpaws]

One thing I used to love exploring was old MUCK/MUD type chats through telnet and such. Last I checked FurryMUCK was still active now. I haven't checked it in ages but I would just load onto it through an app (since I didn't quite understand the desktop setup)

All of it is done through your desktop terminal. It's just really old style rp and hangouts. You could decorate a room, create character profiles, create dungeons, and build worlds all through text and commands. Fun stuff.

[Memory]

[removed by author]

[doomvega]

Howdy howdy!! I found someone's BBS through Cohost. It's hosted on Neocities too!!

[invader_gvim]

Howdy howdy!! I found someone's BBS through Cohost. It's hosted on Neocities too!!

Thanks for that I found a new place I can live on besides Melon Land. Awesome!                                      

[moonunions]

this is super interesting, thanks for all the info!

[Yaya]

so far, i have:

• p2pc: a peer-to-peer instant messaging protocol
• chat2me: an alternative to places like discord, where you chat with other folks through a centralized server
• justtext (wip - this is what im currently working on :D): a web protocol inspired by the likes of spartan, gemini and gopher that serves the commonmark flavor of markdown documents

I'd be super interested in these! I always think how it would be great to have my own chat platform/server for me and my friends.

[Memory]

[removed by author]

[PurpleHello98]

I wasn't around to experience any of these, really, but I do fondly remember the Telnet ASCII art recreation of Star Wars that I used to watch in the Windows command prompt!

[Misanthropic Monster™]

One thing I used to love exploring was old MUCK/MUD type chats through telnet and such. Last I checked FurryMUCK was still active now. I haven't checked it in ages but I would just load onto it through an app (since I didn't quite understand the desktop setup)

All of it is done through your desktop terminal. It's just really old style rp and hangouts. You could decorate a room, create character profiles, create dungeons, and build worlds all through text and commands. Fun stuff.

omg I was addicted to MUCKs and MUDs - specifically my first experience with anything like that was the Discworld MUD! I used to spend hours and hours playing in there, also Kingdom of Namir was another one. I loved stuff like that.

Ans The Napping Cat's Dream. Gosh, I miss the days of text based RP.

[grubbyfox]

Haha I used to love to like, write text based RP! Had a whole slew of forums I would trawl in the late summer nights in my teens, writing in roleplays. Ohh man, those were the days.
(But those pages are defunct)

I remember there was an old The Burbs (the movie) BBS? I think it was almost dead/defunct when I was looking at it, because there were forums when I started going online. Like EZboard, invisionboard? +++ all those.)

But I remember the BBS setup was kinda chaotic, yet understandable.

My uncle used to chat with people on IRC, just random folks he met online, and there was also another software - Powow maybe it was called? One of those super early 90s chatting programs that also allowed video calls. Cause I remember he used a webcam and it was mind blowing lol.