[TalonDJ]

But by way of edumacatin': BBS stands for "bulletin board system". It's what forums like FR did in the days before the web. Each user had to dial in on a modem directly to the BBS server machine. BBS servers could handle maybe 2 to 8 to 24 to 48 or whatever simultaneous connections, depending on how much they wanted to spend. People could post messages and others would reply... and so on and so on...

It is interesting that as much as things change the basics of what works in human communication does not change that much. A posting forum like this is more or less a BBS, from the human communication format side it is the same.

[HairOfTheDog]

From my memory, it seemed nearly everyone behaved really badly on BBS's. It might be because I was young and behaving badly, but I wasn't the only one... it's like the whole country was a teenager, experimenting with the idea of anonymity, and testing the boundaries of not having to behave.

Kids still go through that faze... teenagers still troll until they learn there is better fun to be had by being social, rather than antisocial, but I think in the early days, everyone was learning that at once.