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🤣

In the 90’s the box tones were still going strong.

I hung out on an underground BBS with loads of interesting folks and a mountain of information. I was chatting with a dude in open text one evening, he was just hanging out playing around with his box software and a wardialer (way to rapidly run through phone numbers to find computers and answering machines and other interesting numbers). A noob came in bugging folks about where was all the 3L33t action…

So I posted back to him that if he wanted the dankest of knowledge he was going to have to go through *679-113-4776.

I am reading something or other, and the guy I was chatting with is not around for about a half hour and pops back in with “YOU MFer” and I was all what???

HE dialed up my noob troll and had spent the previous 30 or so minutes explaining to the cops that he wasn’t punking them and didn’t have an emergency.

I told him didn’t think he’d fall for that and he was laughing by then, he just ran with it without thinking. *67 disables “automatic number ID” (but doesn’t work on 911 or 800 numbers, so when it is followed by 911 you look like a sneaky idiot)
911 - self evident
3-4776 just some filler trash numbers 🤣

That was on the old NirvanaNet, my local node was &TOTSE, The Temple Of The Screaming Electron. That node was powered by about a dozen 286’s in a guys closet all pushing sub 56.6Kb modems. Interesting times, whole system filled with arcane knowledge/Deeeeep rabbit holes. I learned mountains there, still have 3 ring binders with stuff I printed out…

I think I still have the bulk of alt2600’s e-zines on 3.5 inch floppy disks.