I used Fidonet and IIRC several mail programs like PINE.
I remember going “on-line” with my Tandy Color Computer using an external 300 baud dial-up modem. The service was StarText and it had forums similar to this one and news provided by the Star Telegram.
Later, on a PC, using the Mosaic browser to look at Gopher sites, as there was practically no WWW pages to look at. Those Gopher sites had tons of great info.