SP Vlog: Rambling About BBSes

Randy rambles aimlessly about online friends and BBSes of years gone by.

Deranged Comics can be seen at: http://www.derangedcomics.com/

Randy's webcomic, Something*Positive, can be seen at http://www.somethingpositive.net

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• milholland
• webcomics
• bbses
• bbs
• computers
• ramble

[nikose]

This video made me cry. We lost a young man named "42Petunias" that I chatted with, played online games with, lived close enough I could have visited, and never did.

he committed suicide last year. His birthday was yesterday.

You're my favourite comic to read online, and you always cheer me up. Two suicide comics in a row after his death, and I still laughed. But... any chance of something uplifting tomorrow, even just filler art?

[dmh3000]

"Now I can download porn in a minute"

Nice ending there Randy.

[DamnedEyez]

I messed around with BBSes a little, but not much. My neighbor ran a local one, but at the 1991 GenCon I bought a little SSI/TSR Goldbox online game called Neverwinter Nights and wound up pulled into the Online services world.

Still have that 286/12 in the basement, although the drive controller is shot.

[Holammer]

I dreamt of having one since the C64 days, but I never got into BBSes, mostly because it was prohibitively expensive to use. No flat-rate telephone meant it'd get expensive fast.

I love the beard and I'm green with envy! Just a little bit more and you'll advance from impressive dwarven beard to biblical patriarch.

[atomicgiraffe]

a: I love that you referred to it as beard girth not growth.

b: Personally I think that a friend disappearing on the web is different now because of the transient nature of the web in general. I also think maturity has a lot to do with it. It becomes easier to accept the ebb and flow of friendships online the more you experience them. There are some people I will always wonder about and others whose names I cannot remember. They were fond friendships even if they were fleeting.

[JaceDraccus]

In one of my few ventures into BBSing, I chatted with a guy who lived in the same city. A couple of weeks later, a new kid joined my school. He sat next to me in English, we talked a bit, and it turned out to be the same guy from the BBS.

Most of my dearest friends these days I've met online. I've since met a few face to face, but I had to fly to America to do it.

Met my girlfriend online too, come to that. Thank god she lived in NZ.

[ladyeridan]

Hey Randy? you're good people.  thanks.

[darkicyrose]

Your beard is so magnificent. I imagine that people wanting to touch it is a problem. Do you do something special? Like shampoo it with miracle gro? Mine just gets denser and denser, without getting obviously longer.

[tetsubo57]

I have more friends online than I do out here in the real world.

[HappyKittens]

Online friends is an interesting topic. I made one close online friend, on livejournal actually. He turned out to be a fake. Everyone else? I never made a strong connection to. It makes me jealous, in a way.

I'm sure a lot of the reason you're not as bothered by online friends disappearing is because you have more of them and you're so much busier than you used to be, but I don't blame you for being bothered by it. Thanks for posting though. It was interesting and I enjoyed it!

[AlmightyWatashi]

I was a teenager when BBS's started to die, so I didn't see much of them. But, there's are hours of footage about people who ran them called BBS The Documentary.

Very fun to watch. Nerds! Nerds everywhere!!!