Flutterby™! : Nostalgia for a certain squeal and hiss

On the Media: TL;DR Episode #6: Ghost Town is about M-Net, a dial-up BBS that's still running. It made me think about the awesomeness that was The Ghost Ship East:

YOU'VE BEEN SITTING IN FRONT OF YOUR TERMINAL NOT DOING MUCH OF ANYTHING WHEN SOMETHING LEADS YOU TO CALL A NUMBER ON THE 775 EXCHANGE. YOUR MIND, WHICH IS WEAKENED FROM AN OVERDOSE OF COCA COLA AND FRITOS, GIVES IN TO THE OVERWHELMING URGE. YOUR TRUSTY MODEM CONNECTS, ALL OF A SUDDEN YOUR BEING IS ENVELOPED BY THE TERMINAL AND YOU BECOME PART OF ITS ELECTRONIC MORASS. YOU SCREAM, BUT ITS HOPELESS........ THE FUN'S ONLY STARTING. WELCOME TO MONGO'S T H E G H O S T S H I P E A S T

(Of course you have to imagine that appearing on a TI Silent700 thermal printer, where the paper roll has been around long enough that it's faded from the previous session and is being re-used, at 300 baud). And then, of course, the later FidoNet years, in which I ran the "point" 1:362/101.2, and later 1:362/1203 aka "The Society of Independent People".

We've lost something in the grand march of progress that is the Internet...