Count me as yet another person who would likely not be here, commenting on HN, without discovering BBSes and falling in love with the merging of hacking, designing, and community.

I ran a heavily, heavily modded Renegade board in 412/724 (Pittsburgh) with some good distros into the art and demoscenes in Europe. Nearly every free minute of my life back then was related: drawing ANSI, tracking MODs, trying to figure out how to get Lightboxes to work with Renegade, playing LORD and hanging out with other users from around the Pittsburgh area.

I consider myself incredibly lucky to have been a curious teenager in a time when BBSes were a thing, and the web as we currently know it was born.