I am a fannish contemporary (I started on my first mailing list, which I found on gopher in late 1993), so this is just a wonderful reminiscence and I thank you for that.
I not-so-fondly remember getting slapped on the wrist by a mailing list mod for blowing the 100Kb daily posting limit (with 102Kb; didn't factor in the headers when doing my own pre-posting tonnage check). Such a strange concept that must seem now.
[I had a Tandy 1000 with no hard drive (booting from DOS floppy!) that I used into the mid-1990s. Now I've got a 1TB portable external drive that runs on USB power. Still blows my mind. ]
Also thank you (sincerely) for making me feel like the interwebs version of Clint Eastwood in Grand Turino with the sitting on my virtual front porch with a Garand in my hand yelling at the kids to get off my damned lawn. Because I haven't quite adapted to the world of +1s and kudos and the echo chamber that is twitter and any other medium where the signal to noise ratio is so... off and fannish interpersonal communication is so casual.
I have feedback saved from the late 1990s and early aughts because they were so long and thoughtful -- the product of however long spent offline reading what I'd written and considering what to say before taking the time to get online to send it. I still am grateful for every bit of feedback now, mind, but it's been a long time since "I liked this!" was not the norm.
... also, the ASCII art. Because oh, yeah. A skill I never mastered.
Anyway, this is awesome and thank you for taking the time to write it.
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I not-so-fondly remember getting slapped on the wrist by a mailing list mod for blowing the 100Kb daily posting limit (with 102Kb; didn't factor in the headers when doing my own pre-posting tonnage check). Such a strange concept that must seem now.
[I had a Tandy 1000 with no hard drive (booting from DOS floppy!) that I used into the mid-1990s. Now I've got a 1TB portable external drive that runs on USB power. Still blows my mind. ]
Also thank you (sincerely) for making me feel like the interwebs version of Clint Eastwood in Grand Turino with the sitting on my virtual front porch with a Garand in my hand yelling at the kids to get off my damned lawn. Because I haven't quite adapted to the world of +1s and kudos and the echo chamber that is twitter and any other medium where the signal to noise ratio is so... off and fannish interpersonal communication is so casual.
I have feedback saved from the late 1990s and early aughts because they were so long and thoughtful -- the product of however long spent offline reading what I'd written and considering what to say before taking the time to get online to send it. I still am grateful for every bit of feedback now, mind, but it's been a long time since "I liked this!" was not the norm.
... also, the ASCII art. Because oh, yeah. A skill I never mastered.
Anyway, this is awesome and thank you for taking the time to write it.