Another day, another burst of new users from Twitter who are kind of confused about this whole “instance” thing. Here’s an analogy that might work for older folks like me:
Each Mastodon instance is a BBS. And they are all connected behind the scenes, kind of like FidoNet or WWIVNet.
We don’t have any door games, though. Sorry.
@anthracite wasn't there something on botsin.space that let you play zork collaboratively?
@enkiv2 I dunno, all I see from there is simple Themed Nonsense bots that I mostly mute...
@anthracite
That's not an unfair assessment of botsin.space, but nothing could be more annoying than finding your entire timeline replaced with somebody else's zork let's play.
@anthracite Been here a few months, but I imagine it working as a peer to peer network, kinda.
also what were the things you mentioned here?
@Azruulei the two “net” things were groups of early 90s BBSs that would call each other up in the middle of the night and swap messages. And “door games”... I’ll loosely sum them up as “character mode proto-MMOs”. Ask Google for more detail.
@anthracite Oh that's explains why I have no idea! before my time haha
@anthracite what's a door game?
@DialMforMara A broad and inaccurate analogy: MMOs from the era of dial-up BBSs.
Google should be able to give you a lot more detail.
@anthracite If we wanted door games we'd go back to FriendFace, lol. (Actually I loved L.O.R.D. and Exitilus growing up - there's a browser port of Exitilus! I'm sure there's one for LORD out there too.)
@zoetropeexplosn gets really stoned
writes a port of drug wars that runs as a toot bot
@anthracite Aw yeah I forgot about Drug Wars, and Barney Splat! where you systematically planned mayhem on the set of Barney and Friends.
@anthracite
Is there any place where a record is kept as to why this is happening? I mean, what is the reason behind each large influx of new Mastodon users?
@Lingondraken Not as far as I know! Usually it seems to be "twitter did another dumb thing".
@anthracite Dang it, now I'm all nostalgic for "Legend of the Red Dragon", as played over a 14.4 kbps modem.
Hrm, probably need to "reskin" the game, though. It'd be better to play as the dragon, than hunt them.
@Phorm every time I make this analogy I wanna kludge up a version of one of the door games that works as a tootbot.
And then I remember how many other projects I have.
@anthracite @Phorm I mean, that might be fun. Just none of the gory ones, okay?
@anthracite I was very much considering renting server space to run a BBS-like environment for a while. One you'd access through a terminal and everything.
But yeah, absolutely encountered the same thing, regarding irons in the fire. Projects are hard.
@anthracite @Phorm door games?
@SpotWeld @anthracite Basically early MMOs that ran on BBS systems. They were primarily text based, and didn't have high concurrent player numbers (maybe two or three others online, if you were on a highly popular and WELL equipped BBS - at least that was the case where I lived). It was a little like a MUD or a MUCK in interface.
Usually they were limited in how much you could do in a day, to kinda force you offline so the phoneline could free up for others.
@anthracite I miss Dope Wars.
@jjg @anthracite I miss The Pit.
@hackerfriendly @anthracite I don’t remember that one but now I’m going to go log on to my favorite telnet bbs...
@anthracite Contemplates Masto doors... 🤔
@hackerfriendly Every time I think of this analogy part of me is tempted to kludge an old door game into a tootbot.
Then I remember how many other projects I have going right now.
@anthracite Yep. Never enough time for the inevitable DOS buffer overflows and other fun quirks.
Still, one can dream of Masto Tradewars, slinging 🍍 and 🍞 to the highest bidder.
@hackerfriendly this planet has a severe shortage of jorts!
@anthracite yeah, because people remember BBSes, right?
I was born in 1996. I know what BBSes were from father's stories and from wikipedia. But I bet 90% of people my age don't.
@Wolf480pl Hey, I *said* it was an analogy for older folks like me; I was born in '71.
I suspect there are probably lessons for this attempt at a distributed, hobbyist-run social network to learn from what those pre-Internet, pre-WWW attempts did right and wrong.
@anthracite oh, stupid me, totally missed "older" when reading your post. Sorry. Guess I gotta learn to read.
@Wolf480pl no worries! ❤
@anthracite tbh, I'm interested to hear what they did right/wrong.
@Wolf480pl So am I, I gottta go watch stuff like http://www.bbsdocumentary.com to refresh my faded memory and hear stories from the sysop side. I was always just a user back then; now I’m running my own damn instance and it’s both exciting and frightening!
@anthracite I see instances as specific forums. Does this make sense?
@anthracite not yet ;)