I actually ran a BBS briefly; it was called A Perfec World, and no one besides me seemed to think that misspelling “perfect” was particularly funny. (I was trying to gently spoof the Zeitgeist — other local boards were called Elysium and El Dorado — but I don’t think anyone really got the joke.) I also had a soft-spot for the BBS cousin, the DDial; I frequented the legendary Point Zer0 Chat (mentioned in Wikipedia’s entry on DDials), though always as a “non” (that is, I never paid the fee to join).

Looking back, I have to say I think Julian over-romanticizes the period just a bit. Some of the really successful boards amounted to the internet writ tiny and reduced to its most adolescent and frivolous core: a raging Mac vs. PC flamewar. There’s a reason the Web killed ’em off.