The first contact with forums was still in school, using Unix to type English. Actually, I understood nothing, but just felt it cool when one after another character appeared on the screen.
After graduation, I discovered Si Fang Li Tong and found that chatting could be like this. Then I developed the first generation of forum chat mode by using :) from IRC.
Then I started to play with news groups and downloaded a short clip of a terrible sports accident. Its clarity couldn't compare with today's, and it was only 10 seconds long. It was the first time I had touched such things, and I threw up for a week. Later, I couldn't log in again. It was said that it violated the national anti-spam regulations.
Finally, CGI came, which coincided with the overall collapse of free personal space. This brought great development opportunities to non-commercial forums. Forums with hundreds of people were considered quite good at that time. Unfortunately, soon Sina and Bihaiyinsha chat rooms lured away countless users. Then I found out that Si Fang Li Tong had suddenly turned into Du Yan.
Leiao came, and emoticons began to be replaced by round little faces. If you accidentally used :P, you would be ridiculed for a long time. Later, I found out that the image sets that could originally only be obtained through IRC and FTP could also be collected through forums, so I had a good laugh for a few days. But the good times didn't last long. I found out that all the pictures had been edited and stamped. A few years later, I found out that this stamp had become famous. During the same period, a cat that accidentally knocked over a mop also became famous.
I finally understood what "874" meant and saw the deterrent power of NetEase News Community. So, I decided to make full use of my own broadband and absolutely not optimize the 1M bandwidth to 56K anymore. After thinking about it, besides movies, there wasn't much else that could sustain such a long-term war.
In those days, people were simple. When someone posted a question about what积分 (points) were, in a forum of 1000 people, more than 2000 replies followed without any spam. Basically, these replies could be compiled into a paper to explain the meaning of points. Then I started earning points according to the instructions. After a long time, I realized that I was not cut out for earning points. FTP download was just a spring dream. Fortunately, HTTP downloads were more common in those days, and download tools were much more professional than today's Flashget.
As online time accumulated, I got to know more friends and found that forums had changed flavor. Although we moved from CGI to PHP and were said to be about to enter the .net era, people hadn't kept up. Forums, which should have been large platforms for discussion, had become source platforms - platforms only for resources. The original forums were unfathomable because people's thoughts were infinite, and discussions were infinite. Now, the forums are clear but lack substance.
Before, it was called following posts, then replying, and now it's called grabbing the sofa or bench...