• Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    When I was a tween (or almost) someone developed a beef with a local sysop and started posting, “WE HAD A DEAL!!!” over and over on the BBS’s graffiti wall that you saw at login. It became a local meme and people started posting it everywhere in the local calling zone for no particular reason. It was the first sort of flash event I saw, and a significant development in the local culture I was in, but today that culture has been entirely destroyed, and it’s a weird thing I don’t share with anyone. But it always comes to mind as though it might be relevant, and never is.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      7 days ago

      Becoming a local meme on local internet had to be so much worse than it is today. No gen alpha child will understand the pain of getting dunked on by all 10 of the people that had a computer near you

      • SmokeyDope@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        System Operator. In non-nerd speak, it was the guy who owned and ran the local public fourms site on his computer that you connected to with your computer. Lemmys instance admins are usually sysops for example as they have root/hw access to the computer that the Lemmy instance software runs on.

        This person is talking about an admin of a local fourm site early internet users used before centralized social media like MySpace and Facebook made Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) irrelevant.