Post #1078137

@cquest @somedude @pluralistic Not eWorld, but in 1989 we had Quantum Link (Q-Link) for Commodore users, which offered Club Caribe. An anecdote: I remember when I was 15, I actually met a girl on Q-Link who was my age and went to school in the same county as me, less than ten miles away... (Looking back, I'm not sure if there was some kind of localized, geographical affinity — like because we dialed into the same bank of Telenet/Tymnet modems or something, we ended up connecting to the same server or whatever — but it seemed *VERY* unlikely at the time that you'd be in a chat room with somebody who lived so close, physically. «shrug») Anyway, I'm also not sure where to draw the line between "IRL" and "virtual" because neither of us could drive, but we would talk on the phone for literally HOURS every day. And once I got my license, we still only ever met _In Person_ like twice before she and her mom moved to another state four years later — so yes, she really *WAS* my age, and really *DID* exist! (Catfishing wasn't really a Thing yet when so few people had modems, and they topped out at 2400 baud...) In retrospect, however, perhaps that was a blessing; she would have been *WAY* out of my league otherwise! 🤓