in the 80s 'online' was often very local . you learned not to say things you wouldnt say to that persons face because there was every chance you would run into them at some local gathering of users.

I'm pretty sure that I still don't know everything I need to know about online discourse.

By being a part of online discourse as early as 1993 and watching it grow pretty much from inception.

on the internet? it's an on-going process, there is no "everything"

I started in a/s/l? chat rooms, but as social media has evolved, so has the discourse. I think I had to relearn every time I changed platforms.

tumblr

CS 1.6

AOL LOLOL1

By being terminally online since the previous century.

Runescape

Started with online BBS's in the 1980s where you could get kicked off for being a dick (and your phone number banned) but Larry Wall's "rn" for Usenet used to say before every post:

This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.

&totse and IRC mostly

Usenet and IRC, back in the late 90s. Damn I'm getting old.

MMOs and forums.

It wasn't just one place. It wasn't even all online.

AOL 3.0

I'm still learning, despite being around it for over 2 decades at this point.

Alt.flame. iykyk

On MMOs, trying not to sound like a kid, even though I was a kid, so I could join groups of cool people and guilds. Learned a lot of American lingo on Reddit.

The NME (popular British music paper) had a website with a chat room/board that I was active on in the late 90s. I was about 17.

They also gave you free webmail with a @nme.com address, so you felt like a music journalist. Unfortunately, they shut it all down out of the blue in the 00s, with little warning, so I lost my primary email address. Would love to recover all those messages, but they are gone forever.

Over thirty years ago, on TALK.

Online.

The starwars.com forum long before the Disney purchase killed it, then Digg until the v4 update, then Reddit until the APIpocalypse.

So many communities I've seen wrecked by corporate greed. The Fediverse gives me hope for people being able to interact online without having to worry about the enshittification.

I was going to say AIM (AOL), but really it was Yahoo! Games. Specifically Towers with a little bit of Pool mixed in.

Oh man, I am not the primary demographic of lemmy am I?

Discussing online.

Napster chatrooms

Hmmm, I think my gateway drug to interacting with actual Internet strangers vs talking online with people I knew IRL, was probably via StarCraft over dial-up in 1998. RuneScape shortly after for developing actual relationships with people, then WoW owned my soul from its vanilla release through the cata expansion.

Several WoW guilds had their own websites/forums, which eventually got me into forums for other topics, then Reddit, then here.

As many others have said IRC and usenet in the 90's

Thank god I was able to learn on the early days of the internet

4chan taught me that, in a highly uncivilised world, the best thing to do is be kind and keep your dignity. It'll either calm people's spirits or infuriate others, and I enjoy both, lol. Also, words don't have to hurt, especially those from online strangers!

Making as many mistakes, missteps, misunderstandings, misconceptions and misses as possible.

Nexopia and NinjaVideo forums.

Yes, I am Unc and chopped.