Teenage me in 1994 trying to combine helpfulness and knowitallness. Some things never change.
I hope Rudy got that Ultrastar and other cool stuff too.
And I was SOOO close to truly being a part of the original hordes of eternal September, but I was really about 9-12 months too late.
I was fascinated by Usenet, having grown up so isolated, but I was too scared to post. I was at university, and I think my biggest fear was that fellow students there would see my posts and take them as an opportunity to bully me.
I was, and still am, very introverted and, around people I don’t know well, very reserved as well. I found that first AOL and USENET, and then the web provided a safer space, where just that veneer of anonymity was enough of an excuse to engage more readily, and with people whom I knew, based on the literal names of the communities, would share at least one interest, LOL.
Glad to see you eventually found avenues for self-expression.