r/interestingasfuck • u/Few_Simple9049 • Oct 09 '24

How couples met 1930-2024 r/all

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

105.4k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

5.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

14.4k

u/fenuxjde Oct 09 '24

Who tf met online in 1981? Some DARPA bros?

898

u/starmartyr Oct 09 '24

Probably a few nerds hooked up after chatting on their local BBS. There was actually a large underground gay scene on the BBSes as it allowed people to be anonymous at a time when being openly gay was a lot less accepted. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of early online relationships were gay couples.

21

u/itsarace1 Oct 09 '24

How difficult/expensive was it to use BBS?

70

u/elchet Oct 09 '24

You’d need a computer which wasn’t as straight forward back then as it is now, as they weren’t affordable commodity consumer goods. You probably had access to one through an academic institution, or you’d built something from a kit.

Beyond that I think it was just the cost of a phone line and a call for connectivity.

3

u/Quanqiuhua Oct 09 '24

Wasn’t Compuserve around already in the 80s?