I'm definitely a lot closer to three decades online and felt I was arriving late to the party- the completely dramatic, backstabbing chaos party with endless mailing list blow-ups, warring message boards, screaming over stolen website layouts, and everything else. I'm not going to say it was a bad time, but I admit I'm laughing at "close knit community vibe of the early online years" because that absolutely was not a universal experience. I remember it as gleeful chaos to be approached with sharp knives and a stack of floppy discs. Save everything, save often.