@blogdiva mists of time... I got hooked on BBSes when I met (age 14?) a sysop from the Dorsai Embassy, and volunteered to manage the Mac software uploads. That was in the mid-80s, and they were a special group of nerds -- some of the first people to offer AIDS information online (at least on the east coast), along with hosting files and forums for many other groups. And they ran a weekly soup kitchen (well, chicken & potatoes) out of Jack's loft in Soho, until it burned and the servers moved to an anodyne basement in LIC.
Then in college ca 1990, I got hooked on bitnet relay, usenet, SunOs 4, gopher, and the rest is more recent history...