Most people think of Telnet as "that thing I used to use to remotely access servers." But a few hearty souls are still keeping their Telnet services online — and it's a great way to experience some good old-fashioned time-wasting fun!
Telnet was the internet for me in the early years.
There was a bug at the local university dialup for students and teachers - if you failed to login three times it would drop you to a screen where it told you to disconnect but you could actually telnet from that screen.
I used that to go to a few internet BBS's, and then eventually to MUDs which were early text based multiuser RPGs.