Anyone here used to be on HackForums? I lived on there from 2011-2013/4... was pretty young back then but I learned so much and attribute it to getting to the spot i'm at now. I remember being so obsessed about "rep" on there, at one point I hit over 1k and it was like a huge achievement for me lol. Seems like that was the precursor to "followers" on X/Insta/whatever. Looking back, it wasn't the best place for a kid to be either, but seems I turned out fine. I really do miss forums and I have found myself looking for a new community like that to join lately.
If I recall correctly, I was obsessed with the PBS show "Cyberchase" and had Googled the main antagonists name "Hacker" which lead to me HackForums.
It ended up being a very significant influence on my computing career!
Haha that's a great intro to it. I remember very clearly I was obsessed with minecraft griefing/team Avolition at the time and found it to ask if someone could make me a hacked minecraft client for my first thread (yikes). Wasn't a great intro to the community for me but ended up staying after that. Also was very significant to my computing career, glad I was on it. I think that era of the internet was very special and I miss it dearly. Also seems like back in 2015 or something someone somehow got into my account and Omni deleted it. Sad.