<story><title>The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party</title><url>https://aftermath.site/lan-party-merritt-k-book-read-only-memory-rom</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sshine</author><text>I remember showing up at my first LAN party, ~20 years younger than my online friends. They just couldn’t believe I was actually 13. They were really nice. One woman had a son my age that I went to a music festival with when I was 20. Another got me my first job as a programmer.&lt;p&gt;Somehow I just don’t see that kind of stuff happening nowadays; sending your kid off to some unknown destination with his PC to sleep in a gym hall with some strangers from “The Internet”. Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hobs</author><text>Haha I had this exact experience, we showed up for a Halo lan party (the original) and we were 15 and 16 thinking that we&amp;#x27;d be driving out to the burbs to play some games with some people our age, we met on a local LAN forum board.&lt;p&gt;We rang the doorbell and an &amp;quot;older&amp;quot; man answered the door, and we were confused and said &amp;quot;uh we&amp;#x27;re here to see ____&amp;quot; and he was like &amp;quot;That&amp;#x27;s me.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;For context all of our lan parties up to this point were us schlepping tube tvs around to various basements of our friends houses, occasionally getting to mooch some pizza off of someone.&lt;p&gt;Instead, we walk into the huge suburban house and there&amp;#x27;s four rooms with gigantic flat screen televisions setup for 16 player madness and the entire place is filled with adult couples, the men came to game and the women to socialize and cook and have fun.&lt;p&gt;They had an entire table of snacks and drinks and everything you could ever want as a wee gamer.&lt;p&gt;We were so blown away but they were super nice and didn&amp;#x27;t make us feel too awkward. When the game started they asked us how good we were, &amp;quot;uhh, we beat legendary&amp;quot; - they laughed and put us on the same team for the first round.&lt;p&gt;The second round we were not allowed to play on the same team, turns out the kids can game :)&lt;p&gt;We made long term friends and ended up scrimming and hanging out with people 20 and 30 years our senior, a total blast and yeah, I don&amp;#x27;t see me hanging out with 16 years today.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Rise and Fall of the LAN Party</title><url>https://aftermath.site/lan-party-merritt-k-book-read-only-memory-rom</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sshine</author><text>I remember showing up at my first LAN party, ~20 years younger than my online friends. They just couldn’t believe I was actually 13. They were really nice. One woman had a son my age that I went to a music festival with when I was 20. Another got me my first job as a programmer.&lt;p&gt;Somehow I just don’t see that kind of stuff happening nowadays; sending your kid off to some unknown destination with his PC to sleep in a gym hall with some strangers from “The Internet”. Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lmm</author><text>&amp;gt; Somehow I just don’t see that kind of stuff happening nowadays; sending your kid off to some unknown destination with his PC to sleep in a gym hall with some strangers from “The Internet”. Either the world was smaller and simpler back then, or my parents were crazy, or both.&lt;p&gt;Parents were sane back then, it&amp;#x27;s today that they&amp;#x27;ve gone crazy. They watch too much news and keep their kids caged up, and end up doing far more harm than what they&amp;#x27;re trying to prevent.</text></comment>