Back in University in the mid 90s, a large chunk of my social life was built around “the BBS”. It was a bulletin board system for Vic students (and ex-students), and it was a virtual hangout for an awful lot of cool and interesting folk. An important element that sets it apart from every other virtual community I’ve come across was the amount of crossover into real life – most people on it knew most other people on it in the real world and BBS parties were commonplace.
I loved the BBS. I met many wonderful people, had many preconceptions challenged, had my first and only “e-romance”, was introduced to The Onion, and learned lessons about online discourse that have served me well as the entire world has gone digital…
…but this isn’t a general nostalgia trip. This is about something specific.
Somewhere along the line, the BBS ended up celebrating Hug Day. This was basically an excuse for going around and hugging other BBS members in real life, because Hugs Are Good. Somehow or other I became the flagwaver for hug day in the BBS’s latter days (the BBS was shut down for good in 99 – or 2000? – a shadow of its former self due to member attrition and the rise of so many other avenues for online entertainment and community).
Anyway, today I’m thinking about hug day, and that excuses to hug other human beings are far too infrequent. So, promise me that today you’ll go out and hug someone you normally wouldn’t hug. Your excuse can be this: “I promised Morgan.”
And you wouldn’t want to let me down, would you?
(I can’t remember the time of year in which Hug Day fell – late in semester 1 I think. Doesn’t matter much. Every day is Hug Day!)
9 thoughts on “Hug Day”
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Give yourself a BIG virtual or real hug from us!
WOuldn’t people be in danger of hugging someone they wouldn’t normally and find that that person considers it inappropriate or even sexual harassment? I think if you’re going to hug someone, it should be someone you know won’t mind. Anyway, ‘Hug Day’ is generally a bit of a wet, trite concept.
Warning, kiddies: Hug Day may malfunction if applied without common sense!
(And if anyone knows a better way than Hug Day of promoting hugs in a contact-phobic society like ours, they’re welcome to write their own silly blog entry about it.)
Hugs were given out as ordered. Admitedly only to people I actually at least know. 🙂
A few years ago at the American Football here in Scotland they used to do “Hug A German” when fans came over from Frankfurt and Dusseldorf.
The guys on stage would urge everyone in the crowd to find a visiting fan and give them a friendly hug.
It was a great way for making friends and breaking down barriers.
Gregor
Really must talk to you about seeing some American Football before the season’s over. Are there any more home games? *goes off to search the net*
There is a game this Sunday, but the games then move to Saturdays.
Sat 29 May, 2 pm Hampden Park, Glasgow, versus Berlin Thunder. Entertainment by Speedway (who did cover of Genie in a Bottle).
Sat 5 June, 2 pm Hampden Park, Glasgow, versus Cologne Centurions. Entertainment by Darius (of Pop Idol fame).
I’m heading through to the June 5 game with folks from work. Maybe you could do that one? Train tickets to Glasgow work out cheaper when travelling in groups of 3 or 4 (something like £5 return). Game tickets are £8 adult, but £4 concessions (students).
Gregor
Whoo-wee, that brings back memories. The BBS was just about my only form of social life back then. I even managed to log in for the final moments despite being on a different continent. For the record, that was 01 December 1999, at what must have been 10:12PM in NZ.
(Boring piece of history). Call me boring, but I remember the final days of the BBS as I was there on the admin side of things. Yep, December 1999 was the swan-song for the BBS. Central IT (as Victoria University of Wellington’s central computing organisation was known then) pulled the plug on the server “puketea” that housed the BBS on the basis that the server was non-Y2K compliant. (Also, there was a slow movement at the time to provide computing facilities to a great range of students. Don’t get me started on the legacy situation).
The code running said BBS had been cobbled together by a gentleman who was a VUW institution, Alex Heatley, aka “The Troll”. (I saw REAMS of raw code that had been printed out on a line-printer dot matrix[!!!], and it was certainly beyond my ken). Herr Heatley had been part of Information Technology Services (as Central IT had been branded prior to 1998 and would be called again) immediately before the Great Restructuring of 1997. This was when VUW’s Senior Management Group brought in consultants who recommended destroying VUW’s knowledge base and outsourcing all services because it was cheaper. But that’s another story (I’m STILL on medication from the fallout).
If memory serves, Senor Heatley had left VUW (he was fed up, and was essentially been paid off with a very good exit package), so there was no-one to actually make the server fly into the next century. Consequently, it was caught up in the pre-Y2K “scorched earth” policy so prevalent at the time.
But the BBS did not go quietly into the night.
I mainly remember the server’s decommissioning because Micheal Upton (aka muso Jet Jaguar), then-employee of Central IT, had wangled himself administrator rights to puketea, and sat there in the office “kill-9″ing BBS users to his heart’s delight. A trick that gave us all great joy was to send the message “Not like this… Not like this” (cf. Switch’s demise in “The Matrix”) to a chosen user/victim, and then “boot” (i.e. forcibly log them out remotely) them from the BBS. Fully in on the joke, the user would then log back in and attempt to write a comeback message before being booted again. Ah, such heady pre-Millennial daze!
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
The server itself was cycled back into the organisation’s equipment pool (and most likely cannibalised for parts). I continued to work at ITS/Central IT/ITS until April 2001, when I buggered off overseas for a bit. Michael Upton became my boss, later went to work for another company and now resides in Oz (visit him at http://www.nonwrestler.com) And I’ve taken up quite enough space!