CC.COM was my first social network experience, complete with avatars where some people used real names, some used fake names, and Dru used dozens of names.
Like the rest of internet, there was some incredibly useful information and some time-sucking garbage. I mostly stayed away from Spray.
We raged on the internet here before other social networks were even invented. Back then, we knew that behind every user name - whether real name or cheesy avatars - was a real person, a climber, with whom we likely shared a lot. I was always surprised at Pub Clubs to see that as much as cc.com seemed like a diverse community, it was almost entirely white, moderately athletic, friendly, dudes who would gladly give you a belay or swap a story over a beer.
Then Social media turned into something else. We've all seen how truly toxic and time-wasting much of it is, how algorithms feed us whatever will keep us engaged, and we've come to understand that tech companies could care less about creating community and are just extracting our data like giant mosquitoes so they can instantly sell it to hordes of other waiting mosquitoes whose goal is simply to separate us from our money. Not to mention bots who aren't even human. There's no satisfaction in arguing online in that enviroment unless you are pathologically deranged or pathetically lonely or both. Sigh.
Spray was something here because it was actual people with stuff in common in a virtual mosh pit. Them's were the good old days.