Strypey
I was a bit too late to the internet party to get on UseNet. By the time I got regular net access in the late 1990s, email lists ('listservs' in the jargon of the time, or sometimes 'email loops') were the place to be.
I cut my online debating teeth on a well-established anarchist anarchist list, run using the Majordomo software. This was a fantastic resource, including anarchists from a number of countries, and a source of regular news about new ways other activists were using the net.
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Strypey
It was through that anarchist email list that I learned about the plans for an Independent Media Centre for the 1999 protests in Seattle. Along with the accompaning Indymedia site, which became the focus on my media activism for most of the 2000s.
From there I also learned about the Nothingness situationist email lists;
https://www.nothingness.org/about.html
(FYI list links are currently broken, but the page gives a favour)
As well as a bunch of other activist email lists hosted in various places.
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Strypey
A years or 2 into my time on that anarchist email list, some of the links people shared led to a newish service called EGroups, where anyone could start their own email lists;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGroups
It was later bought by Yahoo! and merged with YahooGroups, and a couple of decades later, deleted. My first experience of a startup funded by Venture Capitalists, and the startup lifecycle described in @Rushkoff's 'Throwing Rocks ...', and @aral's talk about unicorns shitting on lawns.
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