Which brings me to what nonplayers don’t get about online social-networking: it’s much less a walk on life’s wild side than it is a game like backgammon or  that ’70s favorite  Stratego. Successfully “playing the computer,” as we used to call it, requires a set of skills: social intuition, inventive self-presentation, speedy and clever writing, discretion, intricate etiquette, self-protection. Eventually you get a little finesse: you stop saying you’re 18, and you snub people who ask for measurements. You pride yourself on being able to find cool people, avoid jerks and not make dumb mistakes like disclosing too much, opening spam, talking to impostors and replying to all instead of to sender.

The best part of Conference XYZ was talking about adult stuff  etymology and lacrosse and Ronald Reagan  instead of being dismissed as too young. The worst part was the head games: the people who pretended they weren’t who they were and tried to make you say, “I’d love to kiss you,” so they could make fun of you. Your prowess as a player lay largely in how infrequently you were fooled, but everyone got fooled sometimes.

In 1983, I weathered jokes from my friends (“desperado!”) for going on a date with someone I met online. He was a freshman at Dartmouth, and I was 14, as he well knew, since we’d been talking frankly for months online. We met at a bonfire, wrapped in ski jackets and surrounded by my friends, who whispered to me that he seemed great. He kissed me that night, and we started dating, a little bit, no computers involved. Conference XYZ pretty much folded in 1986, but by then I was over it, like an easy game  tic-tac-toe or a search-a-word. Anyway, I’d been kissed, at last, which had never happened when I sat alone in front of a screen. Real life was apparently going to hold more excitement even than Xcaliber.

POINTS OF ENTRY

DON’T TOUCH THAT CONTROL-Q!: “Growing Up Online”  the evenhanded, ultimately antialarmist account of Internet kids  can be seen entirely online at PBS.org. It’s a public-TV courtesy: you don’t have to break your Internet habit to learn about it.

JOI XYZ: Did you visit Xcaliber in the 1970s? Know someone who did? Or did you time-share on that awesome GE mainframe in the ’60s? Join the XYZ alumni reunion at themedium.blogs.nytimes.com. For hard-core time-sharing fiends, nothing beats dtss.org, at which a group of buffs, including one of Basic’s two architects, endeavor to recreate ’60s and ’70s computing  for the fun of it! Warning: The forum there will mess with your mind, like hearing Pink Floyd again  kemenyskids.com.

SURVIVED TO TELL THE TALE: The Computer History Museum in Moutain View, Calif., caters to tech buffs, whatever their obsession: Internet, programming, software and, especially, hardware. Investigate computerhistory.org or watch video on the museum’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/computerhistory. (You didn’t think you were going to have to go there, did you?)