The Star Wars ASCII animation was how I learned telnet existed. Felt like discovering a secret passage in the internet.

There's something pure about text-based interfaces. No loading spinners, no JavaScript frameworks, no cookie banners. Just text.

Wanting to know how email worked and then stumbling on it being mentioned next to the relevant RFCs was my first exposure! You could easily check pop3 mail over telnet, by sending all the commands by hand. HELO!

I then made my first email client, then an RFC later, and after browsing the web through telnet for a while, made my first web server!