Somewhere around the age of 12, I got a 57.6 modem and my parents got a fax line. I realized that what I wanted was warez, specifically anything related to 3d modeling which I was obsessed with. All I had to trade was porn gifs I'd been downloading from other BBSs since I was about 9. The first board I ran was Hermes on a Mac IIsi. Local Los Angeles 213 area code, only after hours when I'd turn off my parents fax machine. The porn for warez trade was surprisingly effective, and I ended up with copies of Strata, Renderman, Playmation, Infini-D and actually a working copy of ElectricImage, which was a coup even though it was basically unusable.