There is an author - Tad Williams, who wrote the “Otherland” series. One of the chapters has the some of the main ensemble going to “treehouse” - aka what happened in this universe when the nerds, geeks and techno wizards took their ball and went home. The series as a whole is interesting if you like sci-fi. That chapter however seems more and more on the nose the older I get.
Usernet requires at least one indexer and service provider. If you just got a provider your going to be missing a part of the tool chain. DM me if you need some help figuring what’s what.