Like, I remember in the 90s “script kiddies” and AOL “hackers” using third-party utilities were considered pretenders to this great tradition stretching through ‘80s hackers to '70s counterculture phreaking, '60s MIT students…

But “running another program while connected to AOL that can issue commands or alter transmitted data in ways the official client can’t” was basically exactly how phreaking worked, wasn’t it? I assume not everyone who used a [color] box knew how to wire one or why