affil - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

Affils are short for "affiliations", otherwise put a listing of artgroups and more-than-one-person productions that an underground computer artist (or a SysOp's underground BBS) could be officially working in conjunction with. Both artists and BBSes could boast affils, though while getting the largest list of the most elite affils possible (distro sites, regional HQs, a WHQ if they were lucky!) was fashionable in the latter case (the cream of them often forming the final 25 lines of a scroller drawn in promotion of a board), in the former case artists were strongly encouraged not to engage in dual-grouping, or at most commit to practicing different art forms for different crews.

BBSes would often show a list of their most valued affils when logging into the board, while artists might flaunt their affils in their signature block at the bottom of messages (eg. "Cthulu - MiST Founder / ACiD Secretary / RECOiL Senior Staff / SONiC EQUiNOX Trial" -- likely spiced up with pipe code colouring to accentuate the elite lowercase i usage -- demonstrating how this hypothetical Cthulu administered one artgroup, wrote newsletters for another, wrote reviews for an e-mag and composed tracker music for yet another crew.) Obnoxious outliers might go so far as to embed their affils in their BBS username, which would cause problems when their affiliation changed, and you would also see people representing themselves over the IRC with initials followed by a punctuation mark (often a caret or underscore) and their group name, eg. ct^mist.

In practical terms this might help to disambiguate between other artists sharing the same nickname (ohhh, you're Cthulu / MiST, I was thinking of Ktulu / RELiC and Cthulhu / Remorse!), but some people just liked collecting and flaunting personal affils like gaudy swag, becoming so elite the odometer ticked over and they became lame. (It was understood that if you did a little bit of this and that for every crew under the sun, your contributions must necessarily be rather unfocused and meager. An artist who was able to bring their entire focus and presence to bear within a single community demonstrated commitment and devotion.)