many of those magazines are bedaubed with felt-tip where I marked my progress whiling away hours typing in those programs.
I got into computers in the mid 70s with the advent of the Altair. Reading your comment was like a flashback. I remember you'd finally get through, meticulously typing in all the pages of code. So your cross your fingers and ran it and got an error. But I was hooked. I still have my Altair, Timex/Sinclair, Ti 99 & 994a. I had/have everything imaginable for the Ti. You needed a kitchen table to spread all that out on.
Later on, as you say, demos became a big thing, I loved the demos. I would write just about anyone giving away a demo of something. Game demos would at least let you play one or two levels.
Well, it worked so well on the home front, why not export it? At least in other countries in my observation, for the most part, the population pretty much knows it's bs. They do not speak out for fear of harm or death. However, here in the US, average citizens don't even blink. It's gobbled up and regurgitated ad nauseam. Then, to seal this in the hearts and minds of America, they label those who would exercise their rights as an American citizen: ultra paranoid, schizophrenic, perhaps a bit mental. The American propaganda machine has no equals.