Just to weight in here, I completely got that also. I probably would have played somewhere in the mid-90s, when I was ~11-13.
As far as I knew, forums didn't even exist at the time (Of course, there probably were forums, and of course mailing lists and usenet were around before that, but I didn't know about them). It really just fit the humour style of the game, not taking itself too seriously. To be honest, it was far from the funniest joke in the game.