Many youngsters came in touch with the scene through intros. The intros were fresh, they were made by teenagers, they were in-your-face, they often looked/sounded better than the games in front of which they stood.

but that only happened later, in the late 80s. If you look at the early 80s, cracks usually got no, or very simple intros. And the few demos that existed were MUCH more interesting than those.

Which means that the swapper network preceded intros. And that this network swapped mainly (intro-less) cracks.

the above hypothesis leaves only around 2 years for these “demos before cracks and intros”

It's not about flipping the timeline.

So maybe interview him as well. My thought is that only people from those early days have first hand stories.

You just won't allow that the fully formed scene exists in mid 1980s and that this scene is predominantly swapping cracks (with intros) and to a much lesser extent demos (which by this time tend to look like standalone intros minus the size cap, wonder why) as described in Newscopy's article.