USENET: Classic Or Dud?

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Search and Destroy too! Things I never want to read again: "Bzzzt, thanks for playing!"; "Newbie"; "Two words:..."; arguments where there are thirty indentations while two people wrangle over the meaning of half a sentence; GODWINS FUCKING LAW.

On the other hand, there were good things too. I just can't think of any right now.

― Tom, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Don't think I've ever been on USENET...so, I'm doing the new anwsers thing for ya!

― jel --, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Hahaha usenet's a little before my time but I've read enough unoriginal crap net discussions to relate.....those phrases kill me....let's not forget "cry me a river!"..."stick a fork in him, he's done!".....people referencing Emperor's New Clothes INCORRECTLY and thinking they're hot shit.....I saw that so many times it's not funny....."well excuuuuuuuse me!"....."what part of ______ don't you understand?".....you get those dainty little wannabe-grammarian pseuds that wait for someone to say something like "my exam was hard as fuck" then they go, "oh yes? and exactly how hard is "fuck", little one?"

The internet is heaven for corny people.

― Ramosi, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

do the words furrfu and froup ring any bells?

― electric sound of jim, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's very hard these days to think of Usenet being anything but a haven for Net Luddites (if that's not an oxymoron) and porn hounds. I know this is not the case, but that stigma is certainly a difficult one to shake.

― electric sound of jim, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I've just recently detatched myself from the internet collective at home. At the end there, all I was doing was collecting my news, and not posting. Two groups I really enjoyed reading (rec.arts.int- fiction and uk.music.alternative) because they were nice little polite self-contained communities. But ukma was becoming more spam and less jyoti/ant banter, then raif errupted with some arse rabbitting on about copyright (which happens on and off) but then going MENTALIST with it. I unsubscribed. I disconnected my ancient computer from the modem.

CLASSIC and lamented. I still google the groups at work from time to time (mostly raif) so I'm not completely cut off from the nice people there.

― Alan Trewartha, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I am not sure if I miss sig lines or not. They were akin to scrawling lyrics in your notebook in high school. Crosspost wars between groups could be fun. I have my suspicions that ILM is just a giant crosspost between alt.music.alternative and alt.fan.britney. Or perhaps alt.music.nas and and alt.fan.jigga.

― bnw, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I still check alt.fan.hello-kitty for collector news (I wouldn't have found about the Hello Kitty xmas lights if not for the newsgroup), but otherwise it's not worth bothering with.

― Nicole, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ah, a.m.a. -- my past, my home, my heaven, my hell. Or something. Abandoned by myself and many others two years ago without regret.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry to be a newbie but what's "Godwin's Law"?

― DG, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's for interweb mentalists DG. (Actually I haf no idea, the interweb began with email and posting on YO LA TENGO message boards for me).

― Sarah, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

godwin's law = that thing about mentioning hitler killing the thread??

― toby, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Toby is correct. The idea is that someone who resorts to inappropriate Hitler analogies has automatically lost their argument.

I kind of miss good old USENET; I wouldn't know any of you if I'd never posted to it, and AMA in its heyday was extremely excellent. On the other hand, IL* manages to encapsulate almost everything that was good about AMA and avoid almost everything that was bad. I still read some of the comics newgroups from time to time (particularly RACMX), but the others I used to frequent are unreadable.

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

On the other hand, IL* manages to encapsulate almost everything that was good about AMA and avoid almost everything that was bad.

This is why I do not miss usenet.

― Nicole, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And of course AMA was infested with with eelf-obsessed, brit-band loving, pop worshipping cabals whose very existence sickens me.

Why couldn't they all just stop being so ironic and smug and listen to more Dylan, or at least some Rufus Wainright?

― Nicole, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

And of course AMA was infested with with [s]elf-obsessed, brit- band loving, pop worshipping cabals whose very existence sickens me.

Why couldn't they all just stop being so ironic and smug and listen to more Dylan, or at least some Rufus Wainright?

But Nicole, Ned posts here, too!

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm still subscribed to a couple of the audio newsgroups. Heaven knows why - the same arguments (vinyl vs CD, tube vs solid-state, double-blind testing vs single-presentation method) have been raging (rehashed in every conceivable permutation) for around 15 years now, and I'm not even that interested in domestic audio thesedays.

There's no sense of 'community' whatsoever - just gainsaying and pointscoring (of which I've probably been guilty). It's completely vile. No-one is ever funny (though plenty think they are).

I do avoid rec.audio.opinion however - read that for a couple of days and lose your faith in humanity.

The embattled state of much of this tiny corner of Usenet (where the topic of interest is hardly life-or-death) means I can only imagine the horror of the political/religious NGs.

Usenet = war.

― Michael Jones, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh, that posing, prissy little anglophile. He can't even appreciate good, honest rock music, man.

I got to write for the Pazz and Jop poll you know. Do you think that will make underage girls want me?

― Gondola Nic, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(when nicole says "elf-obsessed" she means "elf-obsessed" btw)

― mark s, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ned is elf-obsessed as well as self-obsessed, so this works.

― Gondola Nic, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

People, people: USENET is still a fantastic resource for downloading humongous media diles. Yeah, it's rare that you'll find exactly what you're looking for, but that's the fun of it. I just download random MP3s and sometimes I find gold. Can you dig it?

― Michael Daddino, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I do believe I have been made fun of. WELL. *flounces off to go fight Kat Marco*

Ned ned wondering when will it end, when will it end at kuci.org

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Poo, forgot that final line break.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The original Godwin's law said that as time goes on, the probability of someone mentioning Hitler on a usenet thread approached 1. It was only later (probably pretty quickly really) that people started taking this to mean that threads that mentioned Hitler automatically ended (which is not what the statement says).

― Josh, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If Godwin's Law applies everywhere they mustn't talk about much over at alt.nazis.net, eh?

― DG, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

four years pass...

does anyone use usenet anymore?

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Sunday, 10 September 2006 02:36 (nineteen years ago)

or geocities?

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Sunday, 10 September 2006 02:37 (nineteen years ago)

uk.adverts.computer.mac is handy for cheap mac bits, sometimes.

― stet (stet), Sunday, 10 September 2006 04:22 (nineteen years ago)

I haven't had a working Usenet client in years upon years. But I check stuff through Deja when I get bored. Usenet is classic. For better or worse I learned my way as a netizen on rec.arts.comics.xbooks and alt.games.ultima.dragons. Granted, I had to unlearn about sixty percent of it for the reasons Ramosi outlined upthread - the whole thinking you're a badass if you use stilted language, correct people's spelling, and end sentences with " ...., hmmm?" To some extent this crossed over with just being teenaged and it was the cynical 90s, so it's all "Heh" and so forth, but I still blame Usenet in some part. I'm not sure why exactly web-forums and so on are, on average, a little bit better - maybe just because they're less impenetrable to the novice user and so you're more likely to get semi-normal people onto something like ILX? I dunno.

― Doctor Casino (Doctor Casino), Sunday, 10 September 2006 04:47 (nineteen years ago)

What I do miss is having a proper client. Browsers are still crap for these sorts of things.

― stet (stet), Sunday, 10 September 2006 15:33 (nineteen years ago)

James Oberg is still a regular on sci.space.history along with a couple old NASA/Dryden folks.

Unison is still my usenet client of choice.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Sunday, 10 September 2006 17:59 (nineteen years ago)

Yeh, sorry, I was comparing from usenet to web forums. Unison rocks, aye.

― stet (stet), Sunday, 10 September 2006 18:01 (nineteen years ago)

Looking at usenet now, it's hard to remember that at one time it was a completely vital and thriving part of the internet. Before the arrival of high-bandwidth web browsing, Usenet was IT for discussion. There really WAS a strong sense of community. There's a few diehard groups that keep the spirit alive, most notably rec.arts.sf.written, which has a lot of crossposted flames, but an equal amount of excellent conversational threads.
soc.history.what-if and alt.history.what-if are also active and very interesting, especially if you're a history buff. In going over what-if scenarios, the group covers a lot of historical minutiae. Like, for example, why didn't the Vikings that landed in Newfoundland clean house on the stone-age natives? In part, because they couldn't transport horses across the atlantic; they'd freak out and sink the boats.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Sunday, 10 September 2006 18:07 (nineteen years ago)

DC, you were on RACX? What was the name you posted under?

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Sunday, 10 September 2006 18:30 (nineteen years ago)

It's fantastic for archive purposes! Where else can you find crude jokes about Natalie Wood's death from the same month it happened...? or comtemporary reviews of bygone music/films/TV/fashion...? The whole thing stands as an invaluable social commentary of the last 25 years.

― JTS (JTS), Sunday, 10 September 2006 20:12 (nineteen years ago)

D Perry: Ummmmm, let me think. This would have been when I was like 11 or 12 - I think I would have been Desperado for most of that, maybe Volatios later on. In the last few years I've posted every once in a blue moon as Addison Godel. If I'm remembered at all from the olden days it's for harboring an inexplicable love of, and desire to recreate, somebody else's mess of an injoke/fic thread called the Impending Storm...

― Doctor Casino (Doctor Casino), Sunday, 10 September 2006 22:54 (nineteen years ago)

rec.arts.sf.written
soc.history.what-if and alt.history.what-if

jesus christ these set my nerd-meters off

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 11 September 2006 00:29 (nineteen years ago)

USENET is awesome, even after much of the discussion has moved onto message boards. For the purposes of archival, using Deja/Google is incredible. There's nothing even comparable for the time period of the early/mid 90s on the internet historically.

― Alan Conceicao (Alan Conceicao), Monday, 11 September 2006 00:34 (nineteen years ago)

i just feel bad for anyone who posted embarrassing stuff before they realized that it would archived "forever."

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 11 September 2006 01:00 (nineteen years ago)

meow meow

― wostyntje (wostyntje), Monday, 11 September 2006 01:05 (nineteen years ago)

>i just feel bad for anyone who posted embarrassing
>stuff before they realized that it would archived "forever."

I'm still bitter about this. And about this board to. I starting using the internet in the pre-web days, and everything seemed disposable. the internet was where you let your hair down and said whatever was on your, devil may care. i guess our sins have come back to haunt us.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Monday, 11 September 2006 01:09 (nineteen years ago)

OMG NO LINE BREAKS!!!

― chaki (chaki), Monday, 11 September 2006 01:38 (nineteen years ago)

I'm still bitter about this. And about this board to. I starting using the internet in the pre-web days, and everything seemed disposable. the internet was where you let your hair down and said whatever was on your, devil may care. i guess our sins have come back to haunt us.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 11 September 2006 01:39 (nineteen years ago)

having the people of the future know I spent entirely too much time designing my own BattleMechs and talking about the Wolf Clan breakup (rec.games.mecha) is my cross to bear.

Otherwise, they'll see some nonsense in alt.music.ska/alt.punk (or was it alt.music.punk?). I think I was mostly smart enough to use a pseudonym in the political groups.

― milo z (mlp), Monday, 11 September 2006 01:51 (nineteen years ago)

well, i've used pseudonyms too but I don't think that makes me safe. good bye future political carreer.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Monday, 11 September 2006 01:53 (nineteen years ago)

DUDE WHATS GOT INTO YOU!?!? WHERES THE BR'S???

― chaki (chaki), Monday, 11 September 2006 02:06 (nineteen years ago)

He hasn't done that for a few days at least.

― Marmot (marmotwolof), Monday, 11 September 2006 02:08 (nineteen years ago)

AMAZING!

― chaki (chaki), Monday, 11 September 2006 02:10 (nineteen years ago)

If I tell everyone my news froup of choice back in the day (that being 97-2001) was aus.culture.gothic, you're all going to point and laugh :(

In actual fact all we ever did on that NG was shout at each other, write rambles about how things were better in the old days (generally speaking that is - no one really talked about Actual Goth shit) and plan going to the pub.

Bit like somewhere else I seem to have ended up...

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 11 September 2006 03:37 (nineteen years ago)

i used to read alt.music.sonic-youth and rec.arts.wf.written.
when i was twelve or so.

― disappointing goth fest line-up (orion), Monday, 11 September 2006 04:21 (nineteen years ago)

i think that explains a lot about the way i turned out.

― disappointing goth fest line-up (orion), Monday, 11 September 2006 04:21 (nineteen years ago)

I read newsgroups in middle school too but they were so much lamer: rec.arts.comics.*, alt.tv.simpsons, alt.tv.snl, alt.gothic.fashion (for important hair dye tips). lol @ me

― Adrienne Begley (sparklecock), Monday, 11 September 2006 05:33 (nineteen years ago)

The goth fashion newsgroup was responsible for giving little me the impression that International Male was the absolute best and classiest source on the planet ever for menswear and office job clothes in particular.

― Adrienne Begley (sparklecock), Monday, 11 September 2006 05:35 (nineteen years ago)

sparklecock

― chaki (chaki), Monday, 11 September 2006 05:46 (nineteen years ago)

aus.tv was a frightening place to hang out. You'd think it might be about Aus television. YOU'D BE WRONG! It was full of insane unhinged lunatics who loved screaming abuse at each other and were all racist assholes. It was *weird*. Man, they seriously NEVER talked about TV shows.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 11 September 2006 05:49 (nineteen years ago)

yeah it's amazing how the most seemingly innocuous subjects ALWAYS degenerate into discussions of nazis, etc. on usenet--500% faster than on ilx.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 11 September 2006 06:06 (nineteen years ago)

Another one that was interesting to read right around/after 9/11 was alt.folklore.urban - ho boy, the nostrodamus/conspiracy nuts were out in force, it was very entertaining in a sick way. In fact I might go back and read some. Anyone remember the stuff about a guy who'd posted there or somewhere similar BEFORE 9/11 and made loads of references to 911 and emergencies and "I'm going away after this week look out you heathens"?

It was freaky. And now I cant seem to find it again.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 11 September 2006 06:13 (nineteen years ago)

I still read alt.sysadmin.recovery fairly regularly.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 11 September 2006 06:35 (nineteen years ago)

Heh I used to read alt.tech-support.recovery all the time, it was hilarious :) I now read techsupport on LJ which is full of ex USENET veterans anyhoo.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 11 September 2006 06:37 (nineteen years ago)

The great joy of a.s.r is that it's spam-free, still, because to post there you have to know a cunning little trick which noone will tell you.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 11 September 2006 06:48 (nineteen years ago)

Ah! Yes, I remember that! A little dance with the headers if I recall.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 11 September 2006 06:58 (nineteen years ago)

I miss using Forte Agent for posting.

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 11 September 2006 06:58 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, you have to put an extra header in. Because noone ever mentions it, you have to work out for yourself what to do, and what it should say.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 11 September 2006 07:02 (nineteen years ago)

i once got in the world's shittest fight on uk.media.tv.brookside ... [googles] ... holy fuck, that was 1997. i suddenly feel very old.

usenet is classic because it's where stet and i first "met" - uk.media, on march 1, 1996, to be precise - but apart from that ... wow, it was full of smug, petty, point-scoring arseholes, wasn't it? and i count myself among that number.

alt.music.new-order and uk.comp.sys.mac were the last two groups to which i posted; that's a good few years ago now. the former was all but dead; the latter was mostly the same few posters arguing about punctuation and refusing to upgrade from OS9.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Monday, 11 September 2006 08:55 (nineteen years ago)

usenet is classic because it's where stet and i first "met" - uk.media

Yes, but didn't realise this until many years later, when we were having the exact same fight and it rang a bell. Ahh, internet grudges.

― stet (stet), Monday, 11 September 2006 10:06 (nineteen years ago)

I was briefly the keeper of the alt.discordia FAQ, but I mostly lived
on alt.folklore.computers.

― shieldforyoureyes (shieldforyoureyes), Monday, 11 September 2006 10:09 (nineteen years ago)

I first met Donut Bitch on rec.music.industrial in 1992.

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Monday, 11 September 2006 11:09 (nineteen years ago)

I used to read alt.folklore.computers, a few years ago.

― Forest Pines (ForestPines), Monday, 11 September 2006 11:11 (nineteen years ago)

Currently the Usenet is about 90% Israel vs. Lebanon. The rest is your usual Catholic hating and WTC conspiracy theories. Just in case you wanted to know.

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Monday, 11 September 2006 19:03 (nineteen years ago)

(DC, I posted on racx and racmx as deX!, mostly in silly off-topic threads.)

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Monday, 11 September 2006 19:04 (nineteen years ago)

> jesus christ these set my nerd-meters off

I miss the days when using a computer recreationally automatically shouted to the world "I AM A NERD."

― Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Monday, 11 September 2006 20:59 (nineteen years ago)

I AM A NERD.

― Abbott (Abbott), Monday, 11 September 2006 21:07 (nineteen years ago)

I read alt.gothic.fashion in high school and also tried to revive groups that had like 8 posts in them. My brother did the latter, too, we'd talk about our revive failures together. Oh, us nerdlings.

― Abbott (Abbott), Monday, 11 September 2006 21:08 (nineteen years ago)

This was after I got over Prodigy server boards. I was like 11, sitting in a trailer on a 24 kbs modem sitting next to an ostrich egg incubator which took up most of the living room because my parents invest in stupid commodities (a redundant statement I know). I get so fucking nostailgic about usenet for no good reason. Flamewar bedtime story.

― Abbott (Abbott), Monday, 11 September 2006 21:10 (nineteen years ago)

I totally lost my shit stumbling across the blogs of former comics usenet superstars after getting back into comics. Elayne Weschler-Chaput is less glamorous than I imagined.

― Adrienne Begley (sparklecock), Monday, 11 September 2006 22:17 (nineteen years ago)

My finest moment

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 11 September 2006 22:45 (nineteen years ago)

Prodigy is my secret nerd shame, the only time I ever role-played were on their under-12 boards. Until I apparently ran up a huge fuck-off phone bill and wasn't allowed to play anymore.

― milo z (mlp), Monday, 11 September 2006 22:59 (nineteen years ago)

also Sierra Online where I pretended to be older so I could play five-card draw as Leisure-Suit Larry.

― milo z (mlp), Monday, 11 September 2006 23:02 (nineteen years ago)

how can you mock a love so pure

lolol @ soulmate productions

― Adrienne Begley (sparklecock), Monday, 11 September 2006 23:25 (nineteen years ago)

In middle school I remember reading rec.music.hip-hop and alt.rap and thinking this guy named kar1 0rr was like the oracle of hip-hop.

― one six oh (one six oh), Tuesday, 12 September 2006 00:51 (nineteen years ago)

Andrew = still awesome for that.

― Young Fresh Danny D (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 12 September 2006 03:56 (nineteen years ago)

three years pass...

Shed a tear, friends:

http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2010/05/usenet.html

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 21 May 2010 18:35 (fifteen years ago)

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