The only Usenet newsgroups that Verizon will continue to offer customers are the comp.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, and talk.* hierarchies. Customers will continue to be able to connect to other non-Verizon Usenet servers; no blocking is taking place.So they're just not hosting the stuff. They're not blocking anything.
____Followup-To: misc.test
/ \__
|\ / @ \
\ \_______| \ .:|> "Dogs aren't ALLOWED? WAAAAAAH!"
\ ##| | \__/
| ####\__/ \ -- Spot
/ / ## \|
/ /__________\ \
L_JJ \__JJ
Rest in peace
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/~/~ ~\
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\ \ \
\ \ alt* \
--\ \ .\''
--==\ \ ,,i!!i,
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"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel AdamsYou know, I cut my teeth on Usenet and I met most of my early friends on the 'net via odd little corners like rec.games.bolo and rec.music.christian and alt.fan.wednesday. But frankly, the outcry/uproar over this is tiring.
I really probably shouldn't be posting anything to USENET right now, especially to the ark. I've been up for far too long now, getting on to 60-some-odd hours, and I'm afraid that my thinking has long since ceased to even approach coming close to resembling being linear.I just cringe now at how pompous my 1996 self sounds. I wasn't wrong, really. (At least not at the time. The internets hadn't yet given us the metafilters of the world.) But damn. How pompous and pontificate-y. It's a wonder I had any friends at all.
Not that it ever is, really, so I suppose it might not matter all that much. Free reign at the office, now. My boss is down in Hell A., meeting with some froufy studio execs, so I can just play and play and play. Which is probably not a good thing when you're as chronically unfunny as I am. Alas.
I hate the Fucking Web. I hate it with a burning, overwhelming passion. It's not just that it's slow and cumbersome, either. It's that the vast majority of what's available on it seems to be driven solely by either vanity or commercialism. On the one hand, you've got people's home pages cluttered with pictures of themselves and lists of radiKeWl CD's they think everyone else should listen too, also, and on the other hand you've got ADS ADS ADS. And don't forget the NEKKID GIFFFFFSSS, either. Sure, there's some good stuff out there, but trying to find it is like pressing "Channel Up" on your remote when your cable system has about 8 gazillion channels: too many daytime talk shows, even at night.
Which brings me to my main gripe about the Fucking Web. Interactivity. Or lack thereof. It really is way too much like a giant cable system. It's not like USENET. There's no dialogue. It's just another spectator sport, and I am sick and fucking tired of spectator sports.
When the judges who overturned the CDA talked about the internet as a global conversation that one country's legislators had no right to interrupt, they sure as hell weren't talking about the Fucking Web. Shit, regulate the Web. I don't care. I hate it.
It's got more MAKE.MONEY.FAST schemes than the entire alt.* hierarchy ever dreamed of-- it's just phrased differently, and has prettier pictures.
That's not to say that the "global conversation," or whatever they called it, exactly, that goes on in USENET is necessarily always good, interesting or constructive. We all know much better than that. But even those idiotic "Fuckhead Cascades" are more dialogue driven than about 90% of what *I've* seen on the Web.
Sure, people say some dumb fucking things on USENET (is this a tautology, by the way, given the post in which it appears?). In fact, people *mostly* say dumb fucking things on USENET. But they have the opportunity to say it. Even idiots like me deserve to be heard.
More importantly, we deserve the opportunity to hear what our detractors and supporters have to say about what we said. We deserve the opportunity to hear Kibologists mock us, Bigfooters (Bigfeet? Bigfootistae?) and a.s.t.'ers flame us to a cinder, and alt.cuddle bunnies give us big, warm, cloyingly sweet *hugs*, even if it does make us nauseous.
And that's just not the way it works on the Fucking Web. The Fucking Web is just a gigantic fucking suburban shopping mall. You go in, buy a sweater at The Gap, get a 7-layer burrito at Taco Bell, and maybe catch the latest SUPER ACTION BLOCKBUSTER at the movie theater, and leave. There's little character beyond the glitz and neon signs and useless commercialization. There's certainly no culture.
USENET is more like, well, more like Brooklyn. A big city. But in that big city are a veritable plethora (God, how I love the phrase "veritable plethora") of smaller neighborhoods. Each of those neighborhoods has its own flavor, its own character. On one street corner, you can almost get killed by because you're white, but on that same street corner you can also get the best Jamaican food you'll ever have. On another street corner you can almost get killed because you're black, but on that same street corner you can also eat the best Italian Hero you've ever had.
USENET is all street corners. The Fucking Web has none.
Does this make me nothing more than a hide-bound reactionary traditionalist? Perhaps it does, although I would prefer to think otherwise. I prefer to think of myself as a Cultural Romanticist. Or perhaps a Romantic Culturalist. I don't know, really. But I do know one thing.
I hate the Fucking Web.
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posted by tachikaze at 7:10 PM on June 12, 2008 [1 favorite]