Another one for the graveyard
December 15, 2023 3:12 AM Subscribe
22 years after acquiring Deja News and its archive, Google will be ending support for Usenet on February 22, 2024
Other usenet providers are available.
Old messages will continue to be available at groups.google.com (at least for now). Though the dejanews.com domain is now 404 and deja.com does an (insecure) redirect to Google.
Historical backups in mbox format are available on Archive.org
Other usenet providers are available.
Old messages will continue to be available at groups.google.com (at least for now). Though the dejanews.com domain is now 404 and deja.com does an (insecure) redirect to Google.
Historical backups in mbox format are available on Archive.org
Usenet was the first thing I found on the internet that really wowed me. The web was really small and somewhat staid when I first encountered it in 1991 or '92. I was ten, eleven at the time, and there just wasn't that much content on there I found interesting, at least that I could find easily. But Usenet was filled with all kinds of interesting conversations on an incredible variety of topics. I loved it.
In some ways, MetaFilter is the inheritor of Usenet's legacy on the web. Reddit is too, of course, but MetaFilter has that generalist attitude to the wider world, as opposed to Reddit's hyperfocused silos. Admittedly, I haven't visited Usenet often this century, but it was really important to how I developed as a person.
posted by Kattullus at 4:18 AM on December 15, 2023 [38 favorites]
In some ways, MetaFilter is the inheritor of Usenet's legacy on the web. Reddit is too, of course, but MetaFilter has that generalist attitude to the wider world, as opposed to Reddit's hyperfocused silos. Admittedly, I haven't visited Usenet often this century, but it was really important to how I developed as a person.
posted by Kattullus at 4:18 AM on December 15, 2023 [38 favorites]
Do know evil.
posted by fairmettle at 4:22 AM on December 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by fairmettle at 4:22 AM on December 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
Are they chucking out their old USENET archives, too? Glad that that the Internet Archive ia taking those on.
posted by wenestvedt at 4:23 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by wenestvedt at 4:23 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:38 AM on December 15, 2023
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:38 AM on December 15, 2023
Google is M.O.D.O.K.
posted by tommasz at 4:47 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 4:47 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
So many wasted hours browsing comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.
Boss: what’re you working on there, notyou?
Notyou: research boss, research.
(I worked at a video game manual and strategy guide publisher, another more elegant weapon from a civilized age. )
posted by notyou at 4:48 AM on December 15, 2023 [12 favorites]
Boss: what’re you working on there, notyou?
Notyou: research boss, research.
(I worked at a video game manual and strategy guide publisher, another more elegant weapon from a civilized age. )
posted by notyou at 4:48 AM on December 15, 2023 [12 favorites]
I sigh with relief. That's a lot of information to go missing, but at least all the very injudicious things I said as a stupid college student will be lost forever (at least via a search on google groups). Every time I think, I should really run for president I end up remembering all the flame wars, imagining my public humiliation at a press conference. (so many flames, so many, many flames)
posted by mittens at 4:53 AM on December 15, 2023 [20 favorites]
posted by mittens at 4:53 AM on December 15, 2023 [20 favorites]
Tucked away at the very end of the announcement is "as well as spam." most of the spam on usenet was coming from Google Groups, so disconnecting them should be a net plus for what is left of Usenet.
Lets hope that Threads joining the Fediverse does not have a similar effect.
posted by Lanark at 5:04 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Lets hope that Threads joining the Fediverse does not have a similar effect.
posted by Lanark at 5:04 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
September has finally ended. We made it, folks
posted by phooky at 5:07 AM on December 15, 2023 [67 favorites]
posted by phooky at 5:07 AM on December 15, 2023 [67 favorites]
MetaFilter is the inheritor of Usenet's legacy on the web
agreed. i was just telling a friend that metafilter is an oasis of mostly civil discourse, arts discussion, so on. i don't know how it's stayed that way in spite of the enshittification of the world around it.
i keep thinking we'll need usenet and ftp again one day when governments ratchet down the internet.
anyone here remember alt.2600 and newbieschool? newbieschool was the original mefi.
posted by winston smith at 5:08 AM on December 15, 2023 [10 favorites]
alt.fan.warlord 4 lyfe
posted by Gorgik at 5:26 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Gorgik at 5:26 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
alt.lang.c had religious wars yet to be equaled.
posted by whuppy at 5:32 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by whuppy at 5:32 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
talk.bizarre representatives declined comment, other than pointing to the sky and indicating an imminent rain of anvils.
posted by delfin at 5:44 AM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by delfin at 5:44 AM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
.
So sad to hear it's gone, but honestly I thought it already was. Not usenet, obviously, but the google access to it. I didn't realize google groups was still even there. I don't even remember how I accessed Usenet back in the day, before Google Groups before Deja News....I think I had a piece of software that downloaded it? Like Eudora for email and something else for Usenet? That was back when the internet really was the wild west. I love the internet now, but there's still something to miss about those days.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:45 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
So sad to hear it's gone, but honestly I thought it already was. Not usenet, obviously, but the google access to it. I didn't realize google groups was still even there. I don't even remember how I accessed Usenet back in the day, before Google Groups before Deja News....I think I had a piece of software that downloaded it? Like Eudora for email and something else for Usenet? That was back when the internet really was the wild west. I love the internet now, but there's still something to miss about those days.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:45 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
I always kept bouncing off Usenet. My experience is that there's some point in the early-to-mid 1990s where new fandoms and topics just couldn't find any traction there. By 1997-98 most of the things I was interested in had a presence, but almost everything was a ghost town cluttered with spam and indecipherable madness: garbage walls of ascii characters encoding some chunk of a binary file, cryptic posts with like a sentence or two followed by a thoroughly broken chain of quotes from three dozen other posts made years earlier, and porn.
About the only useful thing I ever got from from Usenet was an incredibly long pre-made ipfwadm script for enabling NAT and blocking all the right things. Back then I had no clue as to what it did, but it worked and it meant I no longer had to use the dodgy WinGate key generator I got from someone on IRC to share my internet connection between PCs.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:48 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
About the only useful thing I ever got from from Usenet was an incredibly long pre-made ipfwadm script for enabling NAT and blocking all the right things. Back then I had no clue as to what it did, but it worked and it meant I no longer had to use the dodgy WinGate key generator I got from someone on IRC to share my internet connection between PCs.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:48 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is excellent news for Wesley Crusher.
posted by PlusDistance at 5:49 AM on December 15, 2023 [27 favorites]
posted by PlusDistance at 5:49 AM on December 15, 2023 [27 favorites]
I won’t be missing those weeks-long flame wars on austin.general
posted by smcdow at 5:49 AM on December 15, 2023
posted by smcdow at 5:49 AM on December 15, 2023
So many wasted hours browsing comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.
Not too long before Starfield released, someone had found a usenet post (probably from c.s.i.pc.g.rpg) from the mid-90s where someone had asked about ideas for new rpgs or something like that. And Todd Howard, only recently employed at Bethesda, chimed in to say a space rpg would be neat and mentioned some sources to draw from.
I was amused to find that I was also a participant in that thread.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:51 AM on December 15, 2023 [15 favorites]
Not too long before Starfield released, someone had found a usenet post (probably from c.s.i.pc.g.rpg) from the mid-90s where someone had asked about ideas for new rpgs or something like that. And Todd Howard, only recently employed at Bethesda, chimed in to say a space rpg would be neat and mentioned some sources to draw from.
I was amused to find that I was also a participant in that thread.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:51 AM on December 15, 2023 [15 favorites]
I'm also in the "weirdly ok with this one" group.
posted by zenon at 6:03 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by zenon at 6:03 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
most of the t.b oldbies are on mastodon now, it's fine
this is like, oh, they're tearing down the exit ramp to the little jersey town you grew up in and have never been back to for twenty years. it's like ... we'll that's sad but ... we don't need it any more and the kids have their tok or whatever.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:04 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
this is like, oh, they're tearing down the exit ramp to the little jersey town you grew up in and have never been back to for twenty years. it's like ... we'll that's sad but ... we don't need it any more and the kids have their tok or whatever.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:04 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Man, I haven’t been on Usenet in decades, since Comcast dropped access.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:09 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Thorzdad at 6:09 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
They're tearing down the Bell Labs Naperville buildings, the old home of ihnp4. And then being reminded of the glory days of netnews... just making me feel even older...
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:14 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:14 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
> alt.lang.c had religious wars yet to be equaled.
Some folks say that C is the most elegant and orthogonal abstraction of what most computers actually do of any programming language.
Others say that C is nothing but a glorified assembler.
With the perspective of age, we see that both are correct.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:20 AM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
Some folks say that C is the most elegant and orthogonal abstraction of what most computers actually do of any programming language.
Others say that C is nothing but a glorified assembler.
With the perspective of age, we see that both are correct.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:20 AM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
Is Battlecruiser 3000AD out yet?
posted by credulous at 6:28 AM on December 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by credulous at 6:28 AM on December 15, 2023 [9 favorites]
So sad to hear it's gone, but honestly I thought it already was.
This. It's basically been gone for about 20 years already. Google started running it down very quickly as soon as they acquired it. One of the first things they did with it was cripple its search engine.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:45 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
This. It's basically been gone for about 20 years already. Google started running it down very quickly as soon as they acquired it. One of the first things they did with it was cripple its search engine.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:45 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
bit by bit, my part of the 20th century is disappearing under the waves of change
posted by torokunai at 6:46 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by torokunai at 6:46 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I suppose it's too much to hope that Kibo might put in an appearance on this thread.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:47 AM on December 15, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 6:47 AM on December 15, 2023 [17 favorites]
Key part of the announcement:
But the Usenet search at Google Groups has steadily gotten worse over years. About once every three months I try to find some 1990s Usenet post and it's very hard to convince Groups to even show results from that part of its index. Some combination of caching behavior, relevance algorithms, and outright bugs.
Honestly I'm surprised Google Groups still exists as a product. It's been very poorly managed for most of the last decade. Usenet has died long ago except as a klunky yet remarkably useful way to pirate media. Mailing lists are not exactly a hot product category. My understanding is Google Groups survives solely because it's used internally and by some Google Enterprise customers. (Poor bastards, use Slack instead.)
Some alternatives:
posted by Nelson at 7:02 AM on December 15, 2023 [18 favorites]
You can continue to view and search for historical Usenet content posted before February 22, 2024 on Google Groups.So the Deja archive will live on. Folks are still mad 22 years later about how Google took over Deja. The part they don't know is that Deja as a business had collapsed and Google swept in to rescue the archives as the servers were being shut down for lack of money to pay the datacenter bill. Google didn't even get code they could use, a couple of engineers spent most of a long weekend standing up at least some minimal search engine. Even back in 2001 it was understood that was more of an act of preservation than building a robust new product with a future.
But the Usenet search at Google Groups has steadily gotten worse over years. About once every three months I try to find some 1990s Usenet post and it's very hard to convince Groups to even show results from that part of its index. Some combination of caching behavior, relevance algorithms, and outright bugs.
Honestly I'm surprised Google Groups still exists as a product. It's been very poorly managed for most of the last decade. Usenet has died long ago except as a klunky yet remarkably useful way to pirate media. Mailing lists are not exactly a hot product category. My understanding is Google Groups survives solely because it's used internally and by some Google Enterprise customers. (Poor bastards, use Slack instead.)
Some alternatives:
- groups.io for email groups
- Usenet Archives for search, based mostly on the UTZoo archives. It's a little creaky but still is working.
- Internet Archive's Usenet collection is free for the taking if anyone thinks there's a real business in reviving 1990s flame wars.
posted by Nelson at 7:02 AM on December 15, 2023 [18 favorites]
Is Battlecruiser 3000AD out yet?
Shhhhhhh- he can hear you!
posted by Uncle Ira at 7:04 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
Shhhhhhh- he can hear you!
posted by Uncle Ira at 7:04 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
I remember Usenet before Canter & Siegel. I still have a long-sleeved "Spamming the Globe" t-shirt, made by my old friend Jay (and another person I didn't know). Jay also made the shirt shown on Wikipedia's Eternal September article.
I became a netizen in 1991, joining a polite and erudite community comprising mostly scholars. Anonymity was rare. You could usually `poke` or even `finger` the person who'd posted something. Ads were non-existent. The term "spam" had not yet been coined. There were no firewalls, no hyperlinks, and `.com` domains were few and suspect.
All of the groups I read were self-moderated in the sense that off topic posts and ur-trolls were shouted down or ignored. As an undergraduate at a small university in Virginia, I had in one of the `comp.` groups a minor technical disagreement with a computer scientist from the other side of the world—China!—and came out on top. I am a veteran of the PS/N64 holy wars. I never would have mastered Diddy Kong Racing without the community's help.
Before PornHub—or color monitors—we had alt.sex.stories, and later, alt.binaries.*, which required uuencoding/uudecoding to view. The word "e-mail" was still hyphenated in those days long before e-commerce and iEverything. Period-space-space was still appropriate between sentences.
I've always seen that old Usenet as the Internet as it could have been, even recognizing as an old man now that it really couldn't have. For that one brief shining moment, though, it was Camelot.
posted by phrits at 7:10 AM on December 15, 2023 [22 favorites]
I became a netizen in 1991, joining a polite and erudite community comprising mostly scholars. Anonymity was rare. You could usually `poke` or even `finger` the person who'd posted something. Ads were non-existent. The term "spam" had not yet been coined. There were no firewalls, no hyperlinks, and `.com` domains were few and suspect.
All of the groups I read were self-moderated in the sense that off topic posts and ur-trolls were shouted down or ignored. As an undergraduate at a small university in Virginia, I had in one of the `comp.` groups a minor technical disagreement with a computer scientist from the other side of the world—China!—and came out on top. I am a veteran of the PS/N64 holy wars. I never would have mastered Diddy Kong Racing without the community's help.
Before PornHub—or color monitors—we had alt.sex.stories, and later, alt.binaries.*, which required uuencoding/uudecoding to view. The word "e-mail" was still hyphenated in those days long before e-commerce and iEverything. Period-space-space was still appropriate between sentences.
I've always seen that old Usenet as the Internet as it could have been, even recognizing as an old man now that it really couldn't have. For that one brief shining moment, though, it was Camelot.
posted by phrits at 7:10 AM on December 15, 2023 [22 favorites]
Period-space-space was still appropriate between sentences.
At least some things have never changed. Never. Ever.
posted by mittens at 7:17 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
At least some things have never changed. Never. Ever.
posted by mittens at 7:17 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
Somewhere in a disney group (rec.disney?) is me asking where I can propose to my girlfriend at Disneyworld, and then the follow-up after I did it (Coral Reef restaurant via SCUBA diver).
Somewhere else on a cat newsgroup is me writing something from my cat's point of view.
I have mixed feelings about these things being inaccessible.
posted by bondcliff at 7:17 AM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
Somewhere else on a cat newsgroup is me writing something from my cat's point of view.
I have mixed feelings about these things being inaccessible.
posted by bondcliff at 7:17 AM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
RAWSFRJ - My TAN: Hankism post was my top Egosurf hit for decades.
Trolling racists by pretending their racist groups where pure mathematics groups with made up acronyms: Number Theory Integration Group Theory Graph Theory Enumeration and Ring Theory. Tut-tutting them when they posted off-topic content.
Using alternative email domains on the university network as a primitive form of spam filtering.
The joy of trn
Farewell. You where a better waste of time than MMORPGs.
.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:26 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Trolling racists by pretending their racist groups where pure mathematics groups with made up acronyms: Number Theory Integration Group Theory Graph Theory Enumeration and Ring Theory. Tut-tutting them when they posted off-topic content.
Using alternative email domains on the university network as a primitive form of spam filtering.
The joy of trn
Farewell. You where a better waste of time than MMORPGs.
.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:26 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ah, the place where I first got yelled at upon the internet! The place where I first encountered furry porn! The place where Terry Pratchett actually responded to something I said!
I wasn't even talking to him, I wouldn't dare -- he just liked Usenet. But it was unusable within five years of that. I remember having productive conversations with other users in 2000, but it was like walking in galoshes with all the spam.
Tears in rain, etc.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:26 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
I wasn't even talking to him, I wouldn't dare -- he just liked Usenet. But it was unusable within five years of that. I remember having productive conversations with other users in 2000, but it was like walking in galoshes with all the spam.
Tears in rain, etc.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:26 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
Are they chucking out their old USENET archives, too? Glad that that the Internet Archive ia taking those on.
The crazy thing is that 25 years is a long time and now by modern data standards, the archive is not very big (assuming binary attachments are removed). You could store one of the archives (around 300GB) on a micro SD card in your phone.
posted by rh at 7:30 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
The crazy thing is that 25 years is a long time and now by modern data standards, the archive is not very big (assuming binary attachments are removed). You could store one of the archives (around 300GB) on a micro SD card in your phone.
posted by rh at 7:30 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Pouring one out for rec.arts.sf.written.composition - for a briefish moment in time, which was already mostly over by the time I found it, genuinely an excellent place for thoughtful writing advice and brainstorming.
posted by Jeanne at 7:33 AM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Jeanne at 7:33 AM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
I cut my internet teeth on alt.angst and alt.fan.pratchett back in like 1997.
Sometimes I think about how badly we’ve squandered the promise of the early internet and it just horrifies me.
posted by gauche at 7:33 AM on December 15, 2023 [11 favorites]
Sometimes I think about how badly we’ve squandered the promise of the early internet and it just horrifies me.
posted by gauche at 7:33 AM on December 15, 2023 [11 favorites]
I think that I got on Usenet in the late 80s, very early 90s, and finally dropped off in the early aughts, when Hal-PC's (also now gone) servers finally died. I spent a lot of time on alt.folklore.computers, and rec.arts.comics. I remember late one night answering someone's question via email, and getting a response saying it worked something like 5 minutes later. I was curious why they were up, and then saw that they were in Australia. I also had a Suicide Squid (the mascot of rec.arts.comics) T-Shirt.
I used google groups a little over 5 years ago, because it was the official support forum for some dicom software I was using. I just looked, and it's all spam now.
Finally, at one point, I had the line" ObGrep: Kibo, Freemasonry, Armenia" and got responses from all 3. Kibo just replied with "Cute." The Freemasonry guy gave a brief explanation of how his script worked, and it had a filter for false positives (which now included me), which I thought was nice. I also got a rant about the Armenian genocide for my troubles.
Fun times.
posted by Spike Glee at 7:34 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I used google groups a little over 5 years ago, because it was the official support forum for some dicom software I was using. I just looked, and it's all spam now.
Finally, at one point, I had the line" ObGrep: Kibo, Freemasonry, Armenia" and got responses from all 3. Kibo just replied with "Cute." The Freemasonry guy gave a brief explanation of how his script worked, and it had a filter for false positives (which now included me), which I thought was nice. I also got a rant about the Armenian genocide for my troubles.
Fun times.
posted by Spike Glee at 7:34 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
There are dead people whose only traces remaining (for me) are in Usenet archives, I think. Bulletin board stuff. How can do a sort of global search on names?
posted by pracowity at 7:35 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by pracowity at 7:35 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
Anyone remember alt.fan.suicide-squid?
It was very hard to retract a typo, which made for many useless but occasionally amusing newsgroups.
posted by sammyo at 7:44 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
It was very hard to retract a typo, which made for many useless but occasionally amusing newsgroups.
posted by sammyo at 7:44 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
finally now nobody can read the cringey stuff i said when I was 19
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:44 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by AzraelBrown at 7:44 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mid 80’s, at Apple, Lisa computer running Unix, and someone showed me how to get on Usenet. Heaven… Marvin Minsky, at MIT, personally slammed me about one of my comments about general AI. Chatted with Kibo, learned a bunch of stuff, met a “rock star” in Europe which ended up with me going to Berlin and hearing the band, and then hanging out here in California with the guy when he came to the US for the first time (not a good time), and generally felt a part of a world community of smart asses, and opinionated people of all sorts, sort of like an adolescent MetaFilter….
posted by njohnson23 at 7:51 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 7:51 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
Half of these comments are just "remember some.usenet.group?".
I am here for it. Sometimes a little nostalgia mixed with cringe perfectly meets the needs of the moment.
(alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die, anyone?)
posted by Pemdas at 7:57 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I am here for it. Sometimes a little nostalgia mixed with cringe perfectly meets the needs of the moment.
(alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die, anyone?)
posted by Pemdas at 7:57 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
It was a pretty huge deal for those of us who weren't particularly good at meatspace socializing; it was also an early lesson in not feeding trolls, and also in how evanescent some online communities could be. Cantor and Siegel were blamed for being the proverbial serpents in paradise, but it was probably inevitable.
alt.peeves
alt.tasteless
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:04 AM on December 15, 2023
alt.peeves
alt.tasteless
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:04 AM on December 15, 2023
In some ways, MetaFilter is the inheritor of Usenet's legacy on the web. Reddit is too, of course, but MetaFilter has that generalist attitude to the wider world, as opposed to Reddit's hyperfocused silos.
But Usenet was a load of hyperfocused silos too?
And MetaFilter is a relatively small group with broadly politically similar views, while Usenet and Reddit both include/d all viewpoints from many more people.
And you're more likely to get into a huge unmoderated argument on Usenet or Reddit (based on my very old memory of the former).
I like, or have liked, all three things. But other than "has been around a long time" I don't see much similarity between MetaFilter and Usenet.
posted by fabius at 8:23 AM on December 15, 2023 [14 favorites]
But Usenet was a load of hyperfocused silos too?
And MetaFilter is a relatively small group with broadly politically similar views, while Usenet and Reddit both include/d all viewpoints from many more people.
And you're more likely to get into a huge unmoderated argument on Usenet or Reddit (based on my very old memory of the former).
I like, or have liked, all three things. But other than "has been around a long time" I don't see much similarity between MetaFilter and Usenet.
posted by fabius at 8:23 AM on December 15, 2023 [14 favorites]
The complete UTZoo collection only sticks around for long enough for a lawyer's letter from that guy with the copyright claim to messages he doesn't want people to read to appear. It was always a fragile system.
Yeah, I remember reading Usenet over a 9600 baud serial connection from a VAX cluster to a VT52 emulator running on an Atari ST in the James Weir undergrad computer lab at Strathclyde University, circa 1989. It was a time, but maybe not a better one.
posted by scruss at 8:29 AM on December 15, 2023
Yeah, I remember reading Usenet over a 9600 baud serial connection from a VAX cluster to a VT52 emulator running on an Atari ST in the James Weir undergrad computer lab at Strathclyde University, circa 1989. It was a time, but maybe not a better one.
posted by scruss at 8:29 AM on December 15, 2023
I still have my Suicide Squid T-shirt!
posted by ursus_comiter at 8:31 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by ursus_comiter at 8:31 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
> The word "e-mail" was still hyphenated in those days
And always will be, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:39 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
And always will be, as far as I'm concerned.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:39 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
> > In some ways, MetaFilter is the inheritor of Usenet's legacy on the web. Reddit is too, of course, but MetaFilter has that generalist attitude to the wider world, as opposed to Reddit's hyperfocused silos.
> But Usenet was a load of hyperfocused silos too?
I can see both. Usenet was certainly siloed by topic, but I think it was in a lot of ways a community of its own. The amount of content was also more manageable, and you really could read a little bit of almost everything. And even if you didn't know about the Armenian genocide, you knew who Kibo was, and may have even personally triggered one of his rants.
Sure, Reddit has accumulated some of its own lore and even a few characters. Still it seems to me more an intentionally shared history than the emergence of a pantheon.
posted by phrits at 8:44 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
> But Usenet was a load of hyperfocused silos too?
I can see both. Usenet was certainly siloed by topic, but I think it was in a lot of ways a community of its own. The amount of content was also more manageable, and you really could read a little bit of almost everything. And even if you didn't know about the Armenian genocide, you knew who Kibo was, and may have even personally triggered one of his rants.
Sure, Reddit has accumulated some of its own lore and even a few characters. Still it seems to me more an intentionally shared history than the emergence of a pantheon.
posted by phrits at 8:44 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea. Massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
— Gene Spafford, 1992
posted by smcdow at 8:50 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
— Gene Spafford, 1992
posted by smcdow at 8:50 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
Back in the late 90's I whiled away many an hour inflicting my corny jokes on the good (and otherwise) people of rec.humor.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:53 AM on December 15, 2023
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:53 AM on December 15, 2023
Folks are still mad 22 years later about how Google took over Deja.
... because the Internet Archive offered to do then what they're doing now?
posted by zippy at 8:57 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
... because the Internet Archive offered to do then what they're doing now?
posted by zippy at 8:57 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I first got on to Usenet in 1989 when I started college, then had a job at another college from 1992 to 1995 where I had very little to do most of the time, and so spent almost all my time reading Usenet. It really did seem like you could keep up with almost all of it if you wanted to and had a bunch of spare time. I remember the day of the Canter & Siegel Green Card posts, and the post on rec.arts.books in which Mike Godwin first stated Godwin's Law. I spent a boatload of time on rec.music.gdead - someone made group T-shirts that had a picture on the front of a rose-bedecked skeleton at a desktop computer with the word "NETHEAD" and on the back the slogan "Nothing left to do but :-) :-) :-)" I wore mine till it was full of holes. I also appeared on a cassette compilation of Grateful Dead covers by frequent posters called "Neticated". My real Usenet home was much smaller, though - alt.society.generation-x. We had meetups that we called "Tingles" for some reason I can't remember now- I went to a bunch in Boston and one in Montreal.
posted by Daily Alice at 9:01 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Daily Alice at 9:01 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
I fully expect Google to discontinue support for... Google at some point, possibly accidentally. There will then be a faint "pop" and the internet will return to what it was.
Well, one can dream.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 9:02 AM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
Well, one can dream.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 9:02 AM on December 15, 2023 [6 favorites]
Tim Berners-Lee's "WorldWideWeb project" announcement on alt.hypertext, Aug 6th 1991
posted by gwint at 9:07 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by gwint at 9:07 AM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
They're tearing down the Bell Labs Naperville buildings
Just three days ago Nokia announced that Bell Labs will be leaving their historic Murray Hill headquarters, where the first transistor was made (and is still publicly displayed, along with a Telstar!).
I'm curious what will become of the buildings; after many years of vacancy the Eero Saarinen Bell Labs building in Holmdel was saved, and reborn as Bell Works.
(MeFi meetup at Murray Hill while you can, folks.)
posted by phooky at 9:29 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just three days ago Nokia announced that Bell Labs will be leaving their historic Murray Hill headquarters, where the first transistor was made (and is still publicly displayed, along with a Telstar!).
I'm curious what will become of the buildings; after many years of vacancy the Eero Saarinen Bell Labs building in Holmdel was saved, and reborn as Bell Works.
(MeFi meetup at Murray Hill while you can, folks.)
posted by phooky at 9:29 AM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
Usenet was certainly siloed by topic, but I think it was in a lot of ways a community of its own. The amount of content was also more manageable, and you really could read a little bit of almost everything. And even if you didn't know about the Armenian genocide, you knew who Kibo was, and may have even personally triggered one of his rants.
I guess that depends on when you were reading it, which may affect how much you think it compares to MetaFilter vs Reddit.
It felt overwhelmingly huge to me around 1995-ish and I'd never have dreamed of trying to read it all, even if I hadn't had to download my chosen groups to read offline every day (to avoid phone charges). I'd never heard of Kibo until now.
posted by fabius at 9:31 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
I guess that depends on when you were reading it, which may affect how much you think it compares to MetaFilter vs Reddit.
It felt overwhelmingly huge to me around 1995-ish and I'd never have dreamed of trying to read it all, even if I hadn't had to download my chosen groups to read offline every day (to avoid phone charges). I'd never heard of Kibo until now.
posted by fabius at 9:31 AM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Oh, I completely forgot that I wrote a curses-based newsreader, probably somewhere around 1991 or so. It was kind of cool, and it quickly became my daily driver. Its navigation treated the newsgroup names hierarchically, it automatically kept your browsing history, and rudimentary menus enabled you to quickly zoom back to where you were in a group or thread based on the history.
I never released it because it was just a "taking a break" project, and I had no time to whip it into shape, nor support it. I was in the middle of going back to university for a career change - while continuing to work full time. (The career change ultimately never happened, and in light of current events, I dodged a bullet by bailing out.)
Damned if I can find the source code, though.
posted by smcdow at 9:39 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I never released it because it was just a "taking a break" project, and I had no time to whip it into shape, nor support it. I was in the middle of going back to university for a career change - while continuing to work full time. (The career change ultimately never happened, and in light of current events, I dodged a bullet by bailing out.)
Damned if I can find the source code, though.
posted by smcdow at 9:39 AM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you want to revisit some really old Usenet, the UTZOO archive has 1982 through 1991. It's fascinating that the entire decade is only 1.9 GB, but was stored on such ancient media that it required 141 tapes. I recently hacked together a database loader so that I could grep it for interesting things and found this query from a young student asking for help:
(something is wrong with the message ID in the <pre> field. it should be 1991Mar11.224911.5506@cc.helsinki.fi)
posted by autopilot at 10:40 AM on December 15, 2023 [16 favorites]
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Good PC/AT-hardware books around?
Message-ID: <1>
Date: 11 Mar 91 22:49:11 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 23
Well today I was browsing (sp?) through the books available at the local
book-store (which has a relatively good selection on computer-related
books), and noticed a definite lack in hardware-ralated PC-books. I'm
new to the PC (having programmed 68k before), and have little or no idea
how the actual hardware is programmed. I need help!!
(S)VGA cards and the processor are easy to find books for (Ferraro's:
Programming EGA and VGA cards and various 386-books), but somehow it
seems there is a vacuum concerning PC/AT-related hardware (ie 8529 (?)
interrupt controller, clock chip programming, disk I/O etc). Can anybody
fill me in on what books are needed/useful (I'm a hardware programmer -
BIOS and DOS calls aren't interesting, I need real bit by bit
information).
I found a couple of books that mentioned IO-ports and hardware
interrupts, but none that really told you how to reprogram the 8529 (is
it even possible?) or what the a20-confusion is all about. Is there some
book out there that allows you to use all the features of an AT386
without using BIOS for ANYTHING? The bios is clearly braindamaged, and
cannot be used outside dos (especially in protected mode) for any real
work. Is there some way to move int8 etc to another interrupt by
reprogramming the interrupt chips? etc.
Any help appreciated, Linus Torvalds
---
There weren't any replies in the archive, so I sincerely hope that he was able to figure out how to program the PC/AT-related hardware and do something interesting with it.(something is wrong with the message ID in the <pre> field. it should be 1991Mar11.224911.5506@cc.helsinki.fi)
posted by autopilot at 10:40 AM on December 15, 2023 [16 favorites]
In some ways, MetaFilter is the inheritor of Usenet's legacy on the web.
wanna flame u so bad for this opinion, but I can't, because this isn't usenet
posted by Sebmojo at 10:52 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
wanna flame u so bad for this opinion, but I can't, because this isn't usenet
posted by Sebmojo at 10:52 AM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
unsubscribe me
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:54 AM on December 15, 2023
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 10:54 AM on December 15, 2023
I have used Google groups to find Usenet postings I made in college circa 1985, even ones before the Great Renaming. But maybe another question is what was my last post on Usenet. Guessing it might not even be this millennium.
posted by larrybob at 11:52 AM on December 15, 2023
posted by larrybob at 11:52 AM on December 15, 2023
It occurs to me that I haven't heard anybody use the word "flame" for angry comments in, oh, ten years if not more. Probably because angry comments are basically just the price of doing business on anything you post to more than twenty people or so. There's no need for another word for it, is there.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:59 AM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 11:59 AM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
I did a search on my name on Google Groups and found this post from alt.fan.momus of a transcription of a recording of Momus writing a song about me live on stage circa 1999.
posted by larrybob at 12:03 PM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by larrybob at 12:03 PM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
Wow.
It was because of rec.motorcycles that I....
* found a place to live in Seattle
* found a job in Boston
* met a FWB off and on for a few years
* bought and sold more than a few bikes
usenet, for me in the mid-90s was about a lot more than just the topical silo....
posted by Thistledown at 12:20 PM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
It was because of rec.motorcycles that I....
* found a place to live in Seattle
* found a job in Boston
* met a FWB off and on for a few years
* bought and sold more than a few bikes
usenet, for me in the mid-90s was about a lot more than just the topical silo....
posted by Thistledown at 12:20 PM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm pleased that so many MeFi members are veterans of Usenet. I never got the chance to use it much back in its heyday, most of its legacy is pre-web. As already mentioned, Usenet was where Linux got started. It was also the home of Nethack.
I'm saddened that a number of people here are speaking positively of Reddit as a replacement, when just a few months ago they had their own troubles that they have not apologized for. I'm hesitant to use my efforts to pour still more value in that terrible company. I'm sure someone will chime in shortly with (to use period-appropriate lingo) "u lost get over it lol," but no, I don't think I will get over it. I think I'd rather do without, as far as I can.
Ultimately the things that did Usenet in were spam, the web, and its use as a distribution point for warez. Spam made it impossible to use for its intended purpose; the web made alternatives to it viable; and warez and piracy gave it a new purpose.
There is a free public Usenet server you can sign up for with a focus on discussion, aptly called Eternal September. (If you choose to sign up there, you'll need a client. You might try Pan, for Linux/Gnome. For Windows, you might try this version, although it dates back to 2019.) And the "big 8" Usenet management board, who oversees the major hierarchies, is active.
Looking at it today through eternal-september, the first thing I'm struck with is a sea of 3dfx boards. eternal-september's home page mentions that in February they removed the Microsoft groups, which were shut down by MS 10 years ago. Maybe someone should pass them a message about 3dfx?
posted by JHarris at 12:45 PM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm saddened that a number of people here are speaking positively of Reddit as a replacement, when just a few months ago they had their own troubles that they have not apologized for. I'm hesitant to use my efforts to pour still more value in that terrible company. I'm sure someone will chime in shortly with (to use period-appropriate lingo) "u lost get over it lol," but no, I don't think I will get over it. I think I'd rather do without, as far as I can.
Ultimately the things that did Usenet in were spam, the web, and its use as a distribution point for warez. Spam made it impossible to use for its intended purpose; the web made alternatives to it viable; and warez and piracy gave it a new purpose.
There is a free public Usenet server you can sign up for with a focus on discussion, aptly called Eternal September. (If you choose to sign up there, you'll need a client. You might try Pan, for Linux/Gnome. For Windows, you might try this version, although it dates back to 2019.) And the "big 8" Usenet management board, who oversees the major hierarchies, is active.
Looking at it today through eternal-september, the first thing I'm struck with is a sea of 3dfx boards. eternal-september's home page mentions that in February they removed the Microsoft groups, which were shut down by MS 10 years ago. Maybe someone should pass them a message about 3dfx?
posted by JHarris at 12:45 PM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
Found another site with a 1981-1991 Usernet Archive: usenet.trashworldnews.com
posted by larrybob at 12:47 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by larrybob at 12:47 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I spent all my time on Usenet from 1996-2001 or so in alt.binaries.mac.applications and alt.binaries.movies.dvd.images, downloading free shareware and public domain movies of course. It was dynamite!
posted by porn in the woods at 1:06 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by porn in the woods at 1:06 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm saddened that a number of people here are speaking positively of Reddit as a replacement
I don't see anyone saying that, only people discussing whether Reddit has some similarities to Usenet.
posted by fabius at 1:51 PM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
I don't see anyone saying that, only people discussing whether Reddit has some similarities to Usenet.
posted by fabius at 1:51 PM on December 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
If a friend I met through news.admin.net-abuse.email hadn't said "I talked to my boss about you and he asked 'if hanov3r's so smart, why isn't he working for us?' so, would you like to fly our for an interview?" in 2000, I would not be the person I am, doing the work I do. usenet is directly responsible for my career path.
posted by hanov3r at 2:36 PM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by hanov3r at 2:36 PM on December 15, 2023 [7 favorites]
It occurs to me - to those old timers posting about their experiences with Usenet maybe 30 something years ago - the world was small enough at the time that we were probably informing and arguing with each other back then.
I found a question I had posted to sci.bio about about sensitive plants form 1992 - actual answers from people who knew what they were talking about from across the world. To me Metafilter is definitely somewhere that has inherited that spirit!
posted by rongorongo at 3:31 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
I found a question I had posted to sci.bio about about sensitive plants form 1992 - actual answers from people who knew what they were talking about from across the world. To me Metafilter is definitely somewhere that has inherited that spirit!
posted by rongorongo at 3:31 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Where can I get the latest posts from "alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die" now? :-(
posted by milnak at 3:38 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by milnak at 3:38 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
My usenet claims to fame:
- accidentally annoyed Steve Jobs on comp.sys.next
- met the creator of alt.politics.shelfbutt years after the fact
As far as I can tell I posted my first USENET post in march of 1994, subsequently hung out a lot on alt.society.generation-x, where I made friends I know to this day. Life is long, and weird.
posted by jscalzi at 4:55 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by jscalzi at 4:55 PM on December 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
It is interesting to watch Google abandon their aspirational goal of organizing all the world’s information and making it useful. It seems like something that is relatively cheap, so cheap it can be done by a nonprofit. Definitely much cheaper than not being evil. But it seems like they almost want to write themselves out of history. As big as they are today, I could see them being seen along the lines of Yahoo! in a couple decades. Graveyard of Alexandria.
posted by snofoam at 5:07 PM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by snofoam at 5:07 PM on December 15, 2023 [4 favorites]
Is Battlecruiser 3000AD out yet?
It's almost done
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:36 PM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's almost done
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:36 PM on December 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
Ah, USENET. I was there spring semester of 1988, the wonder years. I took an EE class just to get the university computing account so I could get e-mail and USENET like my EE roommate. It was so nice back then, seems most MeFites are 1990's or later kids. I went to the First Annual talk.bizzare bring your Own Bottle (FATBOB) meetup in an apartment at UC Berkely on the occasion of a USC at Cal football game. Such an interesting group of people that few days. Couldn't make SATBOB, halfway across the country and no car, would have been fun I'm sure. Strangely enough when I look up FATBOB....all the results point back to me here on MF (go figure). I worked for University Computing Services and totally did the Kibo ObGrep across /var/spool/news thing. Ended up in alt.gothic quite a bit as well.
By the mid 90's I had a Linux machine running nntp over the old UUCP dial-up time delay for news/e-mail. Which is also that semi-but-not-quite-technically-one-night-stand-hookup which is a fun story in istelf that in my experience it would displease the mods.
Later on, I accidentally had this job interview for a programmer/SunOS admin that I was more than qualified for and things were going well.... until we got into USENET and the wonderful place it still mostly was except for that annoying September thing and SPAM. Then the guy I was interviewing with pointed over my shoulder to the bookcase on the wall behind us and sitting there was a god-dammed can of SPAM with sharpie writing on it "To the SPAM King". The interview didn't go much further and I didn't get a call back, wouldn't have taken it anyway.... I had an otherwise good interview with an internet spammer, oops.
USENET was great back in it's day and there is no way that MeFi is any comparison to the bounty that once was back in the more civilized age. There was internet death penalty of take care of your asshole users or we just won't carry any of your users at all. Eternal September was the first ringing of the death bell.
There should be another USENET, but given the peoples on the internets of today... Good Fucking Luck With That.
posted by zengargoyle at 10:24 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
By the mid 90's I had a Linux machine running nntp over the old UUCP dial-up time delay for news/e-mail. Which is also that semi-but-not-quite-technically-one-night-stand-hookup which is a fun story in istelf that in my experience it would displease the mods.
Later on, I accidentally had this job interview for a programmer/SunOS admin that I was more than qualified for and things were going well.... until we got into USENET and the wonderful place it still mostly was except for that annoying September thing and SPAM. Then the guy I was interviewing with pointed over my shoulder to the bookcase on the wall behind us and sitting there was a god-dammed can of SPAM with sharpie writing on it "To the SPAM King". The interview didn't go much further and I didn't get a call back, wouldn't have taken it anyway.... I had an otherwise good interview with an internet spammer, oops.
USENET was great back in it's day and there is no way that MeFi is any comparison to the bounty that once was back in the more civilized age. There was internet death penalty of take care of your asshole users or we just won't carry any of your users at all. Eternal September was the first ringing of the death bell.
There should be another USENET, but given the peoples on the internets of today... Good Fucking Luck With That.
posted by zengargoyle at 10:24 PM on December 15, 2023 [1 favorite]
There should be another USENET, but given the peoples on the internets of today... Good Fucking Luck With That.
Mefi's got gopher, why not NNTP.
posted by ctmf at 12:58 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Mefi's got gopher, why not NNTP.
posted by ctmf at 12:58 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
mefi.askme.ShouldIEatThis
posted by ctmf at 1:03 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by ctmf at 1:03 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
Eventually, "just google it" will mean this post's title.
posted by filtergik at 6:01 AM on December 16, 2023
posted by filtergik at 6:01 AM on December 16, 2023
I sigh with relief. That's a lot of information to go missing, but at least all the very injudicious things I said as a stupid college student will be lost forever (at least via a search on google groups). Every time I think, I should really run for president I end up remembering all the flame wars, imagining my public humiliation at a press conference. (so many flames, so many, many flames)
You and me both.
NY Times headline: "Revelatory Online Statements Fuel Collapse of Chitownfats Presidential Bid"
"Horrified and disappointed supporters flee campaign headquarters"
"Intends to "spend more time with family""
posted by Chitownfats at 6:58 AM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
You and me both.
NY Times headline: "Revelatory Online Statements Fuel Collapse of Chitownfats Presidential Bid"
"Horrified and disappointed supporters flee campaign headquarters"
"Intends to "spend more time with family""
posted by Chitownfats at 6:58 AM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
[alt.callahans]
zaixfeep walks through the door and looks around the empty, vandalzed room, glancing over all the spam and ads on the walls
"When did this place become a Starbucks? And when was it trashed and abandoned?"
zaixfeep turns and leaves, disappointed and disillusioned.
posted by zaixfeep at 7:09 AM on December 16, 2023
zaixfeep walks through the door and looks around the empty, vandalzed room, glancing over all the spam and ads on the walls
"When did this place become a Starbucks? And when was it trashed and abandoned?"
zaixfeep turns and leaves, disappointed and disillusioned.
posted by zaixfeep at 7:09 AM on December 16, 2023
To
posted by ob1quixote at 7:21 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
rec.games.netrek: Sync with --] F8 [--- OGG ogg OGG base!!posted by ob1quixote at 7:21 AM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
September has finally ended. We made it, folks
Somebody wake up Billie Joe!
posted by aws17576 at 8:28 AM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Somebody wake up Billie Joe!
posted by aws17576 at 8:28 AM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
...and Green Day
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:11 AM on December 16, 2023
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:11 AM on December 16, 2023
For example, I remember the original non-evil version of the Usenet incel forums founded by Alana, a Canadian queer women who founded "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project." At the time, the forums were mainly women who hadn't come to terms that they were lesbian or queer, people looking for an asexual identity that wasn't really acknowledged or "seen" at the time, and straight autistic boys who didn't know they were autistic yet (it me). It would really be a crime against the historical record if all that Usenet primary source material were thrown away & we couldn't trace exactly when the "incel" subculture turned right-wing and evil.
posted by jonp72 at 10:55 AM on December 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by jonp72 at 10:55 AM on December 16, 2023 [5 favorites]
Interesting story, jonp72. Some of Alana's history got reported on a few years ago: BBC 2018, Politico 2018, Elle 2016. There's also some incel community history on this wiki.
Did Alana ever start a Usenet newsgroup? The stuff I've read says it's a mailing list. The wiki says "the usenet groups Alt.support.shyness and Alt.seduction.fast formed the initial and primary websites of the incelosphere in the 1990".
I said earlier Usenet archives are available but the coverage is spotty, particularly in the later years. The UTZOO archive is great but covers 1981–1991, before Alana's project and a lot of other things. The person who set up usenetarchives.com says he couldn't find good archives for 1991–2001. I'm not even sure how good Google / Deja's archive is. The company dates to 1995. I do not know if their copy of archives is available anywhere outside Google Groups' interface.
In the past I know Google used to create archives of its web indexes and other things and give them to someone for safe keeping. None have been made accessible and I don't know if they still exist or are being updated. It wasn't a serious effort at the company when I was there (until 2005), there was no full time archivist, but folks were doing something. Giganews has also made some archives.
I wonder what it'd take to get one full clean set of archives collecting all the best from everywhere. There's no money to be made, it'd have to be a not for profit exercise.
posted by Nelson at 11:44 AM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
Did Alana ever start a Usenet newsgroup? The stuff I've read says it's a mailing list. The wiki says "the usenet groups Alt.support.shyness and Alt.seduction.fast formed the initial and primary websites of the incelosphere in the 1990".
I said earlier Usenet archives are available but the coverage is spotty, particularly in the later years. The UTZOO archive is great but covers 1981–1991, before Alana's project and a lot of other things. The person who set up usenetarchives.com says he couldn't find good archives for 1991–2001. I'm not even sure how good Google / Deja's archive is. The company dates to 1995. I do not know if their copy of archives is available anywhere outside Google Groups' interface.
In the past I know Google used to create archives of its web indexes and other things and give them to someone for safe keeping. None have been made accessible and I don't know if they still exist or are being updated. It wasn't a serious effort at the company when I was there (until 2005), there was no full time archivist, but folks were doing something. Giganews has also made some archives.
I wonder what it'd take to get one full clean set of archives collecting all the best from everywhere. There's no money to be made, it'd have to be a not for profit exercise.
posted by Nelson at 11:44 AM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm sure the 5 people still using it will be devastated
posted by GallonOfAlan at 4:03 PM on December 16, 2023
posted by GallonOfAlan at 4:03 PM on December 16, 2023
Oh, I completely forgot that I wrote a curses-based newsreader
I missed that you hadn't capitalized "curses" and thought maybe you were talking about having written a newsreader in Inform.
posted by straight at 10:17 PM on December 16, 2023
I missed that you hadn't capitalized "curses" and thought maybe you were talking about having written a newsreader in Inform.
posted by straight at 10:17 PM on December 16, 2023
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this
IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER
BULLETIN BOARDS.
posted by straight at 12:16 AM on December 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER
BULLETIN BOARDS.
posted by straight at 12:16 AM on December 17, 2023 [5 favorites]
A list of some of the earliest messages dating back to May 1981.
The earliest posts, which date from May 1981 to June 1991, were donated to Google by the University of Western Ontario with the help of David Wiseman and others, and were originally archived by Henry Spencer at the University of Toronto's Zoology department. [x]
posted by Lanark at 4:44 AM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
The earliest posts, which date from May 1981 to June 1991, were donated to Google by the University of Western Ontario with the help of David Wiseman and others, and were originally archived by Henry Spencer at the University of Toronto's Zoology department. [x]
posted by Lanark at 4:44 AM on December 17, 2023 [1 favorite]
I arrived after the Eternal September began, through a dial-up BBS from 1994-6 and then full home internet from 1996. Places like rec.arts.sf.tv.star-trek and alt.fan.pratchett with the charming guy with the unseen.demon.co.uk address.
"Just F___ing Google It" now means cancelling a product because the information is already organised or there are too few users and nowhere to make money from selling adverts.
posted by k3ninho at 1:35 PM on December 17, 2023
"Just F___ing Google It" now means cancelling a product because the information is already organised or there are too few users and nowhere to make money from selling adverts.
posted by k3ninho at 1:35 PM on December 17, 2023
I was quite active on politics and history news groups in the 1980s, so you can imagine my surprise when in 2000 I found myself working in the same step start-up with a relatively high-profile Usenet "celebrity" who not only remembered our acrimonious flamewars (I had not) but launched back into their substance with gusto, this time in the flesh. Repeatedly. Day after day. It was awkward. Especially when they set up a website just to slag me off.
Usenet could bring it the best in people, but also the worst. Some things are best left undiscoverable.
posted by meehawl at 8:06 AM on December 24, 2023 [5 favorites]
Usenet could bring it the best in people, but also the worst. Some things are best left undiscoverable.
posted by meehawl at 8:06 AM on December 24, 2023 [5 favorites]
Did Alana ever start a Usenet newsgroup?
I seem to remember some newsgroup & I definitely remember that there was a Usenet-style FAQ for the group, which I found useful. It's all so long ago.
posted by jonp72 at 5:59 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
I seem to remember some newsgroup & I definitely remember that there was a Usenet-style FAQ for the group, which I found useful. It's all so long ago.
posted by jonp72 at 5:59 PM on December 24, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by notoriety public at 4:08 AM on December 15, 2023 [21 favorites]