alt.callahans

February 3, 2000 2:24 PM

alt.callahans is the usenet group we were talking about, Matt. How could you go wrong with lines like this?
Setting a bag of Susie B's on the bar, Freddie winks at Mike. "A round for the house, if you please, kind sir. It would be hard to come up with a better toast than the one just raised, so I'll just add a wish for you all." You truly can't go home again. or can you?
posted by CrazyUncleJoe (3 comments total)

just to add some backstory to anyone else reading this: Joe and I were talking today about how USENET used to be a wonderful useful place and how several biggies on the web got their start by reading it. I remembered hearing about this wonderfully weird newsgroup where everyone toasted each other when they posted, which was patterned after a bar that was mentioned in a book, and this is the newsgroup. Joe, do you know what that book is? I totally forgot.
posted by mathowie at 2:32 PM on February 3, 2000

I believe it's Spider Robinson's 'Callahan' stories. I haven't read them myself.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 2:40 PM on February 3, 2000

It gets even wackier---they make toasts on their IRC channel, too (#callahans on Undernet). Between that and the constant punning, it's like no other place on the net. I've never read a Spider Robinson book, but stumbled across the IRC channel three or four years ago and found it intelligent and irresistible, a far cry from most of the crap on chat even then. The Callahanians of the Internet are, I have always thought, one of the best "internet communities" anywhere. And it's got nothing to do with marketing, or stickiness, or product loyalty :>
posted by Sapphireblue at 3:00 PM on February 8, 2000