Old Usenet Posts Thread

[Pickle Dick]

Usenet, undeniably the precursor to your modern day internet forum website, is still around today (well over 40 years after its launch), but these days is largely used on a much smaller scale (mainly for stuff like filesharing - something about Usenet's filesharing system being superior to Bittorrent). I was born too a little too late to experience Usenet when it was a massive thing, but I've recently been browsing through older posts made through Usenet, and it intrigued me how the atmosphere was not all that different from internet forums of today, albeit with better manners (and for that matter, better grammar). There seems to be quite a bit of old timers here that are familiar with Usenet and love to reminisce about its heyday, so this thread can be a way for those to share posts from a bygone era where users of the internet were nerds sperging about what was current then rather than retards that seethe about politicians they don't like.

Starting off strong with something I print screened earlier today for the Simpsons Griefing Thread:

Spoiler

Some Betamax nerd coping and seething about VHS:



SJWs were alive and well in 1989:


And finally, this guy complaining about someone clogging up the darn internet by listing songs from Miami Vice (probably the most 1980s Usenet post):


I used usenetarchives.com to search up these ancient posts (with help from a handy newsgroup index), though there are other (better) ways to browse, and even still post on Usenet. Many of these solutions require payment, but it will likely be very much worth being able to get a feel for what the internet was like way back when.

 

[murph]

I used to use Xnews. I haven't used it in over 20 years so I don't vouch for this download, but the original program was great.

I used to read a standup comedy group where Louis CK, Dave Barry, and other comics who you haven't heard of would gossip with each other. I was pretty young so I liked a shenanigans group about practical jokes. Also, lots of porn, which Xnews helpfully stitched together for you (it was posted in multiple parts I forget all the technical bullshit).

Completely overrun by spam almost at its inception. It was fun while it lasted. Absolutely no jannies.

 

[JustTheFaxcts]

Definitely similar in a lot of ways but felt quite a bit smaller and served most online activities. It could be used for messaging, looking up information, downloading songs/movies, reading manga, watching porn, etc. There are some archives online of the more prominent trends, such as Kibology. He would grep for any post with the substring 'kibo' and then lol randum humor post.

Also, at the time it was incredibly fast since there were major hubs that synced at least once a day. Compared to downloading off the general internet it had blazing speeds and lots of content as alt.binaries grew. One interesting catch was that servers didn't always sync every file, and all larger content was broken up into multiple parts (often several dozen). They had par files that could arbitrarily recover sections, but I remember a few disappointments were I'd have something like 50/52 necessary files.

Very much a wild-west too, you could easily stumble on about anything. I remember distinctly one morning eating cereal and watching a video called WtfWtf which ended up being some guy drinking ipecac from a wine bottle, throwing it up, eating his vomit, and repeating the cycle. That was fairly tame too, just the first shock video I ever saw. Also, copyright litigation wasn't a thing so almost everything somewhat popular was shared openly.

 

[Pee Cola]

idk if this is true, but I remember reading somewhere that Jeffrey Dahmer used to post on alt.tasteless about how to cook human flesh. Bear in mind that alt.tasteless was full of edgelords posting about sick shit, so someone posting about literal cannibalism wouldn't have raised any red flags.

 

[Pickle Dick]

idk if this is true, but I remember reading somewhere that Jeffrey Dahmer used to post on alt.tasteless about how to cook human flesh. Bear in mind that alt.tasteless was full of edgelords posting about sick shit, so someone posting about literal cannibalism wouldn't have raised any red flags.

I sadly couldn't find any on the Usenet archive I used, but alt.tasteless seems to be a gold mine as far as edgy internet humor/spergouts are concerned. Here's an example from some limey upset about Americans existing (long before it was cool to be so):


Tiny Toons sperg crying about alt.tastless and talk.bizzare crossposting from their respective newsgroups to alt.tv.tiny-toon:


Ancient doomposting about the 1992 election on alt.politics.bush (the one where Bill Clinton won):


And finally, on talk.abortion, surprisingly relevant post about an Idaho abortion bill (that would ultimately be vetoed by the then-Democratic governor of that state), long before such bills came into full national discussion:

 

[Maurice Caine]

I sadly couldn't find any on the Usenet archive I used, but alt.tasteless seems to be a gold mine as far as edgy internet humor/spergouts are concerned. Here's an example from some limey upset about Americans existing (long before it was cool to be so):
View attachment 3541851

Tiny Toons sperg crying about alt.tastless and talk.bizzare crossposting from their respective newsgroups to alt.tv.tiny-toon:
View attachment 3541870

Ancient doomposting about the 1992 election on alt.politics.bush (the one where Bill Clinton won):
View attachment 3541891

And finally, on talk.abortion, surprisingly relevant post about an Idaho abortion bill (that would ultimately be vetoed by the then-Democratic governor of that state), long before such bills came into full national discussion:
View attachment 3541907

Jesus H. Christ, the parallels to modern 4chan-style posts are appaling.

 

[Colon capital V]

Ancient doomposting about the 1992 election on alt.politics.bush (the one where Bill Clinton won):

Clinton Derangement Syndrome lol

 

[Pickle Dick]

Jesus H. Christ, the parallels to modern 4chan-style posts are appaling.

I'd argue the present-day successor to Usenet would actually be more on the lines of Reddit, with how subgroups about very specific subjects are able to be created. Of course, the different is that Reddit is heavily jannified and filled with hyperpolitical retards compared to Usenet's much nerdier, more college-educated userbase that generally stuck to the topic a newsgroup was about. I may do a longer post comparing the two in the future.

Anyway, here's a surprisingly relevant Usenet post from 1983 (can.general):


An excerpt from a spergout about a new rule on Usenet (news.misc):


A post about the issue of separating church and state (alt.politics.usa):


Finally, a pair of threads from soc.culture.usa regarding the then-recent Rodney King riots from 1992. I'd say their an interesting read to get a taste of how people in Usenet's heyday conducted political discussion.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

No comment. I used to like the schizo groups.


Still relevant.

 

[Pickle Dick]

Still relevant.
View attachment 3545549

Poor limey wouldn't survive modern-day internet forums. That or he'd likely be yet another passive aggressive jannie on Reddit or something.

 

[yosho]

Spoiler: 90s /v/

Spoiler: Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies...

Spoiler: Bonus: a little bit of 80s /v/

 

[Flatline]

The console-war autism truly transcends generations.

 

[Pickle Dick]

View attachment 3550487
View attachment 3550489

Lmao, imagine these people going on /v/

Double lmao, a reminder of how contentious Roe v. Wade was even then (net.women):



I might just have to browse through every net.* newsgroup at some point, seeing how they have the oldest posts Usenet has to offer

 

[tetetete]

 

[Pissmaster]

View attachment 3550542

Politisperging pedophiles were online even back in 1989

 

[Pickle Dick]

Politisperging pedophiles were online even back in 1989

Speaking of which...

I present to this thread the duality of early 1980s American politisperging

Spoiler: net.politics

Reagan Enslavement Syndrome(?):


Reagan Derangement Syndrome:

On a (slightly) less political note, if you're wondering what people thought about the New Coke situation back in 1985...

Spoiler: net.misc.coke

New Coke media coverage is hiding the real (80s) problems


New Coke was a conspiracy to introduce corn syrup into """Classic""" coke:

 

[XYZpdq]

between this and the legendary Pomeii Shitposts it's pretty clear that humanity reached its sweet spot a while ago and isn't going to go much further

 

[Wintersun]

I remember my dad using Usenet when I was a little kid for something akin to Stack Overflow. I was absolutely fascinated by it, and I remember trying to figure out how to use it, sneaking down to his office at night when my parents went to bed and making retarded posts. My dad yelled at me for it, lol.

 

[AmpleApricots]

The nature of discussion was a bit different back then, on BBSes (which everyone knew were only for the cool people) too. Everything seemed more honest and sincere, or maybe I wasn't as cynic back then. People were mad online all the time for entirely sincere reasons with no agenda and no matter how wrong they maybe were, it was fine. There was no side to be at, in the way of how today opinions seem to be a team sport, if that makes sense? People also would usually put a lot more effort into what they were writing and the discussions they were having, also in those times mouth-breathers and pajeets usually didn't own/use computers, that helped too. Also less (careful - I said less, not "no") circlejerking and clique-y behavior, or so at least it felt. Maybe less attention whoring too. We were all new to this.

It was also a lot more easy to troll people because people took everything entirely serious and very personal. Somehow, funnily enough, that particular stance seems to celebrate a comeback.

Also a big thing you don't see anymore, people shared their ideas and expertise just because they could. There was a much bigger collaborative spirit in the right corners. No financial incentives to do so, usually. Nowadays e.g. every retard who can put a picture frame on the wall just *has* to make a youtube DIY channel, where he can waffle on about his dangerous half-knowledge, it seems. The internet of today is a *very* commercial place, and i do not only mean the ads, at all.

There were also many a lolcow back then, long before that was a word. Lots of brilliant and also very deranged ones.

 

[tehpope]

https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.computer.doom.playing/c/Fhfl5PHTbVk/m/bfZ2rgIANsQJ

The infamous thread where Team TNT annouces Evilution was not gonna be released freely but commerically.