[ergothus]

> The old-timers on Usenet and IRC at the time thought that me and my classmates were idiots.

FWIW, my view at the time was a bit different - the normal cycle was that fresh students et al would join each year and they would either take time to learn the community conventions or they would leave. All of us were new once (indeed, I wasn't "new", but neither was I an old timer), so the issue wasn't the newcomers being idiots. The issue is that the community worked because of the conventions. We'd say "lurk for a while. Read the FAQ that I'd regularly posted. Learn how to quote and trim so many people can have manage an in-depth conversation that is spread over time and space".

Some considered this elitist snobbery and left. Others learned and stayed (and newcomers DID bring change - the conventions werent static).

But this sort of community cant survive the fast paced ephemeral connections that the eternal September brought.

What exists now is different. Better or worse? Too complex to answer. But definitely the kinds of conversations that were had then do not exist in the replacement media. They cant, anymore than the reverse could.

I'm not aware of any culture that survives integration with a larger one if that larger one has no regard for the smaller one.