[sillyquiet]

Yeah exactly. Usenet wasn't what it was because of the technology, it was because the participants were mostly there to have 'professional' conversations, and the kinds of conversations that nerdy techie-minded people have over beers after work (wesley.crusher.die.die.die, etc).

[sbf501]

As another Member of the Society to Reduce Wesley into a Little Styrofoam Dodecahedron, I can certainly attest that usenet wasn't as gleamingly professional as we remember. The original stereotypes of discussion group users (trolls, white knights, etc.) came from usenet.

[chasd00]

don't forget porn, there was a tremendous amount of porn on usenet. a friend of mine had some perl script he called "aub" that scraped alt.user.binaries or something like that. catalogs and catalogs of stuff on a quiet little server in a university lab.

[sbf501]

alt.binaries.pictures.erotica FTW

(There was also a computer at MIT called "zurich.ai.mit.edu" that you could FTP to in 1990 and download really raunchy NSFL porn. I still have scars.)