One of the things I remember most vividly was my first encounter with the internet, which was Usenet. I was thrilled at the thought of being able to freely exchange opinions, knowledge, jokes and other (in)significant stuff with complete strangers all over the world. Of course, one of the first newsgroups I encountered was alt.tasteless, and boy, did I feel at home there!
That was at the technical university I attended, when an internet connection cost a five figure amount in most European currencies. After leaving university, I lost access, until after a few more years, the internet arrived at the company I worked for by then. Of course, I tried to go back into alt.tasteless, to see if any of my old buddies were still up and running, but there were only a few, and access to the newsgroup was limited and intermittent. Oh well, another newsgroup, called alt.tasteless.jokes had to fill in, and I spent quite some time there, flaming newbies, assholes and other scum, after a while becoming somewhat of a regular.
Since about two years, I've dropped out of atj for the most part, because IMNSHO the trolls and assholes have won it over.
Oh well, I thought - there's bound to be some USEful groups there, too, after all, it's called Usenet, eh?
Found some on photography, cryptology etc. And guess what?
Useless. Boring. A fucking waste of time.
These newsgroups (and I think they may well constitute a representative sample) are so full of people who are so full of themselves. I'm full of myself, too, but I don't bother other people with it. (Yes - not even you who may be reading here, it's your own damn choice, right?)
There's this one guy on sci.crypt - he (obviously) has been writing for like 9 years, and he rambles on and on about what scientific discoveries he's made, how his knowledge is going to shove the world into a maelstrom of chaos - an obvious nutcase. You'd think people would just ignore and/or killfile him.
Guess what?
That's right - instead of just looking the other way, they ENCOURAGE the moron, replying to him over and over again, telling him that he's full of shit. The only one successfully ignoring anybody at all is - HIMSELF! He successfully ignores all the people who reply to him, and keeps droning and rambling and ranting...
Hundreds of seemingly intelligent people... and they get baited EVERY FUCKING TIME!
Goodness fucking gracious, I most sincerely do hope (although I should know otherwise) that people posting on Usenet are NOT a representative sample of the population of this planet.
But, dear inclined reader, you and I know better, don't we?
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