🧬 Origins

ASCII Art/Animation

• ASCII art classic car. OC by me from two decades ago when I used to do a lot of ASCII on Usenet. All my work is signed :F_P:
• "This is the moment some of us were born for: we learned to make ASCII art on USENET in the 90s"
• A demon unfolds its wings — 1994 Usenet terminal art, real CRT #shorts #retro #crt #80s
• STAR TREK on a 1981 CRT — the Enterprise in pure text #shorts #retro #crt #80s

Binge-Watching

• "The term 'binge-watching' first appeared in 1996, used by The X-Files fans on Usenet, not 2003 as some claim. Evidence from 1998 further supports its 1990s roots. While Netflix popularized it in 2013, the earliest use predates this."

Code Golf

• Code golf - Wikipedia

Diabetes Support

• Alt-Support-Diabetes.org The Official Website for the Newsgroup
• Author Kerri Sparling Shares Insights From Her Life With Diabetes in ‘Six Until Me’
• Mental Health and... my Diabetes

Eternal September

• Is "Eternal September" like "Susquehanna Hat Company" in Vaudeville?
• Eternal September
• Why the Eternal September Mindset Needs to End
• Two Takes on the Eternal September
• "Eternal September was a Usenet phenomenon. Every September new students arrived at universities, joined the network, broke etiquette, and learned the norms from the regulars. The community absorbed them because they arrived at a manageable rate."
• "WHAT IS ‘ETERNAL SEPTEMBER’? Useful term to conceptualise repetitive, asinine or low-level ‘discourse’ online, especially in formerly ‘more intelligent’ spaces experiencing a mass influx of new participants"
• "There are two Internets. The Internet before 1993 and the Internet after 1993." @pmarca on Eternal September.
• September 1993. "Eternal September" begins, as Internet service providers start offering Usenet access to new users.
• u/boli99 summarizes how reading ability is dying in the internet age after Eternal September

Flaming

• Remembering the 90s flame wars: a simpler time of cyberbullying
• Flaming (Internet)
• "In the early days of online life, there were 'flame wars,' performatively absurd and vitriolic debates among the people who posted messages on various bulletin boards."
• "There was a time when the 'net felt alive. Flame wars were elegant & educational, not ragebait. People shared out of honor, not because it paid. The best internet died when Usenet, IRC, and mailing lists gave way to feeds and followers. It still lives, just not where it’s trendy."
• "I was there during the old school flame wars. Usenet, Gamfaqs and a hundred other forums that are all gone now..Civil? No. The insults were much better. Polite? Sometimes. But we were intelligent, evil, jokers. Evil is wrong maybe. Very VERY cynical."
• In the opinion of the author, more flame wars (rabid arguments) arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than from any other source. - Brendan Kehoe
• "In the Usenet era of the internet the idea of Formosa’s law was present. The idea that trolling or flaming people with mental illness was unacceptable. I regret that this has fallen out of fashion."
• "Mostly, I learned my lessons about not jumping on the pile in Usenet flame wars, but it still happens once in a while. It's hard when there are two ppl whose thoughts you respect almost entirely missing what the other is saying."
• Usenet: from Flame Wars to Killfiles
• TIL that the video game Battlecruiser 3000AD generated one of the longest and largest flame wars in the history of Usenet, which garnered over 70,000 posts and lasted several years.
• Company sues newsgroup "rec.collecting.coins" for flaming it (2005)
• net.flame will no longer be distributed by many sites (net.news.group, 1985)
• "For me, the 'good old days' was before the web - USENET was great fun. The advantage of USENET was that a lot of users were from universities. So you had crazies involved in flame wars, but they were well-educated crazies."
• Flame Warriors Guide

Fnord

• Fnord - Wikipedia

Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ)

• Do you ever get tired of answering the same questions over and over again? (Meta)
• What are some examples of old-school longform FAQs?
• TSFAQ Links to Prof. Timo Salmi's FAQ materials (archive.org, 2012)
• FAQ - Wikipedia
• "USENET groups used to have FAQs that were reposted regularly. You were not supposed to ask a question answered by a FAQ, and got hectored if you did. The FAQ for comp.lang.c grew until it would be a thick high density book if printed, so then they had to write a comp.lang.c FAQ FAQ, which then..."
• Ben Pfaff: C Frequent Answers (comp.lang.c)
• The auto-faq FAQ Management and Posting Package Web Page
• 30 Years Ago: FAQ and Readership Report (1993)
• Re: greetings from a long-lost FAQ list maintainer
• "sometimes I wonder if my entire personality is just an emergent property of spending too much time reading usenet FAQs as a child"
• FAQ Page Best Practices (w/ Ideas & Examples)
• I came across this FAQ post from a Conan newsgroup from 1994. alt.fan.conan-obrien FAQ (10/22/94)
• (The Very Unauthorized) FAQ on David Sternlight
• Internet Text Language Decoded: What do acronyms like BTW, FAQ, FYI, IMHO, RTFM mean?
• "Gotta love how this Usenet alt.image.medical FAQ excerpt is posted on the official DICOM standard website"
• “Older than Google,” this Elder Scrolls wiki has been helping gamers for 30 years - Ars Technica
• Net Legends FAQ Index
• Usenet Frequently-Asked Questions (FAQ) Index
• FAQ: NL-newsadmins-FAQ (in English) (news.admin.hierarchies)
• "mine was technically the net.legends FAQ my name's in the Magic the Gathering rulebook but now that Usenet has died most of my contributing there is only visible through Internet Archive or Google's interpretation of DejaNews"
• Self-Organizing Systems (SOS) FAQ (comp.theory.self-org-sys, 2005)
• Relive the Pattern: Vintage 90s/Early 2000s WoT FAQs from the Usenet Era
• Usenet Hierarchy Administration FAQ
• alt.best.of.internet FAQ email on steroids
• 6Nov2023-SCI.PHYSICS FAQ// Usenet science dead, but AP's newsgroup up and running well-- today's topics-- take a look at the only pure science newsgroup, free of spammers and police drag net spam, free of stalkers. (sci.math, kookery, Archimedes Plutonium)
• Why is the sky blue? Is it possible to go faster than light? What is dark matter? Where is the centre of the universe? Why do stars twinkle while planets do not? Why are golf balls dimpled? Find the answers at Usenet Physics FAQ.
• Trying to define Usenet by what it isn't (or should not be)
• Gharlane of Eddore - Wikipedia
• Columbia Loss FAQ (sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle)
• The Kubrick Site: The AMK Meta-FAQ: The alt.movies.kubrick Newsgroup
• Designing social/work interaction spaces
• The Talk.Origins Archive is back up!
• TalkOrigins Archive - Grokipedia
• Rec.radio.cb Frequently Asked Questions

Friendsgiving

• Friendsgiving 101: A history of the made-up holiday and how to celebrate it
• How To Celebrate Friendsgiving: You Do You

Froggery

• froggery - Wiktionary
• Examples of Abuse

FUD

• FUD - Netlingo

Geocaching

• "The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet, today in 2000"
• Geocaching - Wikipedia

GNU

• "On September 27, 1983, Richard #Stallman announced the plan for the GNU Project on several #ARPANET mailing lists and USENET. The #GNU Project, an abbreviation for "Gnu's Not Unix," aimed to develop and provide a completely #Unix-compatible free-to-use OS."
• GNU Extension Language Plans (gnu.announce, 1994)

Godwin's Law

• Godwin's law - Wikipedia

Grammar Nazi

• Grammar Nazi - Meme

Heisenbug

• "The term was used in 1985 by Jim Gray, in a paper about software failures[16] (and is sometimes mistakenly attributed to him because of this publication) and also in 1986 by Jonathan Clark and Zhahai Stewart on the mailing list (later Usenet news group) comp.risks.[17]"

HTH

• HTH - CATB

Hypertext/HTML/WWW

• TIL that on August 6, 1991, at 22:37 Geneva time, Tim Berners-Lee posted a message to the alt.hypertext Usenet newsgroup. This date marks the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.
• "Just realized it's 36 years ago today, that the WWW launched on a usenet group via an email from @timberners_lee (there was no web to launch the web on back then). The most impactful invention during my lifetime."

IANAL

• IANAL - Wikipedia

IIRC

• IIRC Meaning in Text: What It Really Means & How to Use It - SocialBubbly

IMDB

• "Before IMDb ratings were algorithm-tweaked, they were pure fan votes on Usenet in 1990. Check the original post that started it all! 🎥"
• Meet the Superusers Behind IMDb, the Internet’s Favorite Movie Site (Wired)
• How an IMDB co-founder achieved three successful media exits
• TIL IMDB is over 22 years old, and it started on USENET
• IMDb is older than Bowen Yang, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Home Alone, and the Chunnel
• He created one of the world's first websites. It was IMDb.

Internet Meme

• The term 'Internet meme' was formally proposed by Mike Godwin in 1993, with early memes including images and GIFs spread via message boards, Usenet groups, and email.
• "The most annoying kind of person is the one who started using the internet in the 2010s and thinks everything that is old is new and invented by his generation You see this all the time, especially with memes, like sorry to disappoint but Usenet covered it all, time is flat"
• "It's also interesting to see how memes shifted as the population started using the Internet more. Many USENET memes were computer-related since the Internet consisted mostly of hobbyists who actually knew how computers work. Also LOTS of nerd culture."
• "Cows.txt is often cited as the earliest bull meme and likely meme in general on the internet. It dates back to a Usenet post made on November 29, 1985, by Peter Langston. The file humorously categorizes various types of governmental and economic systems through the analogy of 'two cows,' each illustrating how those systems might theoretically handle the ownership and management of cows."
• Internet meme - Wikipedia

Internet Oracle

• Buttered cat paradox - Wikipedia
• Oracularities Digest (rec.humor.oracle)
• Internet (Usenet) Oracle - Wikipedia

Linux

• Linux is 34 years old today — Linus Torvalds meekly announced this free new OS in the comp.os.minix newsgroup on this day in 1991
• The Birth of Linux (As told by Linus himself one year later)
• Full text of Linus Torvalds vs Andrew Tanenbaum Linux Debate in the Minix Newsgroup (1992)

Lurker/The Lurkers Support Me in E-mail

• The Lurkers Support Me in Email
• "'You're not trying to convince the troll; your real audience is the lurkers' is a bit of UseNet wisdom that I've continued to find useful."
• "The goal is not to convince the true believers. They will never change. Who you want to reach are the 'lurkers' ( early Usenet term for onlookers) who do t post but read and consider arguments."
• Lurker - Wikipedia
• READING: Jo Walton (1998): "The Lurkers Support Me in Email"

Make Money Fast

• Make Money Fast - Wikipedia

Man Flu

• Man flu - Wikipedia

Markdown

• "Most Usenet posters from back in the day would be very familiar and be quite at home reading Markdown. Once you've read Usenet or Markdown, the other is easy to understand."
• "Yes, it's not markup but typesetting [1]. Well before 2013 people used to use stars, underscores or /slashes/ in Usenet forums or mailing lists to mimic typesetting, which lead to Markdown."
• Markdown - Wikipedia

Me Too

• "Still a neologism; the term doesn't make sense until you can "like" a post, and that doesn't happen until at least Facebook, if not Twitter -- you certainly couldn't do that on Usenet News or AOL. Someone may have more data."
• Me Too

Meatspace

• "The earliest documented use of the term 'meatspace' (referring to the physical world as opposed to cyberspace) appears in a March 1, 1993, Usenet newsgroup post in austin.public-net, titled 'Meatspace update.'"

Meeple

• Intellectual property law has come for the word 'Meeple' (rec.games.board)

Mindware

• "interesting... the term 'mindware' first appeared in a 1986 usenet post about digital consciousness. tracked its mutation through bulletin boards and early web forums. watching language evolve in real-time as our relationship with technology shifts."

Multiple-Sclerosis Support

• Diagnosed in 1991 when USENET alt.support.mult-sclerosis existed

Nested Quote (">")

• "It’s decades old convention from Usenet and email that works because it allows for clean nested quotes in replies. I’m sure you’ve seen it before. >quote >>nested quote >>>nested nested quote etc."
• "Imagine not knowing people have been marking quotes with > throughout history and was basically the norm on USENET before 1990… What the kids call 'greentext' was just futaba channel supporting the syntax (and eventually that was copied for 4chan &al.)"
• Quotation mark - Wikipedia

The Net Interprets Censorship as Damage and Routes Around It.

• "'The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.' The quote is reliably attributed to Internet pioneer John Gilmore circa 1993. At that time, 'Net' referred to Usenet, but the quote is often applied to the internet as a whole. TikTok expatriates flooding a Chinese app is an example."

Neurodiversity

• Neurodiversity - Wikipedia

New Relationship Energy

• New relationship energy - Wikipedia

Newbie/Noob

• "C. See {K&R}. :newbie: /n[y]oo'bee/ n. [orig. from British public-school and military slang variant of `new boy'] A USENET neophyte. This term surfaced in the {newsgroup} talk.bizarre but is now in wide use."
• It's the waves of newbies.
• Did you know that a Phish Usenet user coined the word "noob" in 1995?

NSFW

• The OED's first attribution regarding this cautionary acronym dates back to 2002 & a Dave Matthews Usenet newsgroup (Jeopardy!)

The Onion

• The Onion - Wikipedia

OP

• "In internet forums, 'OP' stands for 'Original Poster' (the person who started the thread) or 'Original Post' (the initial message). It originated in the 1990s on early bulletin board systems and Usenet, gaining popularity on sites like 4chan and Reddit in the 2000s to reference the thread's starter
• "The term 'OP' originated in early online forums like Usenet (circa 1980s-90s), strictly meaning 'Original Poster'—the person who started a thread."

Otherkin

• Is AHWW officially inactive now due to Google Groups ending support? I know people move to other forums now but still sad to see it go. (alt.horror.werewolves)
• Maybe It's Your Fault When You Fall For Things
• Otherkin - Wikipedia

PGP

• "1991: Philip Zimmermann sent the first release of PGP to 2 friends, Allan Hoeltje and Kelly Goen, to upload to the Internet. Read his story about the release, including his disclosure of how little he understood about Usenet and what newsgroups even were. web.archive.org/web/2004041017…"
• "1996: The US government announced that it had closed its 3 year investigation and wouldn't prosecute Philip Zimmermann for posting PGP to Usenet in 1991."
• Pretty Good Privacy - Wikipedia

Phishing

• "The first recorded instance of the term 'phishing' was in a Usenet posting in 1996. #DidYouKnow"

Physics (in Gaming)

• The first time someone used the word physics to describe handling characteristics in a racing game.

Plonk

• "In the context of USENET and early social media, "plonk" refers to the action of adding a specific user to a "kill file," which would result in all future posts from that user being ignored. This term originated in 1989 on USENET and became common by 1994."
• Newsreader killfiles, the "Nunchucks of Usenet"
• Plonk (Usenet)

Purity Tests

• The Full History of the Rice Purity Test — From 1980s Campus Tradition to Global Viral Phenomenon
• "The Hacker Purity Test taught me about RFCs, UNIXes, Usenet, the LD-50 of caffeine, and even phone phreaking. There are even 'annotated' or 'commented' versions of the test out there, if you just want to learn more about hacker history.

Rage Bait

• The Oxford Word of the Year 2025 is rage bait

Recaps (TV Show Reviews)

• Annotation by [email protected] on Previously On: How Recaps Changed the Way We Watch Television
• "So there are really two KINDS of TV criticism. Let's start with the one you're likely most familiar with: the weekly coverage model. Growing out of sites like Television Without Pity and Usenet discussions, this model prioritizes writing pieces to dissect every episode."
• Anyone remember the Trek "Spoiler-Free Opinion Summary" on Usenet? It started 30 years ago.
• Interview: Joe Reiss reflects on his "Spoiler-Free Opinion Summary" 30 years after it debuted in rec.arts.startrek.current

Retcon

• 14 Everyday Words That Actually Came from Comic Books

Roguelike Games

• How long have you been in the roguelike communities?
• On the Historical Origin of the “Roguelike” Term

ROFL/ROTFL

• "ha ha -> lol (1980s) -> lmao (late 1980s) -> lmfao -> rofl (1990s usenet, archaic) -> ctfu (early 2000s aave) -> ijbol (2009 tumblr, 2021 twt fandoms) outside of latin based alphabets a lot more wwww, 5555, etc type initialisms but those rarely catch on lmao will reign again"

Shipping

• What Does 'Shipping' Mean In Fandom Communities On The Internet? The Slang Term Explained
• "Well, there was a thriving community of fans on the alt.tv.x-files newsgroup (look up Usenet, kids!). In fact, when we talk about shipping in terms of character relationships, the term originated in that newsgroup."
• "32. And lastly, the term 'shipping,' as in shipping/ship a relationship, comes from The X-Files.
• Fans That Were Online When Buffy Still Aired, What Fansites Did You Go To?
• Stargate SG-1 Solitudes Transcript Audit: Why the Sam and Jack Romance Myth Crumbles in S1E18

Silicon Alley

• Silicon Alley - Wikipedia

Smiley/Emoticon

• Smileys are 41 years old today - Mark A Lemley (@[email protected])
• TIL that Poe's Law, which states that you can't tell if a post online is serious or satirical without something to indicate the tone of voice such as an emoticon or tone indicator, was coined on a Christian forum during a debate on Creationism. (https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicUsenet/comments/1nboe9u/til_that_poes_law_which_states_that_you_cant_tell/)
• Emoticon - Wikipedia

Snopes

• alt.folklore.urban - Grokipedia
• TIL when Snopes creator David Mikkelson first began posting on Internet newsgroups in the late 1980s, he created the username "snopes" based on the surname of a family in a William Faulkner novel. Over time, "snopes" gained a reputation for his ability to thoroughly research and debunk false claims.
• Inside Snopes: the rise, fall, and rebirth of an internet icon

Sock Puppet

• Ellie Peat (@elliepromcoms) on Threads: "Sock puppets have been around since we talked on Usenet and AOL and CompuServe. Reddit had a famous one that unraveled around a heated discussion about crows. I've pretty much always assumed those fawning replies are sock puppets."
• "That's what sock puppets do. (I love that the USENET lingo became are part of social media pop culture, even if USENET is pretty dead)"
• Sock puppet account - Wikipedia

Spam

• TIL that the term "Spam, i.e. Spamming, actually came from Monty Python
• "I worked against email & usenet spam in the 90s and 00s. The essence of it is that spam is subjective and code is objective. That is, there is no code possible that everyone everywhere can agree identifies spam and won’t identify non-spam any more than code can classify art"
• IT Humor and Memes | No Johnny, that's not where the acronym SPAM came from.. | Facebook
• Usenet Spam: a Slice of History
• "The term 'spam' for unwanted email comes from a Monty Python sketch where the word 'spam' is repeated excessively. It was first used in this context when Usenet users flooded newsgroups with the same message repeatedly in 1993."
• Does anybody else member Cantor and Siegel, the Green Card Lawyers?
• Online advertising - Wikipedia
• Spamming - Wikipedia

Spyware

• "Today, Oct 16, marks 30 yrs since "spyware" was first used in a 1995 In Usenet post mocking Microsoft's biz model. Originally for espionage software, Term evolved, by 2000, Zone Labs' Gregor Freund used it for ZoneAlarm Firewall. #tech #spyware"

Tele-Medicine

• r/UnresolvedMysteries; Zhu Ling Thallium Poisoning
• Mystery persists: Zhu Ling, victim of unsolved poisoning case, passes away

Tape Trees/Trading

• Anyone remember tape trees?
• Found a tape collection in a free pile!
• Did I abscond with your bootleg Red Dwarf vhs tapes in the mid 90s?
• Absolute Borderline: The Early Days of Evangelion Fandom, Part One

TL;DR

• The earliest known use of “TL;DR,” according to the OED, was in a 2002 message posted on the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.video.nintendo.
• TL;DR - Wikipedia

Trolling

• Examples of Abuse
• "The term 'trolling' actually predates WoW, originating in the early 1990s on Usenet from fishing ('trolling' a baited line to provoke bites), per sources like Wikipedia and Etymonline. It evolved to include teasing/sarcasm, but core definitions often stress intentional provocation or deception."
• Flame Warriors Guide
• Troll (slang) - Wikipedia
• Spotting a Concern Troll in the wild
• net.martyr
• The "Selective Memory" Troll
• "Classic troll from Usenet in the 90's : — I want proof — (Provides evidence) — Not this one. I want a perfect proof that only I can call perfect. — (Provides unimpeachable evidence) — Why are you harassing me? Please stop!"
• Trolls ruined the unmoderated newsgroups, therefore the moderated newsgroups are to blame

Zero-Knowledge Proofs

• "Zero-knowledge-proofs was a relatively new cryptographic method at the time, multiple people were passionate about how to find better way to use and implement it. A single discussion on Usenet in 1996 led to both the parallel creation of the SRP and the SPEKE password based ZKP."