Russ Allbery's Tribute to Usenet

[firecat]

via beaq and papersky and others

My experience isn't entirely the same (I still hang out on a bit of Usenet that has some of the feel of the old days, and to me strangers posting to my journal are more important than random e-mail replies to a web page), but it resonates strongly.

Despite having been on LJ for years and finding a lot of people on LJ who are interesting (and enjoying finding out more via LJ about people I knew less well via Usenet), I've converted a lot more of my Usenet friends into in-person friends than I have my LJ friends. Usenet newsgroups I've hung out on frequently organized get-togethers...the same sort of thing doesn't happen via LJ as far as I've discovered.

http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/writing/community.html

Comments

[ckd]

It's even more ironic in that it started as an aside in my post about my time at farthingparty. On USENET, that would have spawned a subthread, possibly with a new Subject: header, based on papersky's post; here, as you said, it becomes a series of atomized discussions in many different LJs.