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

[cahwyguy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing me to the discussion. I'm an old-time Usenet person, having been a regular in misc.kids, soc.culture.jewish, misc.transport.road, and many other groups... and I still moderate soc.culture.jewish.parenting.

[elissaann.livejournal.com]

I had a party in December for local LJ friends and their friends. I know that some of them, meeting for the first time that day, have seen each other in person since.

[brooksmoses]

It's sort of ironic how this is spreading, in a way, in that it illustrates why LJ is not Usenet. papersky posted about it, but then the snowball that develops around that isn't a conversation around her post (though there is some of that), but a budding off; beaq posts a link, you post a link, people who know you but not papersky probably post a link, and while it spreads and grows, there's no feedback loop back to the original.

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.

I think the same thing doesn't happen in LJ because ... well, because Geek Social Fallacy #4 is a fallacy. There's no community to have a get-together of. There's a continuous network rather than discrete clusters. Sure, I could potentially arrange a get-together of the people near me in the network, but that would be my group, and it wouldn't have the same sense of "this is my community" to anyone else there.