Wow, what a nostalgia trip. We had our fair share in the comp.sys.amiga.* groups.
I feel bad about one in particular. Don't get me wrong: he was incredibly annoying and liked to jump into nearly every single thread and turn it into some persecution complex thing. I was unkind to him, as were many others.
Looking back, it seems obvious to me that he had some mental issues and was battling demons the rest of us didn't see. I wish younger me had the wisdom to just killfile him and pretend he didn't exist. Whatever his problems, I'm sure I didn't make the world any nicer by yelling at him.
Sorry, man. I'd have handled that differently now.
I can't stop laughing at the first entry and this simple joke:
> he gained international notoriety for his claims that [...] mass and time are equivalent. (With regard to the second claim, it was suggested on the "sci.astro.amateur" newsgroup that his demise be observed with a gram of silence.)
ABIAN was always my friends and my favourite, from our time on Usenet! His all caps .sig with "equivalence of MASS and TIME" is something I will always treasure.
Happy to see Erik Naggum on this list - its the one I really remember the posts, mostly in a very "particular style" which was very entertaining to me (reading it a few years later).
I kinda miss that style of poster and understand it cannot come back. But if the world is big and diverse then I prefer that that kind of people can exist.
I'm going to disagree with the summary of Serdar Argic. My belief is that the Turkish government financed a grad student at University of Minnesota, Ahmet Cosar, to do the spamming. It is as well known that Uunet, and early ISP, had a "pink contract" with Cosar that allowed him to spam. Cosar lost his student visa, had to return to Turkey.
I am very convinced that a number of early X-Files plots (or sub-plots) were inspired by threads on Usenet.
> skiing enthusiast banned by court order in 1999 from posting on the Usenet discussion group "rec.skiing.alpine", after engaging in a flame war with other online posters. The heated exchanges lasted for months, eventually escalating into death threats, until a police detective from Seattle posted a request for all involved to calm down. All involved did except Abraham...
I'm sorry, this was probably annoying to all involved, but also so hilarious. Not least of which picturing a detective, who joined the force thinking he was going to solve murders and maybe even get a lead on D.B. Cooper sighing as he posted on a message board.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.skiing.alpine/c/frIx-J1XpnI
Reading one of the original threads involving Scott is...really something. Boy, the early internet was very weird.
Also, that dude is completely nuts.
I have the dubious distinction of being in the Net.Legends.FAQ. I'm glad I didn't rise to the level of ending up in this Wikipedia article.
I'm starting to think Archimedes Plutonium was wrong about his Plutonium Atom Totality conjecture.
I remember being called out by name in an Archimedes Plutonium rant around 1993. I also had a post referenced in the comp.lang.c FAQ for a few years. That's the closest I've come to celebrity. The internet before the web brings back memories.
I better not dwell to long or I'll have flashbacks t coding X/Motif UI's.
Most of these are negative in some way, except for the "Other personalities" section.
There's a lesson here somewhere.
Didn't John Titor also post his warnings on Usenet?
B1FF sounds like he would have been right at home on weird Twitter
As far as I know there is no link between, say, talk.bizarre and weird Twitter, but it's a sign that the same basic impulses are universal. I'm sure that in 1776, a few dedicated oddballs were creating snarky weird in-jokes on broadsides that nobody read except them.
The list lacks Derek Smart, so it's not a real list.
I was looking for this and finally found it in the comments.
Derek Smart [1] is the indie developer behind the ambitious (and buggy) space sim Battlecruiser 3000AD [2]. He is known for his legendary Usenet presence in the 90s, and engaged in massive, aggressive flamewars with anyone who criticized his game or physics engine. He adopted the "combative game dev" archetype long before social media existed.
Now that he has been mentioned, there's a small chance he will drop by.
I mean, there are certainly similarly odd and known HN personalities.