Comments on: I hope that the net stops fighting over stupid political stuff

I hope that the net stops fighting over stupid political stuff

The Whelk — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 10:33:06 -0800

"I didn't go online for a long time because of my fears it'd mostly be a bunch of 15-year old technoid geeks and social outcasts. ☯87DEC" Visit the early days of the Internet with @WWWTEXt which posts online conversations from 1980-94

By: ead

ead — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 10:51:09 -0800

I used to think it was a terrible place because it was full of technoid geeks and social outcasts (i.e. people like myself). Then the rest of the world showed up, and I realized how quaint that belief was.

By: Oyéah

Oyéah — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 11:26:19 -0800

I have a personal friend who is trying to mutate into a frog. Could this be Alex Jones's first internet communication?

By: tobascodagama

tobascodagama — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 11:28:32 -0800

Only if the friend was mutating while sitting in a boiling pot on a stove.

By: gucci mane

gucci mane — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 11:37:36 -0800

The NSA are very good at what they do, which is essentially reading other people's mail. ☯90MAY

By: effbot

effbot — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 11:58:58 -0800

☯87DEC The "☯" symbol was added to Unicode in 1991, and Unicode in itself wasn't widely used at that time. These are clearly all faked.

By: PMdixon

PMdixon — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 12:10:17 -0800

These are clearly all faked. Either you're joking or you didn't click the link, where it's obvious that for whatever reason the collater is using "☯" to separate the quote from its date of origin.

By: comealongpole

comealongpole — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 12:10:38 -0800

I just got a chance to play SimCity! It's like a drawing program that lets you build cities. 89DEC So many neat quotes. The power of human curation!

By: fraula

fraula — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 12:20:05 -0800

I am an official Nice Guy and I am also a True Nerd. ☯92JUN Nah these are cute and pertinent, but fake or pulled from our current intarwebs and posted as if. I was online in 1990 and no one started using capitalized "Nice Guy" until the 2000s. Another dead giveaway is that there's no "there r no women on teh internet lol". Granted, I'm grateful he went a more inclusive route, but yeah I will never forget that period for the flaming misogyny it burned into my life experience. I was 14 in 1990.

By: Doktor Zed

Doktor Zed — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 12:25:39 -0800

These are clearly all faked. The project's website, which is wittily designed as Mac System 7, has a FAQ that claims "Primary sources include: discussion groups on Usenet, BBS-based FidoNet, and the initial online services (CompuServe, GEnie, Prodigy, AOL); both public and private text files; early hypertexts of Gopher/WWW; and abandoned personal documents."

By: jedicus

jedicus — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 12:41:03 -0800

Nah these are cute and pertinent, but fake or pulled from our current intarwebs and posted as if. I was online in 1990 and no one started using capitalized "Nice Guy" until the 2000s. The Nice Guy quote is indeed from 1992.

By: comealongpole

comealongpole — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 13:26:37 -0800

I suspect it's less the modern concept of Nice Guy(TM) and more that ironic/emphatic capitalising is A Thing. One which I do Too Much come to think of it.

By: [insert clever name here]

[insert clever name here] — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 13:37:05 -0800

The newsgroup post discusses "Nice Guy" usage in reference to it in terms of relationships and rejection. Including pointing out some groups use it with an added (tm). So it was a thing. And I remember Nice Guy being a term I've known my adult life, so the time fits. I think what HAS changed is our recognition from the idea that the Nice Guy is just a hapless guy that can't get women, to the more recent understanding that the Nice Guy sees women as objects you insert friendship coins into in return for sex. Basically the idea has shifted that the Nice Guy is not really nice. Or at least there is a wider recognition of such now.

By: meinvt

meinvt — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 13:48:20 -0800

This hapless because you're too nice notion was big enough in the 80's to be used in promoting computer games.

By: sammyo

sammyo — Sat, 29 Oct 2016 17:03:18 -0800

The newsgroup post discusses Wait, what, there's a metafilter feed into USENET?

By: sldownard

sldownard — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 01:32:21 -0800

My sister is a "squid" (an e-mail freak)—she checks it every ten minutes. ☯94APR Wow! I'd totally forgotten that term, but yeah, some people I used to hang out, we called going online "squidding." I cannot for the life of me remember the etymology, but ... yeah. Awww, those brain cells have been dormant for 20 years and now they can go back to sleep until "squidding" is needed once more.

By: lmfsilva

lmfsilva — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 07:55:00 -0800

This hapless because you're too nice notion was big enough in the 80's to be used in promoting computer games. "Nice Guys End Up With Madagascar." WELL, I SHOULD BE SO LUCKY *goes back to playing Pandemic*

By: y2karl

y2karl — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 08:14:34 -0800

After the year 2000, I believe humanity will break beyond all physical constraints and all logical thought will begin to dissolve. ☯94MAR Well, part of that turned out to be true.

By: Capybara

Capybara — Sun, 30 Oct 2016 16:02:39 -0800

OH MY GOD this is mesmerizing. The first thing to draw my attention from hitting refresh on the election thread in days. The '80s net seems so mythical to me-- like a lost civilization.

By: porpoise

porpoise — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 15:38:24 -0800

re: squid Does it have anything to do with superconducting quantum interference device? It was A Thing in science fiction to "jack into" the net using a SQUID interface.