Chapter two 
The Weird, World of Usenet
Well, here is something useful:
On my computer one morning, I learned the proper way to elevate a cantaloupe. You go to the grocery store, buy some strawberries, eat them, take the green plastic basket that the strawberries came in out to the garden and turn the basket upside down, then plop the growing cantaloupe right on top of it.
This information is not so earth-shattering—unless the cantaloupes in your garden are rotting from the bottom up.
Mine were, but they aren’t anymore.
My brain might be rotting from the bottom up, however, because I’ve spent the last twelve months on my computer reading messages, asking hundreds of questions, offering hundreds of answers, being electronically insulted, electronically insulting others, trading my thoughts and opinions on the strangest topics with millions of people I have never met. I have been visiting the wired world of Usenet.
Usenet is one of the most popular aspects of the Net, the area that many newcomers finds themselves drawn to first. What is it? Well, my grocery store has a series of bulletin boards along one wall just past the checkout line, and customers are encouraged to post flyers and notices on these boards. The boards are divided by topic, along the lines of “items for sale,” “social events,” “items wanted,” and “services offered.” Shoppers bring their own index cards and thumbtacks, and post just about any message they want.
Usenet, in essence, is just like that: a big, electronic bulletin board. Or, more accurately, it’s a series of bulletin boards, divided by topic. At last count, there were over ten thousand topics represented. There are no thumbtacks, of course—you can only post notices and read notices on these bulletin boards by using your computer.
And Usenet goes a bit beyond the metaphor. On a real bulletin board, like the one at my grocery store, people merely read your notice, maybe jot down a phone number, then wander away. On an electronic bulletin board, or on one of the thousands of Usenet “newsgroups” available through the Internet, people read your notice, and then can type a reply into their computer and send that reply through the electronic lace doily to hang on the newsgroup wall right next to your notice, and hundreds or thousands of other people can read that, too, and maybe write their own reply.
How does it happen? This gets technical. The big “host” computers essentially cooperate to store and forward the thousands upon thousands of individual Usenet messages—there is no center to this doily, you see, just lots and lots of knots and wires.
Here’s an example of Usenet at work:
Let’s imagine that you become curious to know why your cat Cheetah sleeps on the bathroom floor next to the toilet brush. You can type the question into your computer on Monday evening, use your Internet access to “post” this question to a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the discussion of cats, then go to bed (but hopefully not near Cheetah). While you sleep, hundreds of wired cat lovers will see your question on their home computers, deliberate, and offer advice. (My suggestion: get a new cat.) On Tuesday morning, turn on your computer, press the keys that take you to the cats newsgroup, and read the answers.
Presto.
Cats are a big topic on the Net, as are kids, computers, music, movies, and politics. There are new groups being created every day, and the list of topics is truly exhaustive: abortion, anagrams, amazon women, backrubs, banjos, Chinese computing, coupons, devil bunnies, drugs, genealogy, hamsters, hot rods, ketchup, motorcycles, pantyhose, religion, romance, satanism. Name any subject that interests you and chances are very, very good that some group on Usenet is discussing it right now. Chances are even better that they disagree.
Best estimates by computer magazines put the total number of people using these Usenet forums at more than 7 million, and this number is also spiraling upward.
But what is really useful about Usenet?
Well that depends on who you are, and on your interests.
One of the first things you will notice within the Usenet portion of the burgeoning Net is that there are different groups of groups. Each newsgroup has a name, and that name is divided by dots (so.the.computer.will.know.that.it.all.goes.together.)
The beginning of the name tells you what kind of group you are reading. For instance, the group comp.sys.ibm starts with “comp,” which simply means that it is one of many groups that discuss computers and computing (in this case, IBM systems). If a group begins with the letters “sci,” look for a discussion of some scientific discipline or controversy, as in sci.archeology, sci.bio.evolution, or sci.physics.plasma.
By now, of course, most people joining Usenet for the first time are not computer technicians or scientists. You will find many of the newcomers in the “rec” groups—short for recreational (like rec.pets.cats, rec.movie.reviews, or rec.skydiving). I needed a chicken curry recipe one night, posted a request on rec.food.recipes, and within twenty minutes some nice fellow in Ireland sent me three. I’ve seen people give advice on wedding photographers, sports equipment, prescription medicines, and muffler repair. Some discussion is technical, much of it is gossipy. You don’t always know who is giving the advice, so be wary, but there is always plenty of advice from which to choose.
Other groups of groups include “news,” “soc,” “talk,” “misc,” “alt,” and a growing number of smaller groupings, many of them regional. A number of countries have their own area within Usenet (“aus” is short for Australia), as do states (“oh” equals Ohio), and even some cities (“hsv” means Huntsville, Alabama.) It is beyond the scope of this book to list of all of them, and new groups spring up almost every day. Your access provider should have a list of newsgroups available, or you can look for a list on the Usenet newsgroup called news.announce.newgroups.
To make it easier to understand the ways these groups work, let me focus briefly on a newsgroup called misc.kids. I have a six-year-old daughter. Unlike Cheetah the cat, a daughter is not so easy to give away, so my wife and I have agreed to raise Maria to the best of our abilities. Some days, the best of my ability leaves me collapsed on the floor, near the point of weeping, while Maria promises to go to bed when and only when I give her one more cup of pudding and read two more Madeline books. At that point I usually dump the beautiful insomniac into my wife’s lap and go to the computer.
The group misc.kids is not for kids, you see; it is for parents, and misc.kids is among the more highly trafficked groups on the Usenet system, with hundreds of fresh messages posted every day. Topics on misc.kids range from parental crowing (“I Have a Great Kid!”) to serious tales of fear and woe (“Kid Won’t Eat Anything but Macaroni, I’m Stumped!”). There are ongoing discussions about the advisability of amniocentesis, circumcision, and breastfeeding, and lots of talk about ways of exerting parental discipline, about the awful things older kids do to their younger siblings, and even about head lice. If you ever want a few chuckles, find misc.kids and read the messages concerning potty training. Turns out that potty training is hilarious (when it involves other people’s kids).
What happens on misc.kids is just exactly what happens on each of the ten thousand or so other newsgroups—all that differs is the topic. For instance, late one Tuesday evening a woman named Zenia posted a message. (She wrote it on her home computer, sent it to the host computer of her access provider, and it showed up in misc.kids soon thereafter, where everyone could read it.) Zenia’s message, appearing under the tide “Am I Alone?,” explained that she had two young children, worked a full-time job, dropped her husband off at work, picked him up, did all the housework and childcare, and even mowed the lawn. It was a swell life, except she could find no time to sleep. She asked for suggestions as to how to cope with this.
Nancy from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was the first to respond.
“You’re definitely not alone,” Nancy wrote. “I have 3 kids, ages 9,7, and 5.1 get up at 3:30 A.M. so that I can get to work early and therefore leave around the time that my kids are getting out of school, eliminating the need for after-school care. My husband is on 2nd shift, which works out great in that he can get the kids ready for school in the morning and take them to school. The only drawback is that he and I never see each other during the week… of course, we have been married for 16 years, so maybe we’re onto something here.”
Other misc.kids regulars followed almost immediately with messages of the “hang in there Zenia” and “no, you’re not alone” variety, and then a North Carolinian named Ed waded in with this timely question:
“Is your husband handicapped physically? If not, then why the heck isn’t he doing some of the chores?”
Ed went on to explain how he and his wife Annette divide the work in their home—Ed cooks, washes baby bottles, does the yardwork, picks up around the house, handles the house-cleaning. Annette scrubs the diapers, cooks a lot of the dinners, does the laundry.
Susan Miller posted next, responding to Ed’s message with this:
“Ed, you have given me hope. Do you have any single brothers?”
Others quickly chimed in with their own advice (get a maid, get a new husband, ignore the dirt). Then Kathy Leggitt wrote, “Well, after reading several responses on this thread, I called an errand service last night and hired someone to empty, clean, and refill my kitchen cabinets and upstairs closets. If I like what she does, she will get to do my laundry room after I get another paycheck. If it works out well, I intend to find someone to make and deliver meals too. Let my husband work on cars every night—I’m tired of it!”
A few cheers went up for Kathy, a few more people (men mostly) suggested that Zenia shop for a new husband, and then the whole issue seemed to die out. The last time I checked, there was one last posting on the topic. Gail Mellor of Kentucky wrote, “Keep in touch with us, Zenia. Let us know what happens. Do not give in to this. If it comes hard to think about yourself, think of what you are teaching your children about marriage. The best way to teach them that it is a partnership is to make it true.”
Misc.kids is often filled with support and good wishes of this sort. The group, large as it is, seems to be sane, rational, and somehow not so electronically isolated. In Colorado, for instance, people who read and post to misc.kids have come together for summer picnics. Other people swap pictures of their children by mail. Some regular misc.kids users keep computer files full of useful information on key parenting topics, from discipline to disease, and they will send this info to anyone who asks. Maybe misc.kids is this way because almost everyone who posts is old enough to have had kids, or maybe they are just too worn down to be quarrelsome (unless you mention spanking).
Rec.gardens is another group where people help people. In fact, this group helped me through a horrible Pennsylvania winter. While my neighborhood had temperatures of twenty below zero and ten feet of snow on the ground, people from Florida were posting messages with titles like “Great News! My Roses Are Blooming.” Screaming at these people to keep their damned cheerfulness to themselves was very therapeutic.
A list of recent subtopics on rec.gardens looked like this:
1. Any Plumeria growers out there?
2. Are spiders OK on cucumbers?
3. Brown Turkey Fig leaves dropping
4. Dead cucumbers—I give up
5. Fusarium wilt on cukes?
6. Groundhogs!
7. Help! Duckweed!!
8. Help! My Willow is sick!
9. Mice in worm bin … now what?
10. Need SQUIRREL HELP
11. Overabundance of Rabbits
12. Potato Disaster … Mice!!
13. Squirrels Eating Tomatoes
14. Snails from Hell
You see now why gardening is considered to be relaxing? But even Thoreau had woodchucks in his bean field, and he could probably have used a group like this. For each of the pest- and blight-ridden subtopics above (Usenet people call such subject headings “threads”), there was the original question or announcement, then someone’s response, then perhaps someone else’s response that differed slightly, maybe a disagreement, then a clarification, some more helpful advice, and often the suggestion of a good book for more information.
This all takes place over time, of course. The first question might be posted on a Tuesday, and the answers posted over the course of the next two weeks, until interest in the thread dies out and the messages are deleted to make room for new ones.
The people on rec.gardens helped me keep the aphids from my roses, taught me when to harvest my crop of new potatoes, explained which kind of fencing would keep my groundhogs at bay, and assisted with the cantaloupe elevation project that I mentioned earlier. The rec.gardens group has good information (usually) offered in a friendly manner (almost always); it’s fast, free, and you don’t need to drive to the farmer’s co-op.
But just as it would be dishonest not to mention the serious, useful groups, it would be a misrepresentation to ignore the frivolous and weird. Such groups—and there are plenty on Usenet—provide information no one can use, much of it offered rudely and contentiously. People drop in, do their damage, and leave with no accountability, and most discussion degenerates quickly into either obscenity, misinformation, or an outright attack on the person who first asked the question.
Many of the more bizarre groups can be found hovering in the “alt” category, meaning “alternative.” One of my favorites is alt.destroy.the.earth.
The very name of the group, alt.destroy.the.earth, is wonderfully straightforward and unapologetic. These people are not content to just ruin the Earth’s atmosphere to the point where human life can no longer exist. They want to vaporize the globe, destroy all traces of the planet, leave no outside chance that a single cockroach might survive and evolve all the way back up to hosting Wheel of Fortune. I assume they are kidding. They must be kidding. I hope they are kidding.
Conversational threads on alt.destroy.the.earth have discussed the feasibility of building thousands of space shuttles, hooking them to ropes, and hauling the planet off toward Mars, until the gravitational imbalance sends the various celestial orbs scurrying like billiard balls. There are a few bona fide astrophysicists in this group, and they purport to be working out the calculations. (Just good fun, right guys? Just kidding?) Another popular idea is to propel all the Earth’s old tires, Goodyear and Firestone, toward the sun, until this added fuel raises the sun’s temperature, evaporating the globe in one big cosmic meltdown. Call it accelerated global warming—just a little help from the boys and girls at a.d.t.e. There are plenty of nuclear options, of course, instances where we would all perish in some horrible conflagration—one fellow suggested condensing plutonium into powder and distributing spray bottles to every citizen.
And Clay Jones (so active on the Net, he has two nicknames, Space Ghost and Super Genius) posed this question:
Why do we want to make it a quick death? I myself prefer the way we are already hurtling into oblivion. When my city is under ozone alert, I drive and fill up my tank. I’m the one with the bumper sticker that says SPOTTED OWL TASTES LIKE RIDLEY’S SEA TURTLE. I’m the one that says “Kill a tree for Mommy.” I triple- and quadruple-bag things at the store where I work, with paper bags, just to ensure we have to kill more trees. Am I on the right wavelength here? Many environmentalist whackos call me a fascist. I prefer to watch them scream in agony over a prolonged death while I sit fat and sassy over a charcoal-grilled steak dripping with fat, a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other, with my lawn mower idling in the corner of my yard belching out black smoke.
Pleasant, no? But when you come right down to it, his rant is funny (on purpose, I assume), and alt.destroy.the.earth has yet to destroy anything but the efficiency of my mornings.
A cheerier though equally baffling newsgroup of my acquaintance is alt.hi.are.you.cute. Not much problem with intellectual snobbery on this subject group. The purpose, as best I can discern, is for people to tell one another whether they are cute or not. Of course, participants in this group are talking by computer, so it is easy enough to lie. Nor does it seem to matter. Just say that you are cute, and you will be welcomed with open (electronic) arms.
Perhaps the reason I am so fond of this group is that the evening I discovered it someone sent a message from an address that ended with “house.gov.” What this means in Internet idiom is that the individual on the other end was posting from a government account, specifically one connected to the House of Representatives. The important federal message asked, “Are there any cute girls out there?”
I was hoping to catch my local congressman cheating on his wife, or maybe even Newt Gingrich trolling for babes, so I quickly sent the house.gov person an electronic mail reply, asking, “Why is a House staffer (or are you a representative) posting to alt.hi.are.you.cute? Sounds fishy. Fess up or I will tell Bob Dole.”
This apparently spooked the poor guy because I got a lengthy message back thirty minutes later explaining House policy on Internet use and making very clear that any and all alt.hi.are.you.cute activity happened very late at night, after business hours. For all the fellow knew, I might have been Bob Woodward at The Washington Post. I could feel the fear coming off the screen.
“I realize that America thinks Congress wastes their money? he wrote, “but let me assure you that I am in no way abusing the privilege of serving you.” He admitted to being a legislative analyst for the Republican leadership and eventually asked me, “How cute do you consider yourself?”
Cute enough to know when my tax dollars are being wasted. That cute, at the very least.
People who spend a lot of time on Usenet are quick to point out what they see as a key distinguishing feature: no one is in charge.
While that claim is not entirely true, trying to explain why aptly illustrates one of the singular characteristics of the electronic culture. On Usenet, and across the vast electronic Net, lots and lots of people are actually in charge, to varying degrees, at various times, with varying results. So many different people are in charge of so many tiny electronic intersections, in fact, that it can become quite confusing.
At Penn State, for instance, the folks who maintain the large host computer that makes my Internet access possible determine which of the ten thousand newsgroups I can see. They make sure that groups dealing with sexuality, for instance, are unavailable to most Penn State users. Many other colleges and universities do the same. But if I really want to see these groups, I can get a second account through one of the commercial providers. (In fact, I did.)
The folks who run large host computers are called system administrators, and they also, to a certain extent, regulate which Usenet newsgroups get formed and which do not. But clever computer users are always finding ways around this. That is why we have a number of inane groups like alt.sex.fetish.startrek and alt.cows.moo.moo.moo.
“You can say anything you want,” people will tell you, and again this is substantially true. Should I ever become obnoxious in my messages to other people or break the law, somehow bringing shame or strife down upon the Penn State system, they could shut me off in about three seconds in the same way Visa cancels a credit card: by invalidating my electronic-mail address and yanking my access. This would be true, as well, if I had an account with a big company such as Prodigy that discourages obscenity, or even with some small local service. But actual cases where people are tossed off are very rare, and if Penn State or any other host did throw me off the Net, I would only be off until I paid another access provider to let me on. There are literally thousands of ways in.
Lots of these system administrators are in charge of many different corners of the Net, but no one person, committee, organization, or government agency is in charge of the whole kit and caboodle. Standards differ from country to country, from account provider to account provider. There are so many people on the Net, coming from so many different directions, that no one really keeps track or can effectively censor what goes out. If you offer an unpopular or impolite opinion in a letter to your local newspaper, they can refuse to print it. If you do the same on a radio talk show, they can refuse to air your call or can cut you off in mid-sentence. But on Usenet, you pretty much determine for yourself what is acceptable and what is not.
Sometimes it seems like chaos.
Sometimes it is.
And Usenet keeps changing. It is getting more crowded by the hour, growing like electronic kudzu.
“Already,” points out Steve Franklin, a physicist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a longtime Usenet user, the Net “has lost its personal feel,” it is no longer an in-group of informed users from education, research, and industry. “Now, there are two distinct groups: those who know, and those who don’t. There may be some bad vibes because the new users are looking for quick and easy answers to everything, and the knowledgeable users know how much work it takes to become accustomed to the Net environment. I welcome this expansion personally, but it will inevitably change the ‘feel’ of the Net.”
Why so much growth, so much change, so many newcomers, so many people in such an awfully big hurry to enter these digital woods and look around for themselves?
One reason is certainly that it’s “cool” to be on the Net. You could find discussions similar to those on Usenet elsewhere, by joining an organized group of hobbyists or enthusiasts, or by sitting in a coffee shop with your friends, but having it come across the phone lines and appear on your computer is simply more novel, more exciting.
Most people I know appreciate a good conversation, even an argument, and this technology offers us that. But perhaps more significantly, it offers us a convenient way to find talkative people and the chance to converse and argue with them in the safety of our homes, with near total control. Maybe that security is the allure, in a day and age when the man next door is as likely to pull out an automatic weapon as he is to come at you with a clever rebuttal. We can join the fray when and only when we choose to join it, we can do it from miles away, and we can shut it off whenever we want.
And the amount of information is truly dizzying. This is the Information Age, after all, and there is so much information out there on Usenet that you can dig forever and never reach the bottom of the pile. For some people, this presents a challenge, for others, something more like an addiction. I have heard countless stories of people who go searching on Usenet for just a few moments, to check one thing, and reemerge hours later, pale and jittery, totally oblivious to the concepts of time or hygiene.
I have been lost for hours myself in fact, wandering the highways, byways, and multiple dead ends. Around every corner, at the end of every keystroke, is something else, something that probably won’t be that important, but it might be, so I keep going, keep checking the newsgroups, keep sending messages to the world, in case the next message is the one message I would regret having missed.
There are days when the Usenet seems nothing more than a waste of electricity: tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. But then I get a rapid answer to a nagging gardening question or read a message from some college kid asking for advice about a suicidal girlfriend, and I find myself hooked.
We are information junkies, after all, and Usenet is a strong dose of the purest stuff.