Eternal September
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| Synonyms: | Endless September |
| See also: | Feral |
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The Endless September is an old Usenet term. It referred to Usenet's existing culture's inability to assimilate new users (mostly first year college students), making it feel as though it were September all the time.
One of the seasonal rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of themselves. This coincided with people starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and plunging in without bothering to learn what was acceptable. These relatively small drafts of newbies could be assimilated within a few months. But in September 1993, AOL users became able to post to Usenet, nearly overwhelming the old-timers' capacity to acculturate them; to those who nostalgically recall the period before, this triggered an inexorable decline in the quality of discussions on newsgroups.[1]
Fan Comments
It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September that never ended.[2]
I can reliably spot age among people who all look 'about my age' by who can, without even thinking about it, spell anonymous correctly off the tops of their heads. BTW, I'm a child of the very beginning of the Endless September: I got my first email account, through college, in fall 1993. And spent the next two years on MOO/MUCK/MUDs and Usenet. I very nearly had an alt.fan group at one point; the folks in alt.alt.alt thought I was funny enough that someone officially proposed 'alt.fan.podgirl' (which is what I was going by then) ... but the Usenet mod at my school refused to add it, so that never went anywhere.[4]
Further Reading/Meta
- The Making of an Underclass: AOL, Wendy M. Grossman, NYU Press (1998)
References
- ^ "September that never ended", by Eric Raymond, The Jargon File (version 4.4.7)
- ^ alt.folklore.computers, comment by Dave Fisher, January 24, 1994
- ^ synecdochic, comment at the good old days before google were dark and involved horses (2010)
- ^ almeda, comment at the good old days before google were dark and involved horses (2010)