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I'm really loving how Mastodon has become a refuge for all the grizzled seafarers on the ocean of the internet. They pop up in my feed and their bios all say something like
"I've been online for longer than the internet. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. 56k modems on fire in the light of Usenet. I watched IRC forks glitter in the dark near the Gateway 3000. All those moments will be lost in slop, like tears in rain. Time to deshittify."
@Janeishly Back before the Web... When the internet was Gopher, WAIS, Veronica, IRC, and Usenet. It was a hell of a time.
@Lightfighter @Janeishly Usenet was not on the Internet then - not until it was bridged by InterNetNews in 1992 (after the Web). (EDIT: I was wrong, see thread)
I remember Usenet discussions around 1987: "I've heard of this new thing called the Internet. What is it? Is it any good?"
EDIT 2: Ignore me, I'm an idiot. I was getting Usenet and FidoNet's newsgroups confused.
@robinadams @Lightfighter @Janeishly That isn't quite right. In that time period some of us, the second-class citizens, had only Usenet/UUCP connections, but we all knew what the Internet was and could email people on it, with complicated incantations like neighbor!relay!user@internet_host.ARPA, back in the 1985 time frame (I administered a Usenet site for a small company). NNTP (Usenet over TCP/IP) started in 1986.
@not2b @Lightfighter @Janeishly OK, I was wrong about the timeline. But I definitely remember complaints about how Usenet was Ruined Forever when they let the Internet users in.
@robinadams @Lightfighter @Janeishly No, that isn't right. In the 80s, only government labs and top research institutions were on the Internet, and all of those people already could access Usenet. It was when AOL connected to Usenet that everything went to hell. That, and when spammers discovered it.