I first got on the Internet in 1991. The older students told me to lurk on Usenet and not post anything for a month or 2 to avoid getting flamed. I did and then I loved it. Once all the @aol.com people started showing up it went downhill. By 2000 it was so full of spam and garbage that I stopped going. I connected to a Usenet server last year for the first time in over 20 years and it was just full of junk.
Funny thing is, if we were to revive it now, it might end up as a pretty nice place, given that all the dumb crowds now have their 4chans, reddits, phpBBs, facebooks, instagrams, etc.
