usenet nostalgia

[Jim Leonard]

Mike Loewen wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Jun 2007, Richard wrote:
> 
>> Usenet had the same proportion of asshole users back then, just that
>> they were fewer in absolute number because the size of the total users
>> was less.  I dealt with plenty of asshole users on usenet, even in
>> 1988.
> 
>    And before that time, the BBS systems had pretty much the same types 
> of users.  People write things from behind a screen which they would 
> never say to your face.

All this is true, however back then you couldn't be a complete moron and 
yet still have the tech skills to get online to have these discussions. 
  So while the debates were heated, you were generally talking to 
non-idiots just due to the nature of the discussion medium.

That's mostly what I miss from the early to mid-1980s era of computing. 
  The ratio of stone cold idiots online is orders of magnitude higher 
today than it was back then.
-- 
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)            http://www.oldskool.org/
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