X-Nico

unusual facts about newsgroup



Alma Alexander

In addition to her fantasy novels, Alexander has published a memoir about growing up in Africa and an epistolary novel (written with her husband, then an acquaintance from a Usenet newsgroup) about the NATO war in Yugoslavia.

Arnie Lerma

Lerma was the first person to post the court document known as the Fishman Affidavit, including the Xenu story, to the internet via the Usenet newsgroup alt.religion.scientology.

Attack of the Killer App

Fry asks, "Since when is the internet about robbing people of their privacy?", to which Bender replies, "August 6th, 1991", which is the date that Tim Berners-Lee announced the World Wide Web project and software on the newsgroup alt.hypertext.

Buschwhacker

The term originated in an argument Craig Witkowski had with another user "Tinadog" in the Usenet newsgroup rec.autos.sport.NASCAR in May 1997.

Deryni Adventure Game

The Deryni Adventure Game uses Freeform Universal Donated Game Engine (FUDGE), a system created in 1992 by Steffan O'Sullivan on the rec.games.design newsgroup.

Egosurfing

Kibozing - prior to the existence of search engines, a similar practice existed on Usenet, known as kibozing after James "Kibo" Parry, who was well known for replying in a surreal fashion to anyone who mentioned his/her name, on any newsgroup.

Fictionmania

By the mid 1990s, the bulletin board had largely been usurped by the newsgroup alt.sex.stories.tg (see alt.sex.stories).

Fucking Smilers

The title of the album comes from a thread Mann read about 20 years ago on a newsgroup called alt.bitter where someone was complaining about the "fucking smilers" who would approach him at work when he was in a bad mood and try to cheer him up.

Grey Ghost Press

The Freeform Universal Donated Game Engine was created in 1992 by Steffan O'Sullivan on the rec.games.design newsgroup.

MSTing

MSTing began in the early 1990s, as fans of the show, many of whom were involved in Usenet discussions in groups such as popular MST3K newsgroup rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc, began adding amusing or critical remarks to others' posts, attributing them to the show's characters (typically, Crow T. Robot, Tom Servo, Joel Robinson, and later Mike Nelson).

Shane Atkinson

Atkinson was tracked down by anti-spam collaborators on the Usenet news.net-admin newsgroups.

Sublink Network

Sublink was the very first public (non-academic) internet email and newsgroup network in Italy, with very low access fees (around $100 a year), fast backbone modems running at 19200 bps (the average modem was 2400 bit/s at that time), and fully registered to the NIC.

Thallium poisoning case of Zhu Ling

Her symptoms were posted to the Internet via a Usenet newsgroup by her friend from Peking University, Bei Zhicheng and was subsequently proven to be thallium poisoning.

The Feederz

A fan's post to the Nirvana newsgroup, alt.music.nirvana, revealed that Cobain had taken a bumper sticker from the Feederz' Teachers in Space LP and proudly stuck it on his all-black Fender Stratocaster, made famous at the 1991 Reading Festival (see Reading and Leeds Festivals) in England, where Nirvana performed with Sonic Youth.

TinyURL

Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 so that he would be able to link directly to newsgroup postings that frequently had long and cumbersome addresses.


see also