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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

The Internet could be better off if the AOL-ian masses started believing "Facebook is the Internet." Let them all move over there--a Reverse Eternal September [1]! It would be even better if all the crap moved over to Facebook with them. All the spam, trolls, ads, tracking, malware, etc. could follow the masses, leaving the rest of us in peace.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

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It would look a lot like IRC or usenet or mailing lists today, but on a vastly larger scale.

I suspect culturally it would look a lot like amateur radio / ham radio, the majority constantly making leading questions about "does that still exist today for grandpas?" despite actual continuous long term demographic growth.

So the right people would find a way to hang out together while being marginalized by the masses.

Eh, you're already marginalized by the masses (in the US at least) if you don't fit into typical consumer culture. I barely watch TV. I watch sports (on TV) only occasionally, and then only a couple teams. I don't play video games. I do listen to music and go to movies, but generally avoid a lot of the really popular ones because they just don't appeal to me. I don't buy trinkets, nearly everything I own is useful, though I've started collecting some art recently (I like the look, and my home and office feel more comfortable with it around, so that's useful if subjective). I buy enough new clothes that my clothes are in good repair, but I'm hardly fashionable. I can barely relate to many of my peers (professional and otherwise).

I've stopped viewing this as a bad thing, though. I have more time and money than many of them to spend on the things I want to do. And when I complain about not having enough time to do what I want, I can actually list off all the things I'm doing that are filling up my schedule (and they're all productive, at least for personal development if not professional and social goals).

The subset of the internet that I use, and probably many here, is similar. Many of us probably skip Facebook (beyond perhaps casual browsing or maintaining our social network for communication), Buzzfeed and other time sink sites. Though HN can be pretty bad sometimes, hits just the right level of time sink + technical/professional interest.

Again, I don't consider this a bad thing. I have a lot better discussions with people on sites like this or because of the content from sites like this than I do for 99.9999% of what's on Reddit or FB or anything else.

You've described some of your preferences, but you didn't describe at all how you're being marginalized; it sounds more like you're attempting to marginalize everyone else and their interests.

It's hard to effectively communicate with a lot of people when their lives are driven around consumer (media and other) culture. There's just a fundamental disconnect. And (at least around here) that's a large percentage, if not the majority, of folks.

From their perspective, it's more like

"It's hard to communicate when someone is anti-consumer, and thinks the fact I watch TV is a reflection on my values"

If you feel like you are being marginalized for what you are describing maybe you just live in a shitty place.

I said I don't consider it a bad thing. It's a good first-pass filter. If people can't talk about things beyond what was on TV last night (consistently), then there's probably little of importance that I can discuss with them. And when they can, we usually end up becoming really good friends.

The way I remember "Eternal September" was giving UNIX shell accounts to incoming university students.

The problem is when students graduate; no more shell account. Then what?

That's the September bit. Frosh would come in, get shell accounts, discover USENET and drive the regulars nuts. Then after a few months they'd acclimate themselves or get bored and USENET would settle into normal, only to repeat the cycle next September.

When AOL flipped the switch enabling USENET newsgroups in the fall of 1993 it was an "eternal September" because AOL had an endless continual stream of chuckleheads getting online foe the first time and not acclimating to existing net culture because they think the network is there to serve THEM.

> because they think the network is there to serve THEM.

I can't tell if you mean to imply that it's there to be served by them, or that it is there to serve "regulars".

I can't tell if you mean to imply that it's there to be served by them, or that it is there to serve "regulars".

I think he meant that USENET works best as a collaboration between users, whereas the users being complained about see it closer to visiting a restaurant where the other users are the waiters and they are the customer.

I'd say it's there to facilitate communication, but as in all forms of communication, there are norms of etiquette to be observed.

The "Eternal September" was when AOL got access to Usenet; a regular September was when the students got their shell accounts. The point of the "Eternal" was that the inrush of noobs never went away once AOL was attached.

Ah. I always thought it was a reference to "ISP's" and the general public getting access to Usenet. Thanks for the clarification.

It was; AOL in particular, but other ISPs as well.

September was always a rough time on Usenet as all the noobs arrived; some old folks took the month off (or at least claimed to), coming back in October when they'd calmed down a bit. Once the public ISPs arrived it became like September the whole year round.

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