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What's Your Oldest Usenet Post?

October 28, 2005 - 9:42pm — djfiander

That's the question/Challenge that Jessamyn has most recently asked. The oldest one that Google Groups reports for me dates from almost a decade before her's:

C'mon guys!

and is probably incomprehensible to most of the people that read this blog, since it's about a fairly straightforward (but hard to figure out when you're new) detail of C programming. Unfortunately, I'm quite positive that I'd posted articles prior to '86, but they've probably rotted off the tapes Henry kept at utzoo.

Comments

October 29, 2005 - 2:19pm — nbruce (not verified)

That's

really old. I think I discovered usenet around 1994, and I don't remember what name I used.

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October 29, 2005 - 3:51pm — Rochelle

1996

It was rather mortifying to find it, as it dealt with my naive concerns about my then boyfriend, who has paranoid schizophrenia.

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October 29, 2005 - 5:47pm — Mock Turtle

Feb 1994

What a trip down memory lane. My earliest posts don't quite mortify (as in Rochelle's case), but do reflect a different emphasis in my preoccupations of that era.

The first post that came up on the Google search (like djfiander, I've got a feeling I must have had some pre-1994 posts ... but then again I have ALWAYS been slow to de-lurk -- this, at least, has not changed) is a recommendation of a book by Gary Null. No More Allergies had helped me get my then-preschool son off the cycle of late-night ER visits for asthma attacks, and I shared that in response to somebody's query about author Null on alt.folklore.herbs.

Other posts from the time reflect my absorption in the community at rec.music.gaffa in the pre- and just-post-Jorn-Barger-meltdown era.

What entertains me most of all is the assortment of taglines I was using, some of which I had entirely forgotten. A couple of rediscovered gems: "Elvis isn't dead; he's just shelled to DOS," and "Diagonally parked in a parallel universe."

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October 29, 2005 - 6:01pm — Walt

I commented at Walt at Random

1992--but that's apparently because PACS-L, a Bitnet list, wasn't echoed to Usenet until then. I don't believe I ever used Usenet directly, but Bitnet list use goes back to the late 1980s (at least). (The oldest post that Google Groups has is a strange one, having to do with a document I don't remember ever reading...)

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October 31, 2005 - 8:52pm — bentley

1993

It had to be spring, maybe summer, 1993, the year I worked at the university hospital. The earliest entry I could find on Google was June 1994, though.

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