The history of the Usenet system is one of the most interesting in the world of technology, not only for its contributions and influence on the modern Web, but also for some events that permanently altered its essence. Usenet was a microcosm in itself, with its own rules and expressions. A subculture, if you will. However, in September 1993, Usenet had to undergo an unexpected transformation, triggered by one of the big players of the time: America Online.
The technical details reveal that Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea of Usenet in 1979 (based on the UUCP architecture), which led to its formal debut in 1980. Needless to say, Usenet precedes the World Wide Web by a decade, and at first its access was focused on schools, universities, laboratories, and other research institutions.
Peak activity on Usenet was registered during the month of September, each time a new generation of students accessed the system for the first time. Activity would normalize in just under a month: those who had managed to assimilate the structure of the newsgroups and learn certain parameters of "netiquette" inherent to the service would "convert" into full users, while the rest quickly lost interest. This dynamic worked quite well… until September 1993.
What Happened in September 1993?
What happened in that particular September? Well… America Online happened, along with other providers with similar goals. In the middle of that year, AOL started its massive trialware campaign with floppy disks (followed later by the invasion of CDs), and in September it decided to offer access to Usenet as part of its services. The new legion of users took Usenet by storm.
The conflict was inevitable. Neither Usenet nor its "natives" had the capacity to receive such a number of users, and on the other side, almost no one bothered to interpret the basic rules of this new space. As if that were not enough, America Online did not stop its campaign, but accelerated it. So it was in January 1994 that Dave Fischer published in the newsgroup alt.folklore.computers: “It doesn’t matter anymore. September 1993 will go down in the history of the network as the September that never ended.”.
The Aftermath: An Eternal September
America Online closed its access to Usenet in 2005, but others took its place, including Google itself (which in turn ended support in February 2019). Some believe that the effect of the Eternal September went beyond Usenet and reached the entire Web. If we consider the questionable intellectual quality behind certain comments… maybe they are right. This phenomenon has also been linked to the Dead Internet Theory.
