I've been digging through some old Usenet archives and came across alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk, which eventually led me to something called Requiem for a Newsgroup.
I wasn't there for the Flonk days, so I'm curious to hear from people who actually were.
From what I've been able to piece together, this wasn't really a group about aliens or vampires at all. It became its own strange little corner of Usenet, complete with regulars, inside jokes, trolls, flamewars, cascades and all the other insanity that made old Usenet what it was.
At some point, someone even wrote Requiem for a Newsgroup, a parody of Ozymandias, looking back on the group's glory days and eventual decline.
One line caught my attention:
“Look on our trolls, ye Pavers™, and despair!”
Now I want the stories that aren't obvious from reading an archive.
Who was actually there? What the hell went on in Flonk?
Who were the legendary trolls? What were the big flamewars about? Who were the characters everybody knew? Were there any running jokes that would make absolutely no sense to somebody discovering the group today?
If you were a Flonker — or even just watched the madness from a safe distance — I'd love to hear what you remember.
Some Internet history is better told by the people who lived through it.
Darth Yoda
"Debugging the galaxy, one bite at a time."