The biggest Flamewar

What was the biggest flamewar on usenet ever? What were some funny memories of it.

#usenet

Once upon a time in a magickal land far far away the being called yodabytz stirred from its deep slumber and pronounced to Rootbadger:

On 25 Jul 2002 07:17:44 GMT, Tessa entri...@yahoo.com wrote:

Not really a flamewar as such but a massive flood.
I used a socks5 proxy to hijack an ISP's NNTP server to post a harmless looking message asking nicely for FAQs to thousands of groups using different names and subjects and set followups to alt.bad.clams. There was a nasty resident netKKKop who there who thought he owned the group.

Oh how I laughed when I saw all the long FAQs landing from responsible usenetizens who had been duped. I'd love to have seen his face that morning! There were many hundreds of them in his precious group!

Even Tim Skirvin commented on it, but that seems to have been wiped from history, all I can find is this:
https://rootbadger.com/shortened/g47ofkve3

On Jul 31, 2026 9:18 AM, Steve Leyland sensed a disturbance and said:

Who did the flooding?

Once upon a time in a magickal land far far away the being called yodabytz stirred from its deep slumber and pronounced to Rootbadger:

I used a script to multi post the OP asking for FAQs but the follow up headers were set to the victim group.
So once they replied to the post with their FAQs it only went to alt.bad.clams and they wouldn't have even seen their reply in their own group. So in a way the many hundreds of FAQ posters did the flooding!

lmao

yodabytz wrote:

This was the most well-known, back in the day...

https://rootbadger.com/shortened/05eikxacx

Meow.

--
Flamer to the Gentry -- Prof. IACW -- mhm 20x8 -- "ludus non nisi sanguineus" https://rootbadger.com/shortened/fnjxaozfn (but don't expect any updates)

.sig file open for submssions.

On Aug 22, 2026 1:40 PM, Arnaud_M_Fercq sensed a disturbance and said:

Looking at your name, I get "Are Not a Motherfucker". Is this right?

yodabytz wrote:

[...]

No, but thanks for asking.

Arnaud M Fercq is from an old UseNet troll which started somewhere around '97. The "M" stands for "Menjy", which is also an old UseNet thing.

Oddly enough, both handles are still in use, here and there.

--
Flamer to the Gentry -- Prof. IACW -- mhm 20x8 -- "ludus non nisi sanguineus" https://rootbadger.com/shortened/fnjxaozfn (but don't expect any updates)

.sig file open for submssions.

On Aug 22, 2026 2:16 PM, 'Menjy' wrote:

The meow wars were just a little while before I fell into usenet but meow posts and references to it were still commonplace.

It was in the early eighties that I found ahm and my usenet 'education' began. I lurked for a few years trying to understand the mayhem and learn some network stuff.
Mostly I remember a lot of laughs at trolls and some really clever, witty and intelligent posts from the majority of posters not to mention all the tech info posted there.

I found my way into places like the flonk and alt.slack by following crosposts and thereby discovered a whole new level of interweb insanity.

:)

On Aug 23, 2026 10:34 AM, lurk sensed a disturbance and said:

Early 80s??? lol did you mean 90s?

On Aug 23, 2026 10:38 AM, yodabytz wrote:

lol...
my mistake, actually it was more mid to late 80's
I'm not sure of the actual date but I know that in '82 I was experimenting with transmitting afsk data across London on the uhf band using a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, it would be a year or 3 after that so probably mid rather than late 80's

Once upon a time in a magickal land far far away the being called lurk stirred from its deep slumber and pronounced to Rootbadger:

I used to transmit Speccy games on AM pirate radio back in the 80s for people to record on their cassette decks then play them. I was a personal friend of Matthew Smith who wrote Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy so had plenty of tapes to share.
Sounded horrendous on the radio for people tuning in to listen to music though lol

That's it mate, soundcard in and out to radio mic and speaker connexn then carefully adjust the audio levels... on FM you have Audio Frequency Shift Keying 🤓 worked great !

Once upon a time in a magickal land far far away the being called lurk stirred from its deep slumber and pronounced to Rootbadger:

lol, no soundcard back in those days - just a cheap audio mixer, two record decks, a cassette player and a reel to reel.
All cheap stuff because we got raided frequently so it all had to be replaceable.

On Aug 23, 2026 3:17 PM, Steve Leyland sensed a disturbance and said:

How did they find you? Do they trace the signal?

In article b4ccf882-265c-40a9-9887-4b3514f2a02a@rootbadger.com, yodabytz yodabytz@holonet.sith wrote:

That would be one way. Good detective work aslo helps.

Once upon a time in a magickal land far far away the being called 'Menjy' stirred from its deep slumber and pronounced to Rootbadger:

I'm still in touch with The 2-Belo on facebook and have invited him here but sadly he shows no interest.