Quite fittingly, it is by Tom Galloway. From a .arpa domain…

Oh, the memories…

Jamie’s remarks about all the things not to miss from the days of Usenet’s prime are useful correctives to all this nostalgia, too.

Part of the appeal, for me, is the sense that while I knew other people who read and loved and loved talking about comics before I found RAC, I didn’t know so many of them, nor so many so passionate, so intelligent, so fun to interact with. It really was a moment of plugging into a reality I’d previously never know of, one with its own rules and history and culture and virtures and vices–it was a heady feeling. What a brave new world, with such people in it, indeed.

Now, in addtion to simply hating the web-interfaces (even on sites I love, like this one), the lack of centrality that others have mentioned for any given web forum just bleeds away any sense of having come to the greatest comics cafe of all time that I used to get when visiting RAC.

But, enough. What would be a good time period for a RACer Reunion on RAC.misc? Any anniversaries coming up?

I think r.a.c.* is analagous in many ways to ye olde broadcast television, compared to the Web’s digital cable. In the heyday of Usenet – which I’d peg at the mid-1990s (though of course tyg would probably cite the mid-1940s {smile}) – r.a.c.* (along CompuServe and with a few other places) was a more-or-less unifying online community about comics, that (despite the static) was worth tuning in. The folks on r.a.c.* turned me on to literally oodles of great comics. Now with 500 specialized comics message boards on the Web, there’s no *THE* place to go anymore, so the Posters Worth Reading are scattered all over the place. Also as *THE* focal point for online comics discussion and info, r.a.c.* was worth contributing to. It *mattered* (or it least it felt like it did).

It helped that it required some technological aptitude to find and use. Perpetual September became Perpetual Tuesday After Labor Day At 8:00AM (to stretch a metaphor beyond its breaking point). With everybody and his emotionally and intellectually retarded brother getting on the Web, pretty much the only places to carry on an intelligent conversation are those ruled by petty tyrants, who – benevolent though they might sometimes be – are still tyrants. Usenet’s democratic model of open voting and self-appointed net.cops was never ideal and clearly doesn’t scale well, but at least it felt inclusive… as much as a technologically exclusive club could. {wry grin}

My abandonment of r.a.c.* around the turn of the century was mostly due to upheaval going on in my life at the time. But its declining significance and signal-to-noise ratio were certainly contributing factors. I do prefer Usenet’s technology (using a client custom-built for message threading) to every web-browser-based forum software I’ve seen to date. But like any golden age, there’s no recapturing it, because the net has changed.

Cue Richard Burton: “Don’t let it be forgot / That once there was a spot / For one brief shining moment that was known / as rec dot arts dot comics dot….”

Cheers, Todd

I wrote this to Warren Ellis regarding usenet:

I remember those usenet days. I got on the net in 95ish myself and even remember reading your posts.

I think the main reason WEF was a success was your strong hand in kicking out the trolls and minimizing the typical usenet bullshit.

Among the things I didn’t miss:

- No “Who’d Win?!?” Thor vs. Superman threads.
- No Christian Micheal Viola threating PADs life and repeatedly praising Liefeld’s art as the greatest thing ever.
- No idiots posting spam, then getting upset when you tell them your not supposed to post spam.
- No name calling and debating semantics (which many threads devolved to if it went on for more than a week).
- No Pat O’Neil getting pissed off because you were supposed to talk about Marvel in the Marvel group and not in DC.
- Non big two superhero books were something more than “misc”
- No quoting a long post with only a throwaway one line comment at the bottom.
- No arguing over dorks that regularly did that and wasted everybody’s time. Then followed by a long thread about how much to snip.
- No arguing over what part of the post your chose to respond to and then chose not to respond to because they “won” that point.
- No re-writing other peoples posts, putting words into their mouths, building strawmen in order to knock down and win their arguement.
- No reviews titled “All the things that SUCKED: Batman #486″
- No people threatening to e-mail your work and/or ISP and get you fired/kicked off the net if they disagreed with your opinions.
- No OMAR.

That being said, yeah, I occasionally miss it too. Which is why I was so excited to find you and the curmudgeons and others on the web. :-)

Count me in for the reunion, too. I’ll bring the dip. So when is RAC.misc’s “birthday” then? (Make it an annual event, totally mess with the server numbers.)

I LOVE the reunion idea! But when? Because yes, it is about the people who are there.

Cole, I hope at least you find my snark pointed instead of pointless.

And yes, the idea of “neutral ground” is key — control through peer expectations instead of someone wielding a hammer.

Without neutral ground I find it harder to engage in discussion; with blog comments, you’re always visiting someone else’s house, instead of gathering together on the public square. And most of the time it feels like the blog proprietor is really just trying to land a writing gig with one of the companies whose comics he or she is complaining about/making fun of, so that the discussion becomes just a prop for the writing flourishes (which more often than not manifest as pointless snark.)

Yes. By all means, yes.

Yes. Absolutely.

Should we hold a RAC Reunion Week in RAC.misc, putting the word out to just have everyone drop in for at least a “Hey. Good to see you again. What are you reading?”

I’ll bring the beverages….

[...] Johanna Draper Carlson offers a short but eloquent eulogy for the old rec.arts.comics Usenet groups of years past, as well as a lament for the reasons that compelled her to abandon them. [...]

Ralf, you make a good point, that the groups were very focused on what was current, and it was hard to participate if you weren’t an every-Wednesday-buy-and-read kind of person.

Eric, yeah, I miss sprawling threads that ran for weeks as the conversation continued. You can’t do that on blogs and journals, because material just scrolls away.

Here, Legion Omnicom, Howling Curmegeons, and a few other sites make me feel like I’m getting about 80% of the actual content still. (I also use Google groups to catch RAC.reviews, at least.) I miss the give and take, though. But the signal to noise just got way too high.

But I do miss it. The conversations aren’t the same on blogs and message boards.

For me, it was the rec.arts.comics.* and sci.space.* groups, I was all over the place, reading and replying. But eventually it just got too much – not the s/n ratio, just too much stuff. So I took a hiatus. I loved being a part of that community (especially the comics ones), it made the shared experience more enjoyable, whether online or in person at conventions.

I never really went back because I got out of the habit of checking in, and by the time I did, the web-based message boards had really come to life and (a) there was too much to choose from and (b) everyone scattered. That, plus some personal stuff that kept me off line much more than in the past, made it easy to not go back.