Confessions of an early Internet addict......

[poltr1]

While going through Box 62, I found a few message threads which dealt with my voracious appetite for netnews, aka the Usenet. I read a lot of rec.* groups in college, and probably to my detrement. I even got into trouble with the system administrators because I'd either send batches of news articles to a person who was temporarily off the net, or I'd receive news articles from someone whose site didn't cut them off, thus running up our site's phone bills. (The way Usenet worked in the 1980s is that the machines would call each other and send both the mail messages and news articles in a store-and-forward fashion.)

As I re-read these messages from John and Gretchen, our system administrators, threatening to take away my Usenet access, I felt anger, and then sadness. What I didn't know at the time -- or even admit to -- was that I was addicted to Usenet. I even referred to myself as "The Usenet Junkie". My OCD, hoarder syndrome, and addctive personality aspects ganged up on me. But now that I'm aware of these aspects in my life, I can no longer cry victim. If I was in their position, would I have done the same thing? Perhaps, but I wouldn't have been as punitive.

I kept reading netnews until graduation. Then I had to quit cold turkey, since I no longer had access. That wasn't easy.

I guess I had Internet addiction before it was fashionable, or even recognized as a legitimate addiction.

Now I look back on my college days and think what an idiot I was back then. If I could have spent less time reading the rec.* groups, and maybe some more time reading the comp.* groups, I probably would have had a better grade point average than what I earned. I haven't gone back to Usenet, now known as Google Groups. There's so much information out there on Usenet that it's impossible to keep up. I wish I would have learned that lesson 20 years ago.

Comments

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I guess I had Internet addiction before it was fashionable, or even recognized as a legitimate addiction.

There were a lot of people who IRCd, or MUCKed or MUSHed or MOOed their way to flunking out of school, back in the day.

[poltr1]

Don't I know it. We had a game on our VAX called "Galactic Trader", and there were a few folks who had to drop out of school because they spent so much time playing the game. It even got to the point where the tires of one of the game ops got slashed. That's when the staff pulled the game off the system.

At least with moria and rogue, the sysops put in a cutoff switch which disabled starting a game if the load average was higher than 6.

[zorya-thinks.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize that Usenet had morphed into Google Groups.

I think you have made a lot of progress on cleaning out the junk, btw. A little bit more every day, and one day you'll be surprised at how much lighter and freer you feel.