So I've finally been doing my little reddit/twitter migration against my better judgement (my better judgement would say to take the opportunity to get off the internet but who listens to that loser). I'm finding all these platforms interesting, I particularly like how kbin combines both formats and links up to Mastodon, that's quite an idea.
Having said that all this nonsense made me nostalgic for Usenet all over again. I had some very enjoyable years on there and quite a lot of what I liked about Reddit was actually that it felt like the closest thing the web had to Usenet. (You'd think Google Groups was the closest thing but for some reason it wasn't. There is something I just loved about a newsreader's interface that Google Groups didn't replicate and it was just annoying).
It actually made me go check some old newsgroups out, and, well, that's the eternal problem Usenet isn't it - it being 99% dead as a parrot.
Is anybody still on Usenet, and if so what newsgroups do you follow? For that matter, what newsgroups are you aware of as still having some activity? Is anybody interested in getting (back) on it, and if so on where? Is Google Groups still in 2023 the best the web has to offer in terms of accessing it easily?
Usenet arose during a time when the people using computers actually understood how they worked and how to use them. Asking someone to download and install a Usenet client then set it up to connect to a server of their choice and then subscribing to newsgroups is way above and beyond what most people are willing to do in 2023, sadly.
If it's not on a touchscreen, and not able to be done with 2 or 3 taps, then it ain't happening.
Expanding on this, I'm worried a technological education gap is forming among the youth. Old people didnt grow up with computers, they have an excuse. Middle aged people had to deal with the computers of the 80s and 90s, and because of that, understand computing pretty well. Young people were born into a world of instant gratification and super simplified touchscreen GUI interfaces, and from talking with them, it's clear most of them know how to get on the internet and do their thing on social media, but most of them have no clue how the nuts and bolts of it all work.
Well. Usenet arose during a time when computers were only available to people who were all or most of the following: wealthy, white, formally educated at the post secondary level, professionally employed, affiliated with a western university, fluent in English, male, associated with the "defense" industry. Presumably most people who were on Usenet in 1980 had a good understanding of the technology.
But you sound as though you are being nostalgic for this extremely exclusionary time in computing. Having been in rooms as described above, it is not as interesting as you'd think. Homogeneous. Rigid. Boooring.
Why would anyone do that in 2023 when usenet is full of spam. It would only be an academic exercise unless you are looking to download pirated content. In which case usenet is quite a popular choice. Usenet's traffic has increased steadily year over year as it has transitioned into a media sharing platform. But you mean the forum side of things. Probably because you yourself have "sadly" not done any of the things you are crying about other people not doing you are not even sure what is going on.
It's off topic but on this you are correct from what I understand. I can't find in my bookmarks right now but I recall having read some research about how younger people (b >~2000) lack understandings of things like file systems and other computer basics. In their experience these things have always been very obscured. So they are very good at the things they have experience with, but actual understanding of "computers" is minimal.