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* ''']''' (d. 2003) — American ] for greater rights for clients of ]s (]). Not known for taking kindly to criticism of his views, became known as a Usenet personality for his frequently unsubstantiated accusations of ] (NAMBLA) membership and of literal support for the ] (going far beyond the issue raised by ]). His invective was directed against those opposed to his cause, especially ]s, who opposed NAMBLA and supported the legalization of prostitution. These accusations were often included in massively crossposted articles. Since this was a violation of the ] at most ]s (ISPs), Cherry changed ISPs frequently during most of his career. * ''']''' (d. 2003) — American ] for greater rights for clients of ]s (]). Not known for taking kindly to criticism of his views, became known as a Usenet personality for his frequently unsubstantiated accusations of ] (NAMBLA) membership and of literal support for the ] (going far beyond the issue raised by ]). His invective was directed against those opposed to his cause, especially ]s, who opposed NAMBLA and supported the legalization of prostitution. These accusations were often included in massively crossposted articles. Since this was a violation of the ] at most ]s (ISPs), Cherry changed ISPs frequently during most of his career.

* ''']''' — part-time journalist, dealer in antiques, and critic of the theories of human evolution. His notoriety stems from his vast posting history to Usenet and his belief that, in his words, man is "as old as coal." <!-- from the Ed Conrad wikipedia page -->


* '''David D'Amato''' — former assistant high school principal, he actively spammed and trolled a variety of newsgroups (particularly alt.gothic and rec.music.phish) from roughly 1996 to 1999, initiated e-mail bombings against those he considered "opponents," and solicited for video recordings of young adult males being bound and tickled, all while using the ]/] '''Terri DiSisto''', who was supposedly a female college student. D'Amato was found guilty of e-mail bombings which caused service outages at a number of colleges and universities, was fined $5,000 (USD), and spent a year in prison after being convicted in 2001.<ref></ref> <ref></ref> * '''David D'Amato''' — former assistant high school principal, he actively spammed and trolled a variety of newsgroups (particularly alt.gothic and rec.music.phish) from roughly 1996 to 1999, initiated e-mail bombings against those he considered "opponents," and solicited for video recordings of young adult males being bound and tickled, all while using the ]/] '''Terri DiSisto''', who was supposedly a female college student. D'Amato was found guilty of e-mail bombings which caused service outages at a number of colleges and universities, was fined $5,000 (USD), and spent a year in prison after being convicted in 2001.<ref></ref> <ref></ref>
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* ''']''' (d. 2001) — pseudonym of David G. Potter, a ] writer and critic in ] who was widely known for acerbic, scathingly humorous and knowledgeable postings to Usenet science fiction newsgroups. He guarded his true identity carefully for many years before his death in 2001. His chief surviving non-fictional work is the ] FAQ and voluminous Usenet postings. * ''']''' (d. 2001) — pseudonym of David G. Potter, a ] writer and critic in ] who was widely known for acerbic, scathingly humorous and knowledgeable postings to Usenet science fiction newsgroups. He guarded his true identity carefully for many years before his death in 2001. His chief surviving non-fictional work is the ] FAQ and voluminous Usenet postings.

* '''John Grubor''' — possible pseudonym whose notoriety began when he posted in favor of the legalization of ] for ]. When his posts were removed from newsgroups in which they were considered off-topic, he began posting complaints about censorship and began attacking many of the individuals and organizations whom he considered to be responsible for the alleged censorship. This paranoid behavior eventually became one of the hallmarks of Usenet ]; it was Grubor who first postulated the idea of a vast, unseen (and fictitious) "]" that controls Usenet. His combative personality and wide cross-posting of his messages to newsgroups in various unrelated hierarchies made him one of the most recognized and controversial posters to Usenet during the 1990s. Named as "Kook of the Century and Decade" on alt.usenet.kooks. <!-- Date? -->

* '''James S. Harris''' — known on sci.math for his theories about ] and ] ]. He is perhaps more well-known for his claims of mental superiority and his vituperative responses to those who point out the flaws in his theories.


* ''']''' — called "a leading Usenet ]," this user wrote and distributed software applications that allow users to modify or cancel newsgroups posts, and to generate large volumes of ]. These have been classified as ] (DoS) and ] programs. The pseudonym is derived from a neologism appearing in the science fiction novel '']'' by ]. Hipcrime has never been positively identified and thus it is unknown if it is the work of a single person or a group. * ''']''' — called "a leading Usenet ]," this user wrote and distributed software applications that allow users to modify or cancel newsgroups posts, and to generate large volumes of ]. These have been classified as ] (DoS) and ] programs. The pseudonym is derived from a neologism appearing in the science fiction novel '']'' by ]. Hipcrime has never been positively identified and thus it is unknown if it is the work of a single person or a group.

* '''Dr. Jai Maharaj''' — wide-ranging troll for whom alt.fan.jai-maharaj was created; notable for massive cross-posting all manner of newsgroups.


* '''] (Mike Corley)''' — paranoid user who goes through periods of binge posting, claiming that ] has bugged his home and is sending people to follow him around and harass him.<ref></ref> They are often crossposted to ] where his messages would be considered off-topic. This has led to claims that he suffers from ]. He has posted transcripts and snippets of conversation that he has recorded, citing it as evidence, years later than the actual event. He has also claimed in his posts that television personalities are often talking about him in code and are part of the MI5 conspiracy. <ref></ref><ref></ref> He will often cross-post "examples" of MI-5 victimizing him 20 or 30 posts at a time. He has been banned from ] through ] for his abuse of Usenet <ref></ref> and has been similarly bounced from most ISPs in England. In the past, his posts were relatively easy to ] out, due to his similar subject lines and email address. However, at the start of the ] in ], he began a series of posts that avoided filters through ] and slightly varying his subject line of "MI-5 Persecution", showing an ability to adapt. * '''] (Mike Corley)''' — paranoid user who goes through periods of binge posting, claiming that ] has bugged his home and is sending people to follow him around and harass him.<ref></ref> They are often crossposted to ] where his messages would be considered off-topic. This has led to claims that he suffers from ]. He has posted transcripts and snippets of conversation that he has recorded, citing it as evidence, years later than the actual event. He has also claimed in his posts that television personalities are often talking about him in code and are part of the MI5 conspiracy. <ref></ref><ref></ref> He will often cross-post "examples" of MI-5 victimizing him 20 or 30 posts at a time. He has been banned from ] through ] for his abuse of Usenet <ref></ref> and has been similarly bounced from most ISPs in England. In the past, his posts were relatively easy to ] out, due to his similar subject lines and email address. However, at the start of the ] in ], he began a series of posts that avoided filters through ] and slightly varying his subject line of "MI-5 Persecution", showing an ability to adapt.
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* ''']''' — self-proclaimed ]. Though not a Usenet poster himself, many of his supporters and ] have posted using his name. * ''']''' — self-proclaimed ]. Though not a Usenet poster himself, many of his supporters and ] have posted using his name.

* '''Xinoehpoel''' ("leopheonix" backwards) — pseudonymn of a conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed prophet. Claiming to be a follower of ] (and who may or may not actually be Sollog), he posted frequently to the Usenet, alternately calling himself "Leo Phoenix", and gaining brief notoriety for a posting with the subject "911" to alt.prophecies.nostradamus in which he claimed "something" would happen "tomorrow" (the posting was made on 2001-08-31). When the ] did happen a week later, this apparent prediction received some attention, and was even covered by '']''.


== Unusual personalities == == Unusual personalities ==
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* ''']''' — American ] and author of ''This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics'', an irregular column on the web since 1993 featuring mathematical exposition and criticism. He is also known on the ] as the author of an ironic ]. * ''']''' — American ] and author of ''This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics'', an irregular column on the web since 1993 featuring mathematical exposition and criticism. He is also known on the ] as the author of an ironic ].

* '''James Bottomley''' — led early Usenet campaigns against spammers. He initiated calls for the moderated Usenet group soc.history.moderated as a means of eliminating the vast numbers of bot-generated spam posts.


* ''']''' — Swedish academic who worked in the fields of ] and ]. * ''']''' — Swedish academic who worked in the fields of ] and ].

Revision as of 05:06, 7 January 2008

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Find sources: "Usenet personality" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

A Usenet personality is an individual who has gained a certain level of notoriety from posting on Usenet. Since its inception, Usenet has attracted a wide variety of people posting all manner of fact, fiction, theories, opinions, and beliefs. While "notability" is a highly subjective notion, some Usenet posters have achieved a certain amount of fame (or infamy) within Usenet circles because of their unusual non-mainstream ideas or because their posts are considered especially humorous or bizarre.

Eccentric personalities

These individuals (or user-IDs, or pseudonyms) are noted for their eccentric beliefs and theories, paranoid behavior, or newsgroup trolling activities.

  • Alexander Abian (d. 1999) — American mathematician who taught for many years at Iowa State University who became an Internet legend for his incessant and frequently bizarre posts to various Usenet newsgroups. In particular, he gained international notoriety for his claims that blowing up the Moon would solve virtually every problem of human existence, and that mass and time are equivalent. (With regard to the second claim, it was suggested on the sci.astro.amateur newsgroup that his demise be observed with a gram of silence .)
  • Serdar Argic — alias used in one of the first automated newsgroup spam incidents on Usenet, with the objective of denying the Armenian Genocide, it was an automated bot that made thousands of posts to several newsgroups (especially soc.history, soc.culture.Turkish, and misc.headlines) in 1994. The deluge of posts suddenly disappeared in April, 1994, after Stefan Chakerian created a specific newsgroup (alt.cancel.bots) to carry only cancel messages specifically for any post from any machine downstream from the UUNET feed which carried Serdar Argic's messages.
  • Fred Cherry (d. 2003) — American activist for greater rights for clients of prostitutes (johns). Not known for taking kindly to criticism of his views, became known as a Usenet personality for his frequently unsubstantiated accusations of North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) membership and of literal support for the Nazi party (going far beyond the issue raised by Godwin's Law). His invective was directed against those opposed to his cause, especially gays, who opposed NAMBLA and supported the legalization of prostitution. These accusations were often included in massively crossposted articles. Since this was a violation of the terms of service at most Internet service providers (ISPs), Cherry changed ISPs frequently during most of his career.
  • David D'Amato — former assistant high school principal, he actively spammed and trolled a variety of newsgroups (particularly alt.gothic and rec.music.phish) from roughly 1996 to 1999, initiated e-mail bombings against those he considered "opponents," and solicited for video recordings of young adult males being bound and tickled, all while using the pseudonym/alter ego Terri DiSisto, who was supposedly a female college student. D'Amato was found guilty of e-mail bombings which caused service outages at a number of colleges and universities, was fined $5,000 (USD), and spent a year in prison after being convicted in 2001.
  • Gharlane of Eddore (d. 2001) — pseudonym of David G. Potter, a science fiction writer and critic in California who was widely known for acerbic, scathingly humorous and knowledgeable postings to Usenet science fiction newsgroups. He guarded his true identity carefully for many years before his death in 2001. His chief surviving non-fictional work is the Lensman FAQ and voluminous Usenet postings.
  • Hipcrime — called "a leading Usenet terrorist," this user wrote and distributed software applications that allow users to modify or cancel newsgroups posts, and to generate large volumes of e-mail spam. These have been classified as denial of service (DoS) and spamming programs. The pseudonym is derived from a neologism appearing in the science fiction novel Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner. Hipcrime has never been positively identified and thus it is unknown if it is the work of a single person or a group.
  • MI5Victim (Mike Corley) — paranoid user who goes through periods of binge posting, claiming that British intelligence has bugged his home and is sending people to follow him around and harass him. They are often crossposted to newsgroups where his messages would be considered off-topic. This has led to claims that he suffers from paranoia. He has posted transcripts and snippets of conversation that he has recorded, citing it as evidence, years later than the actual event. He has also claimed in his posts that television personalities are often talking about him in code and are part of the MI5 conspiracy. He will often cross-post "examples" of MI-5 victimizing him 20 or 30 posts at a time. He has been banned from posting through Google for his abuse of Usenet and has been similarly bounced from most ISPs in England. In the past, his posts were relatively easy to filter out, due to his similar subject lines and email address. However, at the start of the New Year in 2008, he began a series of posts that avoided filters through sporgery and slightly varying his subject line of "MI-5 Persecution", showing an ability to adapt.
  • Archimedes Plutonium (born Ludwig Poehlmann, raised as Ludwig Hansen, legally changed his name to Ludwig Plutonium, then later changed it to Archimedes Plutonium) — noted for his "Plutonium Atom Totality" theory, which posits that the universe is a giant plutonium atom, and that galaxies are "dots" in the electron dot cloud of this atom. He states that the cosmic atom must be plutonium in order to explain the values of the mathematical constants e and π as well as certain physical constants. He also claimed to have invented a new number notation that leads to proofs/disproofs of the Prime number theorem, Poincare Conjecture, Goldbach Conjecture, Fermat's Last Theorem, and the Riemann Hypothesis.
  • Sollog — self-proclaimed psychic. Though not a Usenet poster himself, many of his supporters and apologists have posted using his name.

Unusual personalities

These are individuals (or user-IDs) that are unusual for reasons other than being eccentric.

  • B1FF (or BIFF) — well-known pseudonym and prototypical newbie on Usenet. Posts usually consisted of uppercase text containing many bangs ("!"), typos, "cute" misspellings, the use (and often misuse) of fragments of chat abbreviations, a long signature block, sometimes a doubled signature, and exaggerated naïveté. The BIFF pseudonym was originally created by Joe Talmadge, also the author of the infamous and much-copied Flamer's Bible. The BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton, who posted BIFFisms much more widely.
  • The Internet Oracle (a.k.a. The Usenet Oracle) — collective effort at humor in a question-and-answer format, wherein a user sends a question to the Oracle via e-mail or the Internet Oracle website, which is then randomly sent to another user who has asked a previous question. This second user may then answer the question. Meanwhile, the original questioner is also sent a question which he may choose to answer. All exchanges are conducted through a central distribution system which also makes all users anonymous. A completed question-and-answer pair is called an "oracularity". Many exchanges make allusions to Zen koans, witty wordplay, and computer geek humor.
  • Mark V Shaney — pseudonym of an automated program that used Markov chain logic to recombine the text of posts into nearly coherent posts.

Other notable personalities

These are other individuals or user-IDs that are (or were) well-known within certain Usenet circles.

  • Joel Furr — Usenet personality in the early and mid 1990s, immortalized in the newsgroups alt.fan.joel-furr, alt.bonehead.joel-furr, and alt.joel-furr.die.die.die. He was a pretender to the throne of James "Kibo" Parry and the bitter enemy of Serdar Argic. He is credited with being the first to call unsolicited junk email "spam".

References

  1. Usenet posting on the occasion of Professor Alexander Abian's death
  2. Who Was Educating Your Children?
  3. An expose of David D'Amato's Ticklish Federal Conviction
  4. MI5Victim H2G2 summary with link to Mike Corley's website
  5. MI5Victim Sample Post #1
  6. MI5Victim Sample Post #2
  7. Google Groups profile showing MI5 Victim banned by Google
  8. Joseph Scott (September 25, 1997). "Sometime-scientist Plutonium says science is 'gobbledygook'". The Dartmouth. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  9. Alexander Edlich (July 26, 1994). "Kiewit revokes man's network access". The Dartmouth. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)

See also

External links

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