Notable Usenet personalities

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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.

1 Eccentric personalities
2 Unusual personalities
3 Other notable personalities
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

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 (1923–1999) — 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 ^[1].)

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 (1926–2003) — 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.^[2] ^[3]

Valery Fabrikant — former associate professor of mechanical engineering at Concordia University, he shot and killed four colleagues in the school massacre referred to as the Concordia University massacre. He is currently serving a prison sentence in Canada. Fabrikant has posted in several newsgroups, particularly can.general and can.politics, claiming that he is the innocent victim of a conspiracy against him. These posts can be found at an archive of his home page.

Gharlane of Eddore (1947–2001) — 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.

Robert McElwaine - Wisconsin-Eau Claire astronomy student who posted articles on just about every newsgroup he could access. Common topics included the Eckankar religion ("Jesus is Satan's Pawn", "Divine Masters"), physics and astronomy ("Free Energy", "Hollow Earth") and "The Mark of the Beast" (barcodes). In time, he drew enough interest to have his own FAQ and newsgroup (alt.fan.robert.mcelwaine). He lost his access from UWEC in May of 1993, and subsequently posted from AOL, Prodigy, and the Chippewa Valley Freenet. Mr. McElwaine was famous for his random capitalization and his signature block:^[4]

       UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this 
  IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER 
  BULLETIN BOARDS. 
                           Robert E. McElwaine
                           B.S., Physics and Astronomy, UW-EC
                           2nd Initiate in Eckankar

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.^[5] 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. ^[6]^[7] 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 ^[8] 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)^[9] ^[10] — 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.^[11]^[12] 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.

Jack Sarfatti — American theoretical physicist and the author of a number of popular works on quantum physics and consciousness, known for his iconoclastic ideas concerning the schism between science and the humanities, as well as space migration, intelligence increase, life extension, UFOs, extraterrestrials, time travel, and psychokinesis.

Michael E. Schmidt - Is believed to have been posting on Usenet/Google Groups since approximately 1997^[13] under an extraordinarily long list of usernames primarily in the rec.music.makers.trumpet and rec.arts.marching drumpcorps groups. Often referred to as "Mikey", "Howdy" (a nickname he gave himself), or simply "MES", his posts often feature grandiose, apparently serious claims about his abilities on the trumpet, such as the ability to play higher and louder than any other trumpet player in the world. ^[14] These assertions have been to say the least, a point of contention among participants, many of whom are professional players. He claims to have a doctorate and several other degrees, none in music. Despite this, his posts are notorious for frequent misspellings and malapropisms which, combined with other earmarks of his posts such as claims of acquaintance with notable persons, inspired a parody post titled "One Fine Day...Around 3 PM", considered a classic in the aforementioned groups.^[15] Posted by someone spoofing one of MES's usernames, it depicts a fictional phone call to the offices of Jerome Callet, a noted brass teacher and instrument maker who MES claimed to know. MES's actual known musical performance background includes participation in drum & bugle corps in the late 1970's to early '80's and a small, insignificant musical ministry.

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.

Kibo — pseudonym of James Parry, who provided the basis for the formation of an entire newsgroup, alt.religion.kibology.

Mark V Shaney — pseudonym of an automated program that used Markov chain logic to recombine the text of posts into nearly coherent posts.

Publius — an anonymous poster who, from 1994 to 1995, used the Penet remailer service to deliver cryptic messages to alt.music.pink-floyd. These posts revealed that an enigma had been hidden within Pink Floyd's The Division Bell, and Publius called upon fans to find the solution. Although the remailer service was shut down in 1995 and Publius has not been heard from since, the puzzle and the prize for solving it were acknolwedged by Floyd's drummer, Nick Mason, at a book signing in 2005. The Publius Enigma has never been officially solved. [1]

Other notable personalities

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

John C. Baez — American mathematical physicist 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 World Wide Web as the author of an ironic crackpot index.

Torkel Franzén (1950-2006) — Swedish academic who worked in the fields of mathematical logic and computer science.

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".

Dr. Laurence Godfrey — established a legal precedent for libel on Usenet.

Tilman Hausherr — critic of Scientology and frequent poster to alt.religion.scientology, credited with coining the term "sporgery".

Tim Maroney (1961–2003) was an American occultist author and essayist, and a prolific early contributor to Usenet (as unc!tim from 1982), in particular on topics on Thelemic Crowleyan Satanism. In print, he published The Book of Dzyan (2000), ISBN 978-1568821146.