I was on Usenet at this time. It's hard, even though I lived through it, to really explain how different it was since the total "population" of Usenet was a ver

I was on Usenet at this time. It's hard, even though I lived through it, to really explain how different it was since the total "population" of Usenet was a very tiny fraction of the world (some sources say <1m people around this time). Now 5+ billion people have smartphones. Many individual newsgroups would only have hundreds of active users. The reach was very wide geographically, but the demographics were very narrow and numbers of people were very small. Typically they were in big tech companies, and at academic institutions. One related but vivid memory: in 1991 I was playing some text based MUD (multi-user dungeon) which I barely remember, but at certain moment, someone broke out of character and mentioned that the US had just invaded Iraq (during the Persian Gulf War). It seemed so bizarre yet foreshadowing of the changes to come, of the ways that our news would be shared on social media.