Carlos finds 11k posts per month about Rush Limbaugh by ten people trading articulate insults back and forth. He also asks, what's the point? They're the only p

Carlos finds 11k posts per month about Rush Limbaugh by ten people trading articulate insults back and forth. He also asks, what's the point? They're the only people who will ever pay attention to it. I never did get into Usenet but the internet in the nineties and before was like that. Your online niche was a bubble of private elitism and secret joy that people wondered about, but never knew. You were ensconced and free. People were amazed and curious about the images and magical pull into the future, that people who knew how to work computers, could access in front of them. Your arcane knowledge of (what is now basic and made easy for us) connecting to the internet and plunging into this otherwordly language of buttons and code words... a different time. Contrasted to your father who wore a suit and tie to work at the bank and read the newspaper, and lived through the invention of the Television set. You didn't need a reason to shout into what we now call an echochamber, it held all the hope and promise of working out to some unknown magical end anyway.