To me this was such a weird time, because I was too young to experience the Usenet groups before that. To me, all those "get usenet downloads access" premium up

To me this was such a weird time, because I was too young to experience the Usenet groups before that. To me, all those "get usenet downloads access" premium upsales always looked very phishy and like a scam to begin with, and all the tools available for Windows were also commercially sold. You saw them everywhere, next to serials generators, illegal warez sites, even next to fetish porn ads. That's why I subconsciously associated it with "must be a scam like online casinos". I only realized what usenet and IRC were when I first installed/booted a Knoppix CD that came with a computer magazine. Little did I know that it would brick the bootloader of Windows 98 at the time. But by then most usenet groups were already either flooded with spam, or dead. Most groups were lurking in IRC via bouncers all day long to not miss a message.