The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Language
 froup and alt sex




From: lrudolph@panix.com (Lee Rudolph)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Pi and Indiana gibberish in FAQs. (If there is anyone left who has
Date: 13 May 1996 10:21:16 -0400

The following is lightly excerpted from a post easily retrievable in its entirety from Dejanews: for instance, by searching on "rec.fucking".

--begin historical note on "froup" usage--- 

Subject:      Re: To promulgate on froups

From:         bumgarls@falcon.jmu.edu (Lee S. Bumgarner)

Date:         1996/03/27

Message-Id: <4jc9jv$1o6@doc.jmu.edu>
...
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,alt.culture.usenet

Myles Paulson (xexrrain@wackydoo.DIALix.oz.au) wrote: >
> In article <4i6tms$akm@rocannon.cam.harlequin.co.uk>, Mark Wainwright
>(markw@harlqn.co.uk) writes:
> >Paul Robinson <paul@tdr.com> writes
> >
> >> The term "newsfroup" in this case is an arcane sort of pun having to do
> >> with historical usage in computer terms, but I'm not exactly sure why.
> >
> >I once read that it originated on alt.fan.lemurs, and went so far as
> >to check out the a.f.l. FAQ, but it was unenlightening on the subject.
> >I may have been had.

> It derives from a common touchtypists' error, caused by the fact
> that the left index finger is used to press both the f and g keys
> which adjoin each other on the keyboard.

> As for "newsfroup" - of all the institutionalised jocularity of
> alt.folklore.urban's readymade argot, this would have to be the
> lamest. 'Voracity' for 'Veracity' has the happy accidental
> allusion to 'voracious', but nothing redeems 'newsfroup'.

Doe ANYONE know Net.Culture.these days? <sigh>

>The Origin of alt.sex

>It was a warm sunny afternoon in Baldwin Park, California. I was working at
>Lundy Financial Systems, who made remittence processing robots. While
>everybody else was playing with the neat cool groovy next generation UNIX
>machines, I was contrancted to fix the 8 year old Z-80/Assembler coded
>behemoth that nobody else would touch. It was a horrible job. Mind
>numbing does not begin to describe it.

>My friend Ralph Freudenberger had an account on gryphon.com, as did I.

>With such a mind numbing job, there was only one thing to do: read
>talk.bizarre for 7 hours a day.

>Ralph asked me a question. Oh, if only Ralph *hadn't* asked me a
>question.

>He asked me: "Richard, I know how to follow up a posting on UseNet, but
>how do you post one from scratch - without following one up".

>I said "oh, no problem", and fired up Pnews and typed in the following
>article:

>Newsgroup: talk.bizarre

>Subject: new group
>From: richard@gryphon.com
>Article-Id: <7676723@gryphon.com>
>Distribution: lical

>I propose the newsfroup rec.fucking

>--
> ``It's too dark to put the keys in my ignition''

>I was being flip, ok, but I'd set the distribution to Local so it would
>never leave gryphon.com; nobody would see it. Well they wouldnt have if
I'd spelled Local correctly. Spelling never was my strong suit. Still >isn't. So the article went out to the world. Talk.bizarre was not a
>group that would leave someting like this alone.

>They thought the newsgroup was a good idea. They thought perhaps rec.fucking
>might not get past the backbone cabal, so they changed it to rec.sex. The
>requisite 2 week discussion phase ensued, and although many objections
>were raised and the obligatory postings stating Hmmmph... my site won't
>carry it occurred, it went to a vote. The vote passed. As predicted, the
>backbone cabal would not carry the group.

>Brian Reid simply, quietly and quickly created alt.sex. He also created
>alt.rock-n-roll to compliment the rec.drugs and rec.sex that had been
>created.

>The rest is history. alt.sex spun off subgroups like nobody's business.
>They are the most widely read groups on UseNet according to the
>statistics. Not bad for a typo.

That is why "newsfroup" has lasted.

-l

---end historical note---


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