Part of the joy of Usenet groups (at least the one that I spent the most time with) was the wacky stuff that went on. I was a regular over at atxf (alt.tv.x-files) since the end of 1998, and made friends for life from that group. We had a reputation for being snarky and cliquish--while there was a lot of snark going on, a lot of it was tongue-in-cheek. We did have a very low tolerance for stupidity--e.g., asking questions covered in our F.A.Q., which was posted regularly in our heyday.
The biggest thing that caused dissension in our group was another explosion of sorts--after the movie "Fight the Future" was released in the summer of 1998. People saw the movie that had not been long-term fans of the show, and the ship/no-ship wars really heated up after the movie came out. It seemed that the level of posting degenerated after the movie--we got more fangirl/fanboy type postings, which greatly annoyed some long-time posters. Then there were the polar opposites of these posters--the ones that treated with the gravitas of a United Nations Security Council meeting, having world-changing implications. Somewhere in between is a fine line--to enjoy a fandom, and not lose your sanity, you have to find the people in that fandom with some balance and perspective.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 07:17 pm (UTC)The biggest thing that caused dissension in our group was another explosion of sorts--after the movie "Fight the Future" was released in the summer of 1998. People saw the movie that had not been long-term fans of the show, and the ship/no-ship wars really heated up after the movie came out. It seemed that the level of posting degenerated after the movie--we got more fangirl/fanboy type postings, which greatly annoyed some long-time posters. Then there were the polar opposites of these posters--the ones that treated with the gravitas of a United Nations Security Council meeting, having world-changing implications. Somewhere in between is a fine line--to enjoy a fandom, and not lose your sanity, you have to find the people in that fandom with some balance and perspective.