|
Well, back in the day, when the World Wide Web was a mere gleam in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee and Usenet was the only game in the town, everybody knew who the Wharf Rat was. And I mean _everybody._ I swear he posted in all 5000-odd newsgroups.
There was another guy -- John De Armond, I think his name was -- who was the first major ultra-conservative gadfly on Usenet. H also was everywhere, flaming everything and everybody, until somebody took one of his death-threat-tinged flames seriously and called the FBI. Who actually showed up at his place to ask questions. It made the national press, and this was in the early '90s. In the aftermath, he moved to the new town and vowed he was giving up the 'net forever, because it was too silly to understand him.
|