A bit of internet history: " plonk! "

[fffred]

A bit of internet history:

Back in the early days of the internet, before the world wide web (www) hit its stride, there was a huge milieu known as "usenet". Usenet consisted of a hierarchical system of categories for science and engineering, humanities, computer science, et cetera, etc. Within each main branch were numerous subbranches. It was a mostly formal, considerate, academic environment used for valid communication between professors, scholars, researchers, etc ...with the exception of the "alt." branch. *That* could get pretty rowdy!

One of my favorite mementos of usenet life (my wife being my very most favorite, having met her through usenet) is the term "plonk!". Or " **plonk!** "  This is the sound that an old telephone handset would make when you hung up on someone, "plonk!". The term was used when you couldn't stand someone's drivel being posted in the forum and you could set your software to hide that person's posts from you in the future (using a "killfile"). It was such a satisfying feeling to plonk someone. 

Sometimes I just want to reply to a post or two around the AARP forums with a good " plonk! "

Except that probably hardly anyone would understand. lol

Usenet is still with us, I understand. But not in any viable form, IMO. It died under the weight of so much commercial spam and illegitimate binary files of pirated movies, etc. that came with the commercialization of the internet. Everyone moved to web-based forums.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plonk_(Usenet)

.