the various gathering places of the early internet, fandom edition
May 7, 2023 2:51 PM Subscribe
What are some good representations of late 90s/early 00s internet fandom conversations? I'm particularly interested in the kinds of conversations that would happen in, say, a specific off-fandom discussion thread or part of a message board (that is people within a community talking online but about some spin-off topic). Pre-Tumblr, Pre-LJ is helpful!
I was on the internet in the late 90s as a kid, but the places I lurked/posted in some usenet newsgroups and eventually message boards that weren't quite fandom (hobbyist groups, game dev forums, gamefaqs, etc.), with the exception of some light pokemon fandom. eventually I got into Livejournal in 2003, but more in a social networking way. As a result, I don't have a well-calibrated sense of the conversations happening in these spaces.
A friend once described how they were really active in the Activism spinoff board (sorry I forget the name for a nested message board) within a particular show. This FASCINATED me.
I'm definitely interested in anything that helps me understand these spaces and conversations better - whether that's archived message boards, deep dive essays, books, documentaries, oral histories, anything of that nature. I also want to be respectful in doing this kind of work and not, yknow, peer too much into anything identifiable/not intended to be viewed by outsiders, so I'm open to any guidance and criticism on that.
Thank you!!
I was on the internet in the late 90s as a kid, but the places I lurked/posted in some usenet newsgroups and eventually message boards that weren't quite fandom (hobbyist groups, game dev forums, gamefaqs, etc.), with the exception of some light pokemon fandom. eventually I got into Livejournal in 2003, but more in a social networking way. As a result, I don't have a well-calibrated sense of the conversations happening in these spaces.
A friend once described how they were really active in the Activism spinoff board (sorry I forget the name for a nested message board) within a particular show. This FASCINATED me.
I'm definitely interested in anything that helps me understand these spaces and conversations better - whether that's archived message boards, deep dive essays, books, documentaries, oral histories, anything of that nature. I also want to be respectful in doing this kind of work and not, yknow, peer too much into anything identifiable/not intended to be viewed by outsiders, so I'm open to any guidance and criticism on that.
Thank you!!
Best answer: The old-school forums at Halo fansite Halo.Bungie.Org date back to 1999, and have been involved in a few charitable fundraisers over the years.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:03 PM on May 7, 2023
posted by Rhaomi at 4:03 PM on May 7, 2023
Best answer: Fanlore may be worth a browse. There's also plenty of old, old stuff buried in newsgroups; here's rec.arts.anime, for example.
I was heavily involved with a certain Final Fantasy site back in the day, which had its forums hosted by EZBoard. A lot of other fansites used EZBoard as well, from the obscure to well-known ones like the Gaming Intelligence Agency. EZBoard went through some ownership changes and currently no longer exists; there are also no surviving EZBoards in the Internet Archive. A lot of fan history, gone, just like that.
posted by May Kasahara at 5:00 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
I was heavily involved with a certain Final Fantasy site back in the day, which had its forums hosted by EZBoard. A lot of other fansites used EZBoard as well, from the obscure to well-known ones like the Gaming Intelligence Agency. EZBoard went through some ownership changes and currently no longer exists; there are also no surviving EZBoards in the Internet Archive. A lot of fan history, gone, just like that.
posted by May Kasahara at 5:00 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: In the late 90s, there were a lot of fandom-specific message boards, like on the SyFy Network website, or the Bronze for Buffy fandom.
Allyson Beatrice wrote a book called Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? about those heady days of Buffy fandom.
Until the rise of LJ, a lot of fandom still took place on mailing lists, as well. Yahoogroups was really big for several years.
posted by suelac at 5:04 PM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Allyson Beatrice wrote a book called Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby? about those heady days of Buffy fandom.
Until the rise of LJ, a lot of fandom still took place on mailing lists, as well. Yahoogroups was really big for several years.
posted by suelac at 5:04 PM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Old usenet posts are archived on Google Groups like rec.arts.startrek so you just gotta figure out how to filter for the date range you're interested in
posted by Jacqueline at 5:05 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Jacqueline at 5:05 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: The TV show Lost had a message board called The Fuselage. I was just listening to a podcast where someone wrote in about how they ended up meeting their current spouse over the off-topic boards. Archive.org link to an example day in 2005.
posted by Night_owl at 7:48 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Night_owl at 7:48 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Whoa amazing answers so far! brainwane, Internet Girlfriend Club absolutely rules! I read it all evening thank you! And May Kasahara, Fanlore is going to be an invaluable reference source going forward -- thank you.
Night_owl, would you be okay sharing that podcast episode? I'd love to listen.
posted by elephantsvanish at 8:26 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Night_owl, would you be okay sharing that podcast episode? I'd love to listen.
posted by elephantsvanish at 8:26 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: It was mostly message boards and Usenet, pre-LJ.
X-Files fandom had a board called Ephemeral, which sadly seems to have been completely wiped.
posted by Violet Hour at 9:06 PM on May 7, 2023
X-Files fandom had a board called Ephemeral, which sadly seems to have been completely wiped.
posted by Violet Hour at 9:06 PM on May 7, 2023
Best answer: UseNet was the Reddit of the 90s. There were all these Usenet groups for specific topics.
alt.tv.x-files (old scifi show) had a lot of posts. This article reminisces about those days: https://www.cnet.com/culture/x-files-and-videotape-internet-piracy-usenet-1990s/
posted by Mushroom12345 at 12:23 AM on May 8, 2023
alt.tv.x-files (old scifi show) had a lot of posts. This article reminisces about those days: https://www.cnet.com/culture/x-files-and-videotape-internet-piracy-usenet-1990s/
posted by Mushroom12345 at 12:23 AM on May 8, 2023
Best answer: There's an extensive Gene Wolfe discussion mailing list - the old part of the archive from the early 00s is here
posted by crocomancer at 2:23 AM on May 8, 2023
posted by crocomancer at 2:23 AM on May 8, 2023
Best answer: In the late 90s I spent some time on the Trek BBS, which still exists today in a more modern format. You can find an archived version here: Trek BBS (1999) via the Wayback Machine.
The miscellaneous section had random conversations that might be of interest to you.
posted by carnival_night_zone at 6:30 AM on May 8, 2023
The miscellaneous section had random conversations that might be of interest to you.
posted by carnival_night_zone at 6:30 AM on May 8, 2023
Best answer: The evolution of culture that was caused by networked computers is a favourite topic of mine, so while these are not exactly links to old message boards per se, I think you will get a lot of value out of:
ZZT, by Anna Anthropy - a book that talks about the online subculture that sprung up around the user-modifiable DOS game ZZT.
Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie, by Rob O'Hara - A memoir about a young man finding community through dial-up message boards
Preserving Worlds - this video series is available on means.tv and on YouTube and is composed of a series of interviews with people involved in the preservation / perpetuation of online worlds (primarily games but not always) that were abandoned by their creators but kept alive by enthusiastic communities
My Tiny Life, by Julian Dibbell - this book is about the author's involvement in one of the earliest online communities (LambdaMOO) and explores such topics as how to set up sustainable online communities, how to prevent abuse, online currency, falling in love online, how anonymity enables gender exploration, and so on.
posted by signsofrain at 6:36 AM on May 8, 2023
ZZT, by Anna Anthropy - a book that talks about the online subculture that sprung up around the user-modifiable DOS game ZZT.
Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie, by Rob O'Hara - A memoir about a young man finding community through dial-up message boards
Preserving Worlds - this video series is available on means.tv and on YouTube and is composed of a series of interviews with people involved in the preservation / perpetuation of online worlds (primarily games but not always) that were abandoned by their creators but kept alive by enthusiastic communities
My Tiny Life, by Julian Dibbell - this book is about the author's involvement in one of the earliest online communities (LambdaMOO) and explores such topics as how to set up sustainable online communities, how to prevent abuse, online currency, falling in love online, how anonymity enables gender exploration, and so on.
posted by signsofrain at 6:36 AM on May 8, 2023
Best answer: I still from time to time browse ilXor.com—many of the conversations about music have been ongoing since 2001.
posted by jshttnbm at 6:42 AM on May 8, 2023
posted by jshttnbm at 6:42 AM on May 8, 2023
Best answer: In 2000, I joined a quit smoking site (The Quit Net) that evolved into private internet "clubs". Was pretty wild!
posted by kiwi-epitome at 6:43 AM on May 8, 2023
posted by kiwi-epitome at 6:43 AM on May 8, 2023
Best answer: Mailing lists were a big part of being a music fan. You could opt to receive every e-mail sent in real time, if you wanted to actively talk online all day, or sign up for a daily digest. We didn't just talk about the musicians or bands, but also about other things that people who dig them would also like.
Here's the archives for FEGMANIAX-L, which was the "listserv" (slang for an e-mail mailing list) for the fandom of Robyn Hitchcock and his bands The Soft Boys and The Egyptians. Click on a year, and then on an individual digest (with names in chronological order, like v04.n011) to see what it was like:
http://www.smoe.org/lists/fegmaniax/
Hitchcock was influenced by Syd Barrett (of the old Pink Floyd) so you'll see people discussing stuff in that general wildly-creative-psychedelic style, like Neutral Milk Hotel. There was a feeling of "I've found my tribe!!" that went beyond the coincidence of shared fandom. There were even IRL meetups.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:33 PM on May 8, 2023
Here's the archives for FEGMANIAX-L, which was the "listserv" (slang for an e-mail mailing list) for the fandom of Robyn Hitchcock and his bands The Soft Boys and The Egyptians. Click on a year, and then on an individual digest (with names in chronological order, like v04.n011) to see what it was like:
http://www.smoe.org/lists/fegmaniax/
Hitchcock was influenced by Syd Barrett (of the old Pink Floyd) so you'll see people discussing stuff in that general wildly-creative-psychedelic style, like Neutral Milk Hotel. There was a feeling of "I've found my tribe!!" that went beyond the coincidence of shared fandom. There were even IRL meetups.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:33 PM on May 8, 2023
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posted by brainwane at 3:26 PM on May 7, 2023 [3 favorites]