Talk Elections

Not only is the archaic web design style pretty charming but the archival feeling is pretty cool too, it's similar to the election night footage from previous elections that have been taped and put on YouTube. Amazing how the Internet now has "history". My favorite example: http://empirestategames.tripod.com

I do- a look back in time, a living fossil of sorts.

Yes, it's one of the most awesomest things after sex and masturbation.

Someone linked me to a Usenet discussion on November 9th, 1989, as a bunch of college students in the US and Germany discussed the implications of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  It really drove home to me that people have been talking politics on the Internet as long as there's been an Internet.

A few years ago, someone showed me a link to a Usenet discussion of Return of the Jedi from just after its release in 1983.

Mostly yes.

Never saw them.  How would one run across something like that?

I get kind of creeped out by those 'ghost town' sites.

I've seen posts on Usenet about the 84 election. Really fun to read in retrospect.

I'd like to see discussions on the Perot candidacy and 1992.

Do you still have that link, by any chance? 

This might be it (http://groups.google.com/group/eunet.politics/browse_thread/thread/2dbad510cef3a7e6/df8d3d0984e1ef69?#df8d3d0984e1ef69).

That is indeed it, though I seem to have misremembered the contents a bit over the years: I recalled at least one person arguing for dragging Austria back into the new united Germany, but apparently that didn't happen.

It's kind of surreal, as you really don't "feel" like the Internet didn't come into being until the mid 90s.

Any chance of providing a link?

The Internet has existed since the 70s, it's the web that revolutionized it and that came in around 93-94.

Excuse me, the WWW.

Pretty intense discussion! (http://groups.google.com/group/net.flame/browse_thread/thread/159de09ecb785b17/43ca66aee9413264?q=mondale#43ca66aee9413264)

1992 predictions from that summer (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.rush-limbaugh/browse_thread/thread/1c142358efd6ea0f/c418817eb5269ae2?q=prediction+election#c418817eb5269ae2)

The only thing I'd complain about is the modern layout on those ones... kind of ruins the feeling.


It's amazing I'm able to copy and paste this, written and posted a full decade before I was born, in the manner I would the post just above me posted a few minutes ago. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Eh, there are archives of newspapers and archives online going back decades, so it's not that amazing.

Google has a list of newsworthy historical discussions here:

http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html

But it's the internet. Real forum discussion, in the same form and medium that we use today.

March 1988: Ron Paul and abortion (http://groups.google.com/group/alt.individualism/browse_thread/thread/3ac422a71022c4c9/4328fbfad6f07757?q=%22ron+paul%22#4328fbfad6f07757)

The 1984 thread is HILARIOUS - mainly because it feels *exactly* like a thread from the Atlas right now.

People on the internet were more well spoken back then, it seems.

Well it was only people who were rich/educated/intelligent, so it's actually somewhat surprising that they were only a little more well-spoken.

Edit:  Of course, I was just thinking of home users.  College students goofing off during their computer lab time might not have quite the same level of maturity...

Including a post by Walter Mitty!


The internet has gotten markedly dumber than it was in the mid-1990s, let alone the mid-1980s.  Back then, it was dominated by people with high technical proficiency, high education levels, and/or high income (which correlates with education level).  Nowadays, it's dominated by illiterate teenagers.  The same phenomenon explains why the Golden Age of Television ended in the mid-1950s.  Once television ownership moved beyond the elite, the broadcasters started pandering to the unwashed masses.