Urban Legends: B1FF
Once upon a time, when Usenet was young, there was an anonymous (and many people think "pseudo," meaning in this case "intentionally not serious") article-writer named B1FF. Wikipedia calls this article-writer "the prototypical newbie," in that it seemed as though B1FF's mission was to ignore as many guidelines for newsgroup writers as possible. Some say that B1FF was a 13-year-old boy; others say he was a seasoned Internet veteran masquerading as a newbie. One guy even wrote a B1FF translator! But why? Because in those days there were "guidelines" designed to discourage people from writing like B1FF:C0WABUNG4 D00DZ!...consider what B1FF did:
- wrote in all caps, the Internet equivalent of shouting;
- misspelled words intentionally, to inflame the somewhat better-educated readers;
- threw himself out there without being part of the conversation's context.
Y0U SUCK S0 THERE!!!But writers who know their stuff will often cite B1FF as a precursor to the kind of informal Internet-based conversations held today, especially by teens and college students, in chat rooms and on message boards all over the world, and within AIM and Yahoo Messenger. Some writers and teachers think that is a sign of the coming apocalypse; me, I'm just glad to see people communicating AT ALL.
Labels: internet
posted by Ron @ 9:25 PM
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