{"id":308,"date":"2006-01-14T23:26:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-14T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/?p=308"},"modified":"2015-01-14T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T18:35:34","slug":"misc-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/?p=308","title":{"rendered":"misc.writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I used to participate in a Usenet newsgroup called misc.writing, a group supposedly about writing in all of its forms but in reality about anything<span style=\"font-style: italic;\"> <\/span>but. The people there were writers, though; most had never published, but quite a few had. These were the ones that kept themselves off topic the most; usually, the wannabes contributed actual writing-related posts.<\/p>\n<p>There were also trolls. One I remember in particular called herself Chelsea and claimed to be a published writer; her merits consisted of about 800 Usenet posts. She also thought I was George Lucas. Really. I won&#8217;t tell that story now, but if you&#8217;re interested, do a Google groups search on &#8220;Ari+Chelsea+George+Lucas&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The other night, after a three-year absence, I visited misc.writing again. The place hasn&#8217;t changed at all. Sure, there are some new names and many of the old ones are gone, but it&#8217;s scary how little the place has changed. The same trolls, the same endless political discussions, the same insults.<\/p>\n<p>But the scariest thing of all is to realize that all of this time, I&#8217;ve thought of a Usenet newsgroup as a &#8220;place&#8221;. Virtual reality is here, folks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to participate in a Usenet newsgroup called misc.writing, a group supposedly about writing in all of its forms but in reality about anything but. The people there were writers, though; most had never published, but quite a few had. These were the ones that kept themselves off topic the most; usually, the wannabes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgmlguru.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}