Subj : Net.Legends List (long) ÿ@FROM :WVHORN@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU Message-ID: <2m7tl3$as@charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> Newsgroup: alt.folklore.urban,alt.folklore.computers,alt.usenet.kooks Organization: The Ohio State University Yes, it arrives! Months in the making! After having real life intrude into my net.activities on a regular basis, and a full 4 months after I started this, The Unofficial Net.Legends List Is Here! This is mostly an historical compilation. For real-time data on many posters who are currently haunting Usenet, see alt.usenet.kooks. And, anyway, not everyone listed here is a kook. ---Bill "not a legend, not a kook, not insane" VanHorne -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Unofficial Net.Legends List INTRODUCTION Every social grouping of people eventually forms their own "inside knowledge" based on shared past experiences, and this becomes a sort of communal folklore. Part of the collective culture of Usenet is the shared knowledge of and experience with the posters hereafter referred to as the Net.Legends. As a user of Usenet newsgroups, you will probably at some time come across a thread in which someone like Kibo, Serdar Argic or Robert McElwaine are discussed in off-hand asides; leaving it obvious that many other people are so familiar with these entities that just the mention of their names (or a strange phrase like "space potatoes") is enough for a point to be made. You may or may not understand the reference even if you are an old hat on Usenet. In order to help you (and me!) understand the history and folklore of Usenet, I have compiled this list of Net.Celebrities. This list is an attempt to collect the shared knowledge of the famous posters past and present in one place. I have tried to collect knowledge of the truely legendary posters only, and I will not try to catalog every person that beleives that JFK was killed by a tiger, or who believes that the CIA is using thought-control microwaves on them. Rather, I have limited this list to those Net.Legends that one is apt to find referred to by other people, and help you answer the question: "Who is this Kibo, and why does everyone but me know who he is?". The following catalog is open for revision, so if you have knowledge to share, share it! Bill VanHorne (wvhorn@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu) is the fool ...er... person who has volunteered to maintain this list, so email him or post to alt.folklore.urban or alt.folklore.computers where your Listmaster will see it (leave your emoticons at the door, please). ========================================================================== Dr. Alexander Abian Autumn 1992 - present sci.physics/sci.math ------------------- --------------------------------------------------- Dr. Alexander Abian, a semi-retired mathematician at Iowa State University, began posting to sci.physics in late 1992 proclaiming that TIME HAS INERTIA, that he is a genius of the caliber of Einstein and Newton for realizing it, and that he is deserving of the Nobel Prize for physics for his unique insight. Abian has become famous net-wide for the sheer volume of his postings, his fondness for self-glorification, and the corresponding amount of noise generated by respondants to him. He is also the advocate of a project to move the planet Venus out of its current orbit and into Earth's orbit in order to .... well your Listmaster is not sure why, but I'm sure it's important. ========================================================================== "Serdar Argic" ???? - now everywhere - but mostly soc.culture.turkish -------------- -------------------------------------------------------- (a.k.a Ahmet Cosar / a.k.a. Hasan Mutlu / the dreaded ZUMABOT) Ah yes, the ZUMABOT. So famous a net.legend that he rates his own FAQ and has generated his own newsgroup: alt.fan.serdar-argic, an accomplishment shared with only a select few. The name "Serdar Argic" is probably an alias for Ahmet Cosar, a rabid Turkish nationalist who is affiliated in some way with the University Minnnesota. "Serdar" posts incredibly long messages claiming to prove that Armenians killed (genocided) 2.5 million Turks in the years 1914 - 1920, and sends those posts to almost every newsgroup in existance sooner or later. Many people feel that "Serdar" is actually an automatic posting program (a robot-poster or BOT which posts from sera@zuma.UUCP - hence the name ZUMABOT) that text-searches (greps) all newsgroups for the words "Armenian" or "Turkey" and unleashes a stream of messages. The messages themselves are the same ones repeated over and over with minor changes made in order to insult or accuse people that have gained his/its attention. The ZUMABOT is noted for 50-word message headers; joining unrelated threads with segways like: "Yes, but have you considered the genocide of 2.5 million Muslims...."; spewing forth 100+ lines of quotes taken from various "scholarly" sources; taking other posters' names and ending them with "-ian" to insult them (e.g: Ken Arromdee becomes "Arromdian the genocide apologist"); and telling other people that "The crimes of your criminal Armenian grandparents will not be forgotten" whether the other person is of Armenian heritage or not. This Net.Legends list is not adequate to truely explore the ZUMABOT and all its features, but interested parties can subscribe to alt.fan.serdar-argic, or obtain the Serdar Argic FAQ from nysernet.org to delve more deeply into Argic lore. ========================================================================== B1FF mid to late 1980s ???? ---- -------------------------------------------------------- B1FF (or Biff) was a satiric/comedic poster who haunted the net many, many years ago. His/her/its posting style was to use all caps, substitute numbers for letters, and to use a sort of pseudo-surfer slang. A typical B1FF sentance would read something like: HEY D00DZ!!!!!! TH15 1S K00L!!! (translation: Hey dudes, this is cool). Although very few current Usenet posters remember actually seeing a original B1FF, his/her/its fame remains incredibly high, with many people still posting satiric B1FF-like messages to this day. Your listmaster has no idea why. ========================================================================== L. Detweiler late 1993 - present most newsgroups ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- Leonard Detweiler is a long-time participant in the "cypherpunks" groups and mailing lists who spread a PSEUDO SPOOFING ALERT netwide in the fall of 1993. Mr. Detweiler's alert was to warn other net users of the existance of people who post under assumed names (pseudo-spoofing), run an underground information net (Blacknet), and whom Mr. Detweiler thinks are planning many illegal activities. He seems to think that one or two of his "cypherpunk" acquaintances are behind all sorts of post- ings under all sorts of identities (he refers to these as "tentacles of the Medusa") and are in particular trying to "spoof" him. Although the original PSEUDO SPOOFING ALERT is his most famous contribution, he continues to post net-wide alerts irregularly. Interestingly, Mr. Detweiler often posts under assumed names and from an annonymous account. ========================================================================== Victor Fabrikant 1992(?) sci.research(?) ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- Easily the saddest story in all of Usenet history so far is the tale of Victor Fabrikant. Fabrikant was an electrical engineering professor at Concordia University in Montreal who posted long ranting texts to the net complaining of how his department heads and fellow professors were sabotaging his career. He was apparently actually in danger of losing his position at Concordia for various forms of incompetance. After several months of enduring his ranting on sci.research(?), the people of Usenet were shocked to find Fabrikant in the news for having killed several of the people at Concordia that he had been raving about, including several fellow professors and the department secretary. His trial also became a news item, as he went through several attorneys, finally defending himself, and calling the presiding judge "a Muppet". ========================================================================== Ted Frank (?) - present all over the place ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- Ted is rapidly becoming one of Usenet's most recognized names due mostly to his propensity for baiting the pompous and foolish. This behav- ior, called "trolling" on alt.folklore.urban, consists of Ted posting sarcastic messages to people like Serdar Argic (see above) who respond with vitriolic personal attacks. In fact, Serdar has made "Ted Frank the Idiot" one of his standard message headings. Ted's name also heads up many threads in misc.legal and alt.conspiracy, where he seems to generate an incredible amount of hate-postings from various lunatic fringe types such as the various New World Order loons on alt.conspiracy who post "Ted Frank Watch"s that never seem to end. Ted is, in fact, a law student at the University of Chicago, and an acknowleged expert at "trolling", producing the newsgroup alt.ted.frank. troll.troll.troll, and gracing alt.usenet.kooks with many crosspostings of kooky messages from .... well, kooks. Whether or not he is actually a paid employee of the CIA or NWO is unknown to your Listmaster. ========================================================================== GRiley" February 1992(?) - January 1994 mostly sci.skeptic ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------- (a.k.a. "Riley G. Matthews") Billing himself as an "international psychic detective" GRiley appeared in sci.skeptic claiming to be an ex-NYC policeman and retired "Federal Policeman" who is now making his living using his psychic powers to aid law enforcement agencies. Beginning his Usenet career by posting long diatribes against "The Amazing Randi" and vehemently supporting Uri Geller, with whom he claims to be close friends and in constant contact, he generated a great deal of noise by making many extravagent claims as to his involvement in criminal cases, his supposed six-figure income and his international fame. When challenged to psychic- ally produce information on one sci.skeptic poster, he failed miserably. He later actually made a testable prediction by claiming that he would appear on the "front page of the New York and L.A. Times" for his role in uncovering a major election scandal in N.Y.C. The promised appearance never happened. Note that GRiley may not make further editions of this list because as of January, 1994, he promised the people of sci.skeptic that he was leaving Usenet, never to post again. So far, he has kept his promise, and as a consequence, his net.fame is diminishing rapidly. ========================================================================== Dan Gannon ???? - present alt.conspiracy/alt.revisionism ---------- -------------------------------------------------------- Unlike many of the net.famous cataloged here, Dan Gannon actually upsets people who come across him for the first time. Dan Gannon devotes his life to posting a huge number of pseudo-scholarly missives purporting to show that the genocide of 6,000,000 European Jews in World War II not only never happened, but is a trumped-up lie generated by Jews (who control all the world's media) in order to gain sympathy for themselves and mask their true purpose: global domination. Mostly spouting the party line of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR) and drawing on the "Spotlight" newspaper, (both of which are mouthpieces for the USA's main neo-Nazi Willis Carto), Dan dumps mulitple 300+ line posts onto a predictably huge collection of newsgroups, and in the best tradition of Usenet abusers, either ignores critics or simply responds to them with more 300+ line posts. He causes a great deal of consternation when he first appears in a new group, and like some of the other legendary posters, obviously does not care if 99% of the reaction to his ideas is outrage; as he is hoping that 1% will believe him. Interestingly, Dan is also the author of a theory in which our uni- verse consists of 25 dimensions. It used to be 23, but he discovered two more. Update: As of March 1994, Mr. Gannon has informed regular readers that due to the many complaints sent to his posting site (netcom.com) about his behavior, Netcom is limiting his posting access to groups that actually have something to do with WWII, history, the Holocaust, Germany or Judaism. ========================================================================== Ted Holden mid 1980's - present talk.origins ---------- ------------------------------------------------------- Ted Holden was an extremely prolific poster to net.physics, net.astro and net.origins (the groups that became sci.physics, sci.astro, and talk. origins), whose net.career began in the Eldar Days. Long ago, before the Great Renaming, Ted was convinced to limit himself to the "origins" group where he remains to this day. Ted is mostly a proponent of Immanuel Velikovsky's pseudo-biblical theories of astronomy/cosmology/evolution/history ("Worlds In Collision") and became famous due to his style of arguing vociferously with other talk.origins folk until the logic of his position became untenable. At this point he would disappear for several days before reappearing in other threads putting forth the very same arguments as before. It was this trademark style of advocating a position, ignoring any refutations of it, and then blithely advocating it again that gained Ted his fame. Ted is nowhere near as prolific as he used to be ever since the organization that provided him with free net access discovered that he was using their site without their knowledge. =========================================================================== Robert E. McElwaine autumn 1991 - April 1993 most newsgroups ------------------- ----------------------------------------------------- Along with Serdar Argic, Robert E. McElwaine became one of the most famous Net.Legends during his tenure on Usenet, generating enough fame and interest to rate a FAQ and his own newsgroup, alt.fan.robert.mcelwaine. Originally appearing on the science groups such as sci.physics and sci.astro, and eventually posting to almost every newsgroup in existance, McElwaine would post long messages about a number of subjects on a regular monthly or semi-monthly schedule. These posts were almost always the same, with no changes made from the previous editions, and he *never* cross- posted, making it impossible for most newsreader programs to realize that the message had already been read. Among McElwaine's theories were: o Plants are psychic and transmutating elements (from "The Secret Life Of Plants") o AIDS, cancer, and various other ailments can be prevented and cured by regular baths in a concoction of herbal things. o Unlimited energy is available from an invention that utilizes spinning wheels to unlock KINEMASSIC energy. o Russians are controlling the USA's weather. o The good Christians in Moscow have regularly defeated the BOLSHEVIKS in Washington D.C. (and their Israeli-piloted submarine planes) by using JUMBO COSMOSPHERES equipped with PSYCHO-KINETIC RANGE FINDING. [The last two items were parrotted from the works of the late Dr. Peter Beter (no, I Am Not Making This Up) who published a series of "audio letters" from 1977 - 1983, and whom McElwaine obviously felt was onto all sorts of hidden secrets behind the world's political events.] Robert's messages were famous for RANDOM capitalization, and were ended by the sentence: "UN-ALTERED reproduction and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED". He finally wore-out his welcome at Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) in April of 1993 and lost his newsfeed. Robert has either found other means of proseletyzing or is unaware of alternate methods of net access, since he has not been heard from since. For those of you interested in researching JUMBO COSMOSPHERES and other interesting neglected historical information, a complete collection of Dr. Beter's audio letters is available from etext.archive.umich.edu in the pub/Politics/Conspiracy/Beter.Audio.Letters directory. If you would like to see some original McElwaine posts, use anonymous FTP to access ftp.std.com and look in the pub/alt.religion.kibology/ net-wackiness/mcelwaine directory. ========================================================================== James "Kibo" Parry (???) - Present Everywhere ------------------ ----------------------------------------------------- James Parry took the rather simple idea of text-searching all news- groups for references to himself, and turned it into a net.wide industry. Your Listmaster is suspicious that the designation "Kibo" (official pro- nunciation: "Keyebo" alternate pronunciatons: "Kibbo", "Keebo") was added to his name in order to make the grepping easier. Kibo's modus operendi is to read postings in which the name Kibo appears and then decide if the poster is worthy of a response. This behavior of sudden appearance in response to his name apparently seemed rather god-like to some net.denizens who responded by inventing the religion of "kibology". This makes Kibo the only Usenetter to ever have spawned a major religion. If you would like to understand the phenomonon of "Kibo numbers" or just kibology in general, alt.religion.kibology exists for you. If you would like to summon Lord Kibo from cyberspace, simply mention his name and if He deems your posting worthy of comment, He will reply with an oracular statement that may be decyphered by the initiated. =========================================================================== Ludwig Plutonium spring 1993 - present sci.physics/sci.math ---------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Ludwig Plutonium is a person who made millions in the stock market, bought his own island to live on, and after deciding that he wanted a Use- net newsfeed, took a job as a dishwasher at Dartmouth Univ. in order to gain free net access. A powerful logician and mathematician, he proved Fermat's Last Theorem in only two months and Poincare's Conjecture in only one month. Ludwig is also a remarkable physicist and has already named all the elements that have yet to be discovered. The last element (# 190) is named "Plutoniumium" after him. Ludwig is the main proponent of the theory that the entire universe is actually a plutonium atom ("Plutonium Atom Totality") at least until it is recreated as an Americium atom in the future ("Americium Atom Totality"). In prior lives he was both Archimedes and Phar Lap the Australian race horse. Along with the above accomplishments Ludwig is the author of a text- book entitled "Plutonium Atom Totality: The Unification Of Physics, Chemis- try, Biology And Mathematics" and an accomplished poet. A small selection of Ludwig's poetry is reproduced below: [ How lost was my condition, till the ATOM made me whole ] [ There is but one Physician ] [ Can cure a radioactive-decayed soul. ] [ There is an Afterlife, where my waves are rebundled whole. ] [ There is infinite power in The Protons of the Nucleus ] [ To cure my radioactive-decayed soul. ] [ Protons of the ATOM, radioactive-growth my soul whole ] [ The ATOM is the only physics ] [ ATOM,ATOM ] A large collection of Ludwig Plutonium works is available by FTP from ftp.std.com in the pub/alt.religion.kibology/net-wackiness directory. =========================================================================== Hannu Poropudas winter 1992 - present many groups but mostly sci.physics --------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Hannu appeared in sci.physics in early 1992 espousing a collection of physical theories of the origin and composition of the universe, and quoting a certain "Hanna-Maria" as the source of his inspirations. Part of his cosmology contains the now famous "space-potato" which is supposed to be at the center of the universe (I think). After several months of post- ings a respondant asked him who Dr. Hanna-Maria was, and where they could find her published works. At this point Hannu revealed that Hanna-Maria was his six-year-old daughter whom he believed was in direct communication with God. Hannu's scientific methodology consists of asking his daughter to draw pictures of the universe and neutrinos and the like, and then interpreting the typical 6-year-old's pictures as direct revelations from God. He lost his news feed at one point in 1993 due to his habit of changing his posting name in order to make it impossible for people to kill-file him. He now posts from a "freenet" in Finland. For those interested in more information as to the difference between red and green neutrinos and where to find "space-potatoes", Hannu has graciously made available a collection of his work at ftp.funet.fi. Look for Hannu in the pub/doc/misc/HannuPoropudas directory. =========================================================================== Mark Ethan Smith late 1980s ????? ---------------- -------------------------------------------------------- One of the strangest netters ever to grace Usenet was the woman Mark Ethan Smith. Her original name is not known to your Listmaster, but she apparently legally changed it to Mark Ethan since she felt that female names were demeaning. Coming from a Jewish background, Mark would post long diatribes about Jewish prejudice against women, long diaribes about prejudice against women in general, and would engage in vitriolic flaming of anyone who referred to her as a "she" or mentioned that she was female in any way. This included the people who defended her on the net. Perhaps an example of a Mark Ethan Smith post is in order here (special thanks to Jeff Adler for this). [ P.S. Don't tell me want my name should be. My name is Mark. Is ] [ your middle name Israel? If Hitler can't choose your name for you, ] [ you can't choose mine for me. And don't tell me what women must wear. ] [ Do you wear a yellow star? If Hitler can't tell Jews what they must ] [ wear, you can't tell me what women must wear. And don't tell me what ] [ roles are appropriate to me as a woman. If Hitler can't tell you what ] [ roles in life are appropriate for Jews, you can't tell me what roles ] [ are appropriate for women. Sometimes I suspect that everything Hitler ] [ knew about fascism, he learned from Jews. After all, if Jewish men ] [ can treat their women as 2nd class citizens, why can't other men treat ] [ Jews as 2nd class citizens? ] =========================================================================== Gary Stollman late 1991(?) - early 1992(?) mostly alt.alien.visitors ------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Gary Stollman's name is still mentioned on the net, even though his tenure here was a brief one. Gary posted long autobiographical works in which he described how aliens were replacing his family with look-alikes, following him around the country and watching his every move, tapping his phone, and even replacing the local auto mechanic, his landlord, and his therapist with alien clones in order to watch him. Gary's last post described how he was about to leave Florida to go to California in order to throw the aliens off his track. He never posted again. Make of that what you will. =========================================================================== Dr. Jack Sarfatti ???? - present sci.physics/alt.sci.physics.new-theories ----------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Sarfatti is joining our list due to his habit of posting to newsgroups such as sci.skeptic and alt.alien.visitors where people have trouble knowing whether he is serious or being satirical. In your Listmaster's opinion, Jack is both. He is a widely known physicist, due mostly to his "validation" of Uri Geller, his inclusion in the popularization of physics "The Dancing Wu-Li Masters" and other works, and his voluminous postings to the net. Jack is well known for trumpeting how famous he is and how many famous people he has known and worked with, but it is often difficult to tell whether he is serious about this or just having fun (especially when he claims a Sarfatti family link with Mussolini). Dr. Sarfatti's physical theories consist of extending the ideas of quantum connectedness origin- ated by J.A. Wheeler to an extreme; namely that beings in the future are actually creating the past that we live in. He does seem to be serious about this. =========================================================================== Jack Schmidling ???? - present various groups at various times ----------------- -------------------------------------------------------- Jack Schmidling usually restricts his postings to one newsgroup, but which newsgroup he posts to changes over time as Jack's interests evolve. To the best of your Listmaster's knowledge, Jack Schmidling is the only famous Usenetter (other than Fabrikant - famous for other reasons) to be internationally famous for his activities in the world at large. His international fame comes from his ARF (Amateur Radio Forum) which he used to advertize in a 50-line .sig file at the end of all his messages. ARF staked-out the frequency 14.313 MHz for their informal right-wing profan- ity fest until the FCC cracked down in early 1993. Your Listmaster has been unable to ascertain if Jack was one of those fined by the FCC for up to $10,000 US for their activities on 14.313. Jack has also made the news over a fight with his neighbors in Chicago over mowing his lawn. His neighbors wanted him to mow it, he refused. At one time Jack could be counted on to drop in on any discussion regarding gun control, politics, feminism, etc. where his contribution would usually consist of flaming anyone who disagreed with his particular viewpoint, and clogging the net with his 50-line ARF .sig. Jack is now holding forth on rec.arts.brewing, as he seems much more interested in the home brewing of beer these days. =========================================================================== A.J. Teel autumn 1992 - present alt.conspiracy/misc.legal --------- ------------------------------------------------------- A.J. Teel joins our list of the Net.Famous because, sooner or later, you will run into someone making a sarcastic or serious comment about "specific reservation of all rights (U.C.C.-107) or "Sui Juris". This is a reference to the postings of A.J. Teel. Mr. Teel is of the opinion that all U.S. citizens are covered exclus- ively under "admiralty law", and therefore only subject to the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.), and therefore only obligated to pay income tax if they accept that jurisdiction by having a birth certificate or drivers' license on file with the government. A.J. has posted the letter he sent to the state of Indiana repudiating his own birth certificate. For a full understanding for why you do not need to pay income taxes, use anonymous FTP to access etext.archive.umich.edu to find A.J.'s postings in the pub/Politics/Conspiracy/AJTeel/USC directory. =========================================================================== John_-_Winston autumn 1991 - present alt.alien.visitors/sci.skeptic -------------- -------------------------------------------------------- John Winston is a New Age/astral travel/UFO enthusiast who posts to a wide variety of newsgroups. John has learned how to use his editor over the years, greatly improving the quality of his messages. He often quotes from "The Weekly World News" (a US-based tabloid paper sold mostly in supermarkets), seems to have discovered an underground network of alien tunnels under Mt. Shasta in California, knows all sorts of alien visitors and brujos, and at one time tried to organize a group astral-travel through the net. He makes our Legends list not only due to the frequent mentioning of his name net.wide, but also due to the fact that many people will satirically use the "_-_" spacer in their names when talking about UFOs because John has always signed himself "John_-_Winston", and seems to have the reputation of being the ultimate UFO man of Usenet. ========================================================================== This list is not complete, especially in regards to dates, and your List- master is in need of much information as to the history and content of the famous netters listed here. Please, if you spot legendary Usenet posters, and especially if you have personal knowledge or archives of the legends of the past, share it! ========================================================================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------