Ancient Web: LoserUsers Was a BBS Sysop’s Exasperated Field Guide

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Before moderators complained about trolls in social-media groups, bulletin-board operators were already cataloguing every imaginable way users could make their lives miserable.

Read Documentary: The LoserUsers.

Preserved on Rmitz.org, LoserUsers credits an author calling himself “The Trash Compactor.” It announces itself with elaborate text-character artwork, then spends a very long time complaining about the people who called into computer bulletin-board systems, or BBSes.

The author says twenty months of BBS operation inspired the document. It is satire, sometimes gleefully mean, written from the viewpoint of an operator who feels that enforcing elementary rules has become a full-time occupation.

A taxonomy of users who refuse to read

The piece sorts users into types. There is the habitual troublemaker, the “leech” obsessed with downloading other people's software, the self-styled hacker who mainly wants to crash systems, and the aspiring sysop whose confidence exceeds his competence.

The most vivid scenes are miniature dialogues. A caller fails to read a rule against aliases, gets challenged by the operator, and still cannot grasp the problem. Another cannot follow a telephone-number entry prompt, even after the sysop intervenes in real time.

Much of the humor depends on the technology. A user must understand area codes, conference sections, file libraries, and the commands that end or submit a text message. Software “wares” are traded on disks or through slow telecommunications links. Commodore 64 loyalty becomes an entire class of jokes.

This is not an objective account of the people it mocks. Some stereotypes are crude, and the author's contempt should not be confused with reliable sociology.

When a text file became a web artifact

Rmitz.org's larger humor page has already received Ancient Web coverage. This separate document is worth a closer look because it survives as a substantial original work rather than a one-paragraph joke. Its structure, elaborate ASCII header, fictionalized conversations, and period vocabulary make the online copy an artifact in its own right.

The page reminds us that today's moderation struggles did not begin when social networks arrived. People running small online communities were already arguing about access, civility, technical literacy, and the obligation to read directions.

The difference was that the person on the other end might literally be tying up your telephone line.

Explore the complete LoserUsers text.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.