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Eternal September or the September that never ended was a cultural phenomenon during a period beginning around late 1993 and early 1994, when
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Usenet and the Internet were generally the domain of dedicated computer professionals and hobbyists; new users joined slowly, in small numbers, and learned to observe the social conventions of online interaction without having much of an impact on the experienced users.
The only exception to this was September of every year, when large numbers of first-year university students gained access to the Internet and Usenet through their university campuses. These large groups of new users who had not yet learned online etiquette created a nuisance for the experienced users, who came to dread September every year.
However, each year the tide of new users would eventually abate, as everyone learned to get along and assimilate into existing communities, or found the place not to their liking and quit using it. Once ISPs like AOL made affordable Internet access widely available for home users, however (in particular, offering Usenet access as a sign-on service, like AOL Mail), a continuous influx of new users began, making it feel like it was always "September" to the more experienced users.
The full phrase appears to have evolved over a series of months on two separate alt.folklore newsgroups where a number of threads exist lamenting what they saw as an increase in low-quality posts across various newsgroups. Several members of the newsgroups referenced aspects of the "September" issue, typically in a joking manner.
In a thread on January 8, 1994, Joel Furr cross-posted asking "Is it just me, or has
sdate
a
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...
s began offering Usenet
Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
access to many new users. Prior to this, the only sudden changes in the volume of new users of Usenet occurred each September, when cohorts of university students would gain access to it for the first time, in sync with the academic calendar.
The flood of new and generally inexperienced Internet users directed to Usenet by commercial ISPs in 1993 and subsequent years swamped the existing culture of those forums and their ability to self-moderate and enforce existing norms. AOL began their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users. Hence, from the early Usenet community point of view, the influx of new users that began in September 1993 appeared to be endless.
History
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Usenet and the Internet were generally the domain of dedicated computer professionals and hobbyists; new users joined slowly, in small numbers, and learned to observe the social conventions of online interaction without having much of an impact on the experienced users.
The only exception to this was September of every year, when large numbers of first-year university students gained access to the Internet and Usenet through their university campuses. These large groups of new users who had not yet learned online etiquette created a nuisance for the experienced users, who came to dread September every year.
However, each year the tide of new users would eventually abate, as everyone learned to get along and assimilate into existing communities, or found the place not to their liking and quit using it. Once ISPs like AOL made affordable Internet access widely available for home users, however (in particular, offering Usenet access as a sign-on service, like AOL Mail), a continuous influx of new users began, making it feel like it was always "September" to the more experienced users.
The full phrase appears to have evolved over a series of months on two separate alt.folklore newsgroups where a number of threads exist lamenting what they saw as an increase in low-quality posts across various newsgroups. Several members of the newsgroups referenced aspects of the "September" issue, typically in a joking manner.
In a thread on January 8, 1994, Joel Furr cross-posted asking "Is it just me, or has Delphi
Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), was an ancient sacred precinct and the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient Classical antiquity, classical world. The A ...
unleashed a staggering amount of weirdos on the net?", which garnered a reply from Karl Reinsch "Of course it's perpetually September for Delphi users, isn't it?" The day before, Furr had also posted the same message to alt.folklore.urban, where David Fischer responded with a joke call-to-action where he referred to the increasing numbers of Delphi users as the "Never-Ending-September". Fischer also replied to a different thread on January 25, 1994, in alt.folklore.computers saying, "It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net history as the September that never ended." This quote has been suggested to have been the first reference.
Possibly the first use of the "Eternal September" phrase was a newsgroup post by John William Chambless in February 1994. He posted a rant including some excerpts of low-quality articles he found in one of his newsgroups that day, but titled the post "The Eternal September".
Legacy
A tongue-in-cheek program called ''sdate'' outputs the current date, formatted using the Eternal September calendar (September ''X'', 1993, where ''X'' is an unbounded counter for days since thatepoch
In chronology and periodization, an epoch or reference epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. The "epoch" serves as a reference point from which time is measured.
The moment of epoch is usually decided b ...
). This is not the identically named ''sdate'', one of the sixty commands that comes with the First Edition of Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
, that is used to set the system clock. Named with similar humour is one of the free public Usenet servers, Eternal-September.org.
See also
* * Enshitification *July effect
The July effect, sometimes referred to as the July phenomenon, is a perceived but scientifically unfounded increase in the risk of medical errors and surgical complications that occurs in association with the time of year in which United States m ...
* Sturgeon's law
* Tragedy of the commons
References
External links
*sdate
a
Unix
Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...
program that outputs the date of Never Ending September
{{Internet slang
1990s neologisms
1990s in Internet culture
1993 in Internet culture
AOL
History of the Internet
Internet slang
September
September 1993
Usenet
Internet memes introduced in the 1990s