Note that my prediction about Prodigy did not come to pass. Prodigy users never really figured out how to find Usenet; after the Usenet oldbies ranted about the AOL newbies for about two years, next came WebTV.

From:         kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry)
Subject:      Proposal to end all AOL-bashing!
Newsgroups:   alt.religion.kibology, news.misc, alt.config, alt.fan.warlord
Organization: HappyNet Headquarters
Date:         Wed, 26 Oct 1994 11:39:43 GMT

First Delphi was connected to the Internet, and people started
complaining about Delphi users.  Then AOL, and next Prodigy.

This is, of course, insensitive to the dozens of users at those sites
who are not bozos.  Therefore, I move we do something to stop all
the people whining about Delphi/AOL/Prodigy users, as well as boosting
the self-esteem of anyone using those services.  What I'm suggesting is
that we create a *new* commercial service designed to be even crappier
than those three combined.

I call this idea CrappyNet.

CrappyNet has an entirely graphical interface: text is, quite naturally,
represented by a series of little icons, one for each word (these
"rebusymbols"(TM) are fetched from a large dictionary stored on one of
the six CrappyNet CD-ROMs that will ship with every new computer.)
The CrappyNet-to-Usenet gateway would be specifically designed to
introduce misspellings, change everything to capitals, cross-post to the
wrong newsgroups, repeat the same posting fifty times per second, and
generally introduce a "destructosurprise"(TM) element into Usenet at large.

We would need merely to find five or six suckers to use this service
(and anyone stupid enough to use it would be willing to pay our $500/hr
charges with which we will fund this grand venture.)  Just as people
largely stopped complaining about Delphi when AOL appeared, and as
people will quiet down about AOL once Prodigy becomes prominent, people
will shift to picking on our five or six CrappyNet users once the
service develops a reputation--which should take about five hours of
heavy use.

To secure these five or six key users, we will simply advertise in
technical journals such as "Mondo 2000", "Omni", "Wired", and "Cracked".

				-- K.
				CrappyNet is a joint venture of
				John Palmer and BIFF.  CrappyNet software
				may not be exported to countries which
				are our friends, but is being given
				free to Cuba.