What is Eternal September?

It is Usenet slang for the period starting in September 1993, when newcomers stopped being a seasonal wave and became a permanent presence online[1].

Where did Eternal September come from?

The specific phrase came from a January 26, 1994 post by Dave Fischer to alt.folklore.computers, reacting to AOL opening Usenet access the previous September[1].

What does Eternal September mean?

It means an online space where the usual short-term flood of clueless new users never recedes, so the community's culture is permanently disrupted[3].

How do you use Eternal September?

People use it to flag that a forum is being overwhelmed by newbies, or to mark themselves as pre-1993 Usenet veterans[2].

Is Eternal September still popular?

It is a classic bit of internet history that still gets referenced when older communities discuss newbie floods, and tools like Sdate keep the September 1993 calendar joke alive[5].

Eternal September

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Published August 19, 2026

Eternal September is Usenet slang for the stretch of internet time beginning in September 1993, when America Online opened newsgroup access to its user base and the usual seasonal wave of newbies never receded1. The phrase now describes any online community swamped by newcomers who overwhelm the existing culture2.

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Overview

Eternal September is a piece of Usenet slang describing the period starting in September 1993, when the annual arrival of clueless newcomers stopped being a temporary nuisance and turned into a permanent condition1. Before that, September meant a predictable wave of college freshmen getting newsgroup access for the first time and needing a few weeks to learn netiquette2.

The joke is that after 1993, the calendar effectively froze. Long-time Usenet users started dating posts as "September 1993" no matter what year it actually was, treating the influx as a month that simply never ended1. The phrase is now shorthand for any forum where a sudden crowd of newcomers drowns out the existing regulars3.

Origin & Background

Platform

Usenet (alt.folklore.computers)

Creator

Dave Fischer

Date

1993

The specific coinage is credited to Dave Fischer, who posted to the newsgroup alt.folklore.computers on January 26, 1994, framing the ongoing AOL invasion as a September that had refused to end1. The trigger was America Online rolling out Usenet access to its subscribers in September 1993, dumping a user base that dwarfed the existing Usenet population into the newsgroups all at once2.

Old-timers viewed AOL users as harder to acclimate than the usual student wave, partly because AOL's walled-garden interface offered no offline reading or editing, which pushed users toward shallow, hasty posts4.

How It Spread

Wendy Grossman documented the AOL-driven shift in her 1996 book Net.Wars, laying out how software limitations and interface choices deepened the friction between veterans and newcomers4. The phrase kept circulating on Usenet through the late 1990s and jumped to later communities as a catch-all warning that a board's culture was being overrun3.

Two dates gave commentators a chance to joke that September might finally be over: AOL cut Usenet access on February 9, 2005, after announcing the shutdown on January 25 of that year1. Comcast followed on September 16, 2008, ending the newsgroup service it had bundled with high-speed internet1.

The term later showed up on imageboards and forums like 4chan, Something Awful and FARK, where 4chan spawned the related pejorative "summerfag" for users who appeared during school summer breaks1. Software engineer Christoph Berg wrote a small program called Sdate that prints the current date as "September X, 1993," with X counting the days since September 1, 1993, and works with Mutt, xclock and GNU date5.

How to Use This Meme

People typically drop "Eternal September" into a thread to signal that a community is being flooded by newcomers who do not know the local rules. It is also a common convention for older Usenet users to invoke the phrase as a way of identifying themselves as pre-1993 regulars2. Dates written in the "September X, 1993" style are a running gag that leans on the same idea5.

Frequently Asked Questions

References (6)