# Eternal September 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 receded[1]. The phrase now describes any online community swamped by newcomers who overwhelm the existing culture[2]. ## 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 condition[1]. Before that, September meant a predictable wave of college freshmen getting newsgroup access for the first time and needing a few weeks to learn netiquette[2]. 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 ended[1]. The phrase is now shorthand for any forum where a sudden crowd of newcomers drowns out the existing regulars[3]. ## 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 newcomers[4]. 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 overrun[3]. 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 year[1]. Comcast followed on September 16, 2008, ending the newsgroup service it had bundled with high-speed internet[1]. 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 breaks[1]. 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 date[5]. ## How to Use 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 regulars[2]. Dates written in the "September X, 1993" style are a running gag that leans on the same idea[5]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### 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]. ## References 1. [https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/wF4CpYbWuuA]() 2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/eternal-september]() 4. [https://nyupress.org/9780814731031/net-wars/]() 5. [https://www.df7cb.de/projects/sdate/]() 6. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Eternal%20September]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/eternal-september Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library