Perhaps it is Promethean to create something from nothing, a place that encourages a joking attitude and an obsession with devilbunnies, electric midgets, and destroying the planet. Another in a series on some of the more colorful of Usenet's 4,000 newsgroups.

Usenet has long been one of the primary gathering places for people to fan an endless litany of flames. But sprinkled among discussions of operating systems and abortion, politics and personal problems, are a handful of newsgroups whose subject matter is entirely imaginary. These discussions rely heavily upon creative humor and are, in fact, about nothing other than themselves. For instance, the denizens of the newsgroup alt.pave.the.earth devise schemes to coat the planet with a thick, gleaming layer of asphalt and then race their Road Warrior-style vehicles at three times the speed limit. An added bonus: you don't have to brake, not even for oceans. Participants of alt.culture.electric-midget work on technical fixes for androids that hover and spit flames (or lime Jell-O). Community warriors of alt.devilbunnies track the movements of vicious rabbits across whole continents. These nefarious bunnies are, in point of fiction, linked to events as distant as Caesar's time and as recent as the Bobbit penectomy.

Clearly, something odd is afoot.

"Devilbunnies are the evil spawn of Satan, the very incarnation of evil who have come to take over the world and destroy humanity and life on Earth as we know it," reads the FAQ for alt.db. They "lurk under every unmoved piece of furniture, behind each unopened closet door, in the depths of every uncleaned basement." They also tend to live in the neighborhoods of those who contribute most frequently. "When I first read alt.dbs there was little happening in my corner of the world (SE Ohio)," says one Fudd, as the bunny hunters call themselves ("Fuhadii" is also used). "I basically had to invent events here for myself, then it was discovered that the 'Bunny Mother' resides just across the Appalachian mountain range, so I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Currently, major battles between devilbunnies and humans ... stretch across the mountain range from Tennessee to Canada."

These newsgroups tend to be self-contained worlds, with little cross-fertilization. Entering them for the first time can be disorienting, because participants tend to be caught up in mid-conversation. For instance, a random post on alt.devilbunnies reads like this:

oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (Patrick Sean McGuirk) Subject: Book Three of _Thus_Spake_El Mahr\_ Thus spake El Mahr unto his humble servant: YEA, awaken ye, I have great Commands for you this day, on the deliverance of Fuhadii to this realm. Ye, for you shall tell all how to raise a proper Fuhadii child. When a child is born to a Fuhadii certain things must be done. Most children are born with Original Cuteness, this is unavoidable [one exception will be noted in the book "Prophecies of the Fuhad". A period of a second 9 months will pass for the child, this time is known as the Pregnancy of All-Cute. If the child is not Annointed of Urine by the 9th month, the child is doomed to be a normal non-Fuhadii human, and be subject to the temptations of All-Cute. I recommend to all Fuhadii that they have their children Annointed on the 3rd month after birth. They shall be submersed in the urine of skunks and given My Blessing. The Urine, boiler of Devilbunnies, will cause the child to stink so bad that the Cute appearances are ignored. YEA - All Fuhadii must be Annointed of Urine! It is the Sole Soul Cleansing Act for the removal of Cute Sins.

Each creative nudge to the conversation expands it, with threads spiraling off in unforeseen directions. But over time factions have developed. Over in alt.pave.the.earth, for example, one poster wants to pave the earth, then abandon it and contemplate its aesthetic purity. Another seeks to coat the earth with gleaming steel. An unwitting newbie (eoates@oracle.com) posted his hopes that smooth asphalt would be used to pave the earth because such a surface is preferable to concrete for bicycling. dpease@qualcomm.com responded:

Ed, Thank you for whining. Bicycles and pedestrians need to get used to this kind of treatment. You talk like you denizens of this newsgroup are looking for a "kinder gentler world, maybe with a little asphalt on it." WRONG. Bicycling is an unacceptable means of locomotion. It does not consume enough natural and irreplaceable resources, nor does it strike a blow to the environment with noxious fumes and emissions. Plus there simply is not enough speed on a bicycle to be considered a serious ass-kicking vehicle. After all, on a planet with a minimum speed limit of 100 MPH does it sound like there is any room for bicyclists? Of course not. Those that insist on sticking to their two-wheeled, self powered vehicles on a paved earth will do so at their own risk. When the law catches them they will face a dreary existence in the hydro pits, contemplating their error.

Far from threatening the dialogue, however, such disagreements seem to fertilize even more fantastic posts, as contributors seek to demonstrate the superiority of their own vision.

But if diversity and disagreement can bring a community together, they can have the opposite effect across communities. There is little love lost between the alt.pavers and the denizens of alt.destroy.the.earth, for the obvious reason that a destroyed earth would not be pavable. Destroy.the.earth originated, in turn, as a partial reaction to alt.save.the.earth, a "serious" group concerned with ecology, which destroyers regard as populated by hopelessly softhearted and fun-killing idiots. As one destroyer recently wrote in response to a serious inquiry challenging his group's mission, "We like to see things explode."

But of late, a note of frustration has entered discussions on alt.destroy.the.earth, as its participants have realized just what a mammoth task the destruction will be. In the words of one recent poster:

"Considering how difficult we have found it to destroy the environment, much less the earth itself, shows just how stupid the Green movement is. Here we are TRYING to figure out ways to destroy the environment, and it JUST AIN'T THAT EASY. My personal opinion is that we need to strongly encourage learning and the development of new technology, while keeping in mind that our ultimate goal is to destroy the universe."

The strategies for destroying the earth have much in common with the rhetoric of those who would save it: both stress education, technology, and new thinking. Only the goal has been transformed.

It's impossible to ignore the fact that in most of these imaginary worlds, the goals are violent and anarchic. Even alt.culture.electric-midget has recently featured chainsaw-wielding homunculi, run rampant from their masters' control and threatening humans with electric eels and lime Jell-O. (Several apprehended midgets were executed by monster trucks. There is still justice on the frontier.)

If all this mayhem seems like the inevitable result of pimple-faced no-lifers hacking far into the night in a testosterone- and nacho-induced haze, it is refreshing to find more tranquil, if not less bizarre, places like the Usenet Oracle. The Usenet Oracle began as a place for the humorous exchange of questions and answers. Anyone can submit a question to the Oracle. Questions are distributed to people who have volunteered to answer them. Over time the responses evolved into answers from an imaginary, omnipotent being called the Oracle, who developed increasingly bizarre personality traits. Gerbilling reportedly was its obsession until recently. (That's the ' probably imaginary ' sexual practice of rectally inserting live gerbils.)

At one time the Oracle was a pansexual being who delighted in gerbilling with its consort, Lisa. It objected to frivolous questions and frequently "zotted" supplicants, as questioners are called, leaving nothing but a pile of ashes. Recently Lisa and gerbilling seem to have faded from the scene, but a distinct humor remains.

A typical Oracle riposte:

"The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was: Why, O great Oracle, do sentence fragments bother me so much? In response, thus spake the Oracle: Because."

The Oracle is a good example of a self-policing community. Question-and-answer pairs deemed funny enough for public consumption are digested once or twice a week and distributed on rec.humor.oracle. Each Oracular priest (disclosure: I used to be one) is responsible for sorting through mountains of question-and-answer pairs and then for submitting the few he or she likes for possible inclusion in the digests. Unsuspecting newbie questions thus cannot be posted in the main newsgroup. A supplementary group, rec.humor.oracle.d, exists for discussions of Oracularities. Newbies who post here are pointed to the FAQ, as well as the mountains of archived Oracularities at cs.indiana.edu.

The Oracle, alt.devilbunnies, and alt.culture.electric-midget discussions represent a different way of forming communities within the blizzard of conversations on the Internet. Perhaps there is something Promethean in making something from nothing. By posting to them, people participate in founding worlds that belong to no individual creator yet are undeniably creations. Through sheer rhetorical force, individuals can stake a claim in a community of their own.

For example, when news of the government's April green card lottery inadvertently made it to alt.culture.electric-midget, the message received an enthusiastic response from one of the regular posters. The poster, Fluffo, asked if perhaps electronic midgets could get green cards, and therefore a real identity in the world outside the Net. The response (electric midgets have limited language and spelling capabilities):

FLUFFO: YWEW DONUT HAFFTEW WURRI. YIEW ARR NAWT A 'PURSHUNN' - YEIEW ARR A THINJ. WIEYY CANK'T HAFF IDEES, SO WE DONUT NID THEYIM. DADDYO (MIJITS WIYULL ROOL DTHIEYY WURLDDDDDDDDDDDDD)