#Tastes like prion disease

[hotratking5592]

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

Vriska: Preparing my award winning 8eef roast *grins nefariously 8ecause I didnt tell you that the award was for most poisonous food with largest kill streak past and future*

[soddensavage]

Eternal September

I was turned onto this broad concept by the wonderful "Prion Disease Milkshake" post:

Courtesy of 4-ch BBS, not to be confused with 4chan

The general idea is that a social space loses its existing etiquette and culture once the rate of new users eclipses the capacity of old members to maintain it. Deeper dive below:

The source of this wonderful joke comes from a message board that lives in a state of "Eternal September", a term that about 30 years ago was used to describe a culturally destructive influx of new users of the "Usenet" message boards at a time when AOL and other ISPs began providing access as part of their internet packages. Prior to the World Wide Web, Usenet provided a message board and newsgroup system to much of the available internet. You'd dial into a server and start chatting.

Historically, the flow of new Usenet members was relatively slow, with the largest bursts occurring in September, when new university students would find themselves with internet access for the first time. Otherwise, the boards were populated by computer hobbyists and working professionals.

In general, these new users didn't know what kind of content or behaviour was expected in their newfound message board. Existing members react negatively to content that falls out of line with their expectations of behaviour typical to the space, and provided that the influx of new members does not outweigh the current population of the platform, generally the new users will eventually conform to the etiquette in standards of the old. However, in 1993 when AOL began offering home internet at affordable rates, the flow of new users never stopped, and drastically overwrote the existing online etiquette. This then became known as the "Eternal September"

This concept of a rapid influx of users that are otherwise unfamiliar with the existing culture and etiquette of a social space is something that's occurred quite a few times over the span of the internet's evolution. Usenet was certainly the first to put a name to it, but the phenomena is not limited to Usenet alone.

I'm a Reddit refugee, so I'm inclined to use it as an example. I also feel it provides a good analogue. Reddit has seen several cultural shifts over its time as a forum for discussion online. The first of these would have been Digg's users migrating, generating more memes and pop culture posts, disrupting the mostly nerdy/programmer culture that was present at the time. Following that, a common phenomena known as "Summer Reddit" that bears resemblance to the September university student influxes of Usenet. In this case, teens would often find and spend more time on Reddit over the summer when school was out, driving down the perceived quality of the posted content and discussion.

This growing user-base of teens would provide a tipping point into the "Eternal September" as Reddit reached a critical mass of users and very much became the "Front page of the Internet". But in doing so, it would overwrite (cringey as it was), an otherwise pre-existing culture since the mass influx of new users eventually overwhelmed the individualism of Reddit's communities and pushed the website in a different direction.

Even Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr have experienced similar shifts. Facebook inversely moved from University students and teenagers to catering to middle aged Gen X and Boomers. Twitter's microblogging concept was originally designed to appeal to minimalist users, keeping within a 120 character SMS message limit. Tumblr is somewhat unique in its more left-leaning radicalism, but it seems that its largest shift is driven by a gradual change in generational use as the age demographic remains largely the same.

There are of course other factors that determine shifts in appeal of a website to one demographic or another, but the social aspects of this are particularly interesting.

[jimmerzz0905]

have a badly dubbed comic of Chamomile fucking dying

[void-the-bear]

I JUST FIGURED OUT WHY THE GRIMICE SHAKE KILLS PEOPLE

IT'S PRION DISEASE

[jughead-is-canonically-aroace]

the 7202nd day of september 1993 is may 21st, 2013. so pretty close

[faenaussa]

Made a new keyboard shortcut

[artbyfuji]

summer rose selene underworld cosplay 🦇

[verysharpfish]

*misfolds your prions* have a wonderful day!

I will have a wonderful day! I sure hope I don't start being symptomatic for a degenerative brain disease abnormally young in 10-20 years that leads to my cognitive decline and death and when my body is autopsied they discover misfolded prion proteins in my brain thereby diagnosing me with sporadic creutzfeldt jakob disease!

[hkayakh]

Ok. I’ll ask you about prions.

Which one is the one that killed the cat thing 30 years ago

ask me about prions

[rosiemissfandomchaos]

i dont know what nightmare i have caused but do not mix fruit punch and berry blue gatorades together

[marcsnuffy]

oh well in that case apricot

[professionallydeadinside]

gets shy and kicks the dirt. umm. maybe neon vibes too.... for lemon....

Hmmmm I sure hope someone hasn't spiked my Fiji water :D

[mias-back-from-the-dead]

mmmm soup

HAP BROTH DAY

THANK YOU MIA I HAVE ESCAPED THE SOUP FOR TWENTY SLUTTY, SLUTTY YEARS /j

sending u secret soup from the secret soup society

[jimmerzz0905]

[loveletterworm]

i know its already been said but that post going "haha i bet mcdonalds is really scared about the meme where people drink the purple milkshake from mcdonalds and then die" is so silly like Omg do you think mcdonalds may think that people buying a menu item from them en masse and then using that item in a meme format doing essentially free promotion and encouraging others to buy that item so they can get in on the meme is a BAD thing for them? Do you think maybe they might think that? Do you think