View source for Eternal September

{{Short description|Internet jargon}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2024}}

'''Eternal September''' or the '''September that never ended''' was a cultural phenomenon during a period beginning around late 1993 and early 1994, when [[Internet service provider]]s began offering [[Usenet]] access to many new users.<ref name="jargon" /><ref name="Grossman1" /> Prior to this, the only sudden changes in the volume of new users of Usenet occurred each September, when cohorts of university students would gain access to it for the first time, in sync with the [[Academic term|academic calendar]].

The flood of new and generally inexperienced Internet users directed to Usenet by commercial ISPs in 1993 and subsequent years swamped the existing culture of those [[internet forum|forum]]s and their ability to self-moderate and enforce existing norms. [[AOL]] began their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users.<ref name="Grossman3"/> Hence, from the early Usenet community point of view, the influx of new users that began in September 1993 appeared to be endless.

==History==
[[File:Internet is Full - Go Away t-shirt.jpg|thumb|A 1994 t-shirt commemorating Eternal September]]
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Usenet and the Internet were generally the domain of dedicated computer professionals and hobbyists; new users joined slowly, in small numbers, and learned to observe the social conventions of online interaction without having much of an impact on the experienced users.

The only exception to this was September of every year, when large numbers of first-year university students gained access to the Internet and Usenet through their university campuses. These large groups of new users who had not yet learned [[Etiquette_in_technology#Netiquette|online etiquette]] created a nuisance for the experienced users, who came to dread September every year.

However, each year the tide of new users would eventually abate, as everyone learned to get along and assimilate into existing communities, or found the place not to their liking and quit using it. Once ISPs like [[AOL]] made affordable Internet access widely available for home users, however (in particular, offering Usenet access as a sign-on service, like [[AOL Mail]]), a continuous influx of new users began, making it feel like it was always "September" to the more experienced users.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/its-september-forever/|title=It's September, Forever|first=Jason|last=Koebler|date=September 30, 2015}}</ref>

The full phrase appears to have evolved over a series of months on two separate alt.folklore newsgroups where a number of threads exist lamenting what they saw as an increase in low-quality posts across various newsgroups. Several members of the newsgroups referenced aspects of the "September" issue, typically in a joking manner. 

In a thread on January 8, 1994, [[Joel Furr]] cross-posted asking "Is it just me, or has [[Delphi (online service)|Delphi]] unleashed a staggering amount of weirdos on the net?", which garnered a reply from Karl Reinsch "Of course it's perpetually September for Delphi users, isn't it?"<ref name="Reinsch" /> The day before, Furr had also posted the same message to alt.folklore.urban, where David Fischer responded with a joke call-to-action where he referred to the increasing numbers of Delphi users as the "Never-Ending-September".<ref name="Fischer1" /> Fischer also replied to a different thread on January 25, 1994, in alt.folklore.computers saying, "It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net history as the September that never ended."<ref name="Fischer2" /><ref name="Isaacson" /> This quote has been suggested to have been the first reference.<ref name="Forever" />

Possibly the first use of the "Eternal September" phrase was a newsgroup post by John William Chambless in February 1994. He posted a rant including some excerpts of low-quality articles he found in one of his newsgroups that day, but titled the post "The Eternal September".<ref name="Chambless" />

==Legacy==
{{Today/EternalSeptember}}
A [[tongue-in-cheek]] program called ''sdate'' outputs the current date, formatted using the Eternal September calendar (September ''X'', 1993, where ''X'' is an unbounded counter for days since that [[Epoch (computing)|epoch]]).<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.df7cb.de/projects/sdate/ |title=Never Ending September Date – df7cb.de |website=df7cb.de |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090202084507/http://www.df7cb.de/projects/sdate/ |archive-date=February 2, 2009}}</ref> This is not the identically named ''sdate'', one of the sixty [[command (computing)|commands]] that comes with the First Edition of [[Unix]], that is used to set the [[system clock]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/sdate |title=sdate(1) – Unix First Edition Manual Page |website=cat-v.org |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140530181340/http://man.cat-v.org/unix-1st/1/sdate |archive-date=May 30, 2014}}</ref>  Named with similar humour is one of the free public Usenet servers, Eternal-September.org.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.eternal-september.org/|title=www.eternal-september.org|website=www.eternal-september.org}}</ref>

==See also==
* {{Portal inline|1990s}}
* [[Enshittification]]
* [[July effect]]
* [[Sturgeon's law]]
* [[Tragedy of the commons]]

==References==
{{Reflist|refs=
<ref name="jargon">{{Cite web |url=http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-ended.html |title=September that never ended |last=Eric Raymond |author-link=Eric S. Raymond |website=The Jargon File (version 4.4.7) |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080914000645/http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-ended.html |archive-date=September 14, 2008}}</ref>
<ref name="Grossman1">{{Cite book |last=Grossman |first=Wendy M. |title=Net.wars |title-link=Net.wars |date=1997 |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |isbn=978-0-8147-3103-1 |pages=4–17,31-41 |chapter=The Year September Never Ended |oclc=37451759 |chapter-url=http://www.nyupress.org/netwars/pages/chapter01/ch01_.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060626080344/http://www.nyupress.org/netwars/pages/chapter01/ch01_.html |archive-date=June 26, 2006}}</ref>
<ref name="Grossman3">{{Cite book |last=Grossman |first=Wendy M. |title=Net.wars |date=1997 |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=978-0-8147-3103-1 |pages=31–41 |chapter=The Making of an Underclass: AOL |oclc=37451759 |chapter-url=http://www.nyupress.org/netwars/pages/chapter03/ch03_.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110505003755/http://www.nyupress.org/netwars/pages/chapter03/ch03_.html |archive-date=May 5, 2011}}</ref>
<ref name="Isaacson">{{Cite book |last= Isaacson | first= Walter |authorlink = Walter Isaacson|title=The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution |title-link=The Innovators (book) |date=2014 |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |isbn=978-1476708690 |page=401}}</ref>
<ref name="Forever">{{Cite news |last=Koebler |first=Jason |url=https://www.vice.com/en/article/its-september-forever/ |title=It's September, Forever |date=September 30, 2015 |work=[[Vice (magazine)|Vice]] |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171213210804/https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nze8nb/its-september-forever |archive-date=December 13, 2017}}</ref>
<ref name="Reinsch">{{Cite newsgroup|url=https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/47W6Q3S-ZD8/m/RV0csrWhf6cJ|access-date=January 9, 2022|newsgroup=alt.folklore.computers|date=January 8, 1994|title=Run! It's the Delphioids!}}</ref>
<ref name="Fischer1">{{Cite newsgroup|url=https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.urban/c/47W6Q3S-ZD8/m/FsEty6v1umUJ|access-date=January 9, 2022|newsgroup=alt.folklore.urban|date=January 12, 1994|title=Run! It's the Delphioids!}}</ref>
<ref name="Fischer2">{{Cite newsgroup|url=https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/wF4CpYbWuuA/m/jS6ZOyJd10sJ|access-date=January 9, 2022|newsgroup=alt.folklore.computers|date=January 25, 1994|title=longest USENET thread ever}}</ref>
<ref name="Chambless">{{Cite newsgroup|url=https://groups.google.com/g/alt.folklore.computers/c/HUbG4uvU4T4/m/b9QR6DWeXAAJ|access-date=January 10, 2022|newsgroup=alt.folklore.computers|date=February 8, 1994|title=The Eternal September}}</ref>
}}

==External links==
* {{meatball|TheSeptemberThatNeverEnded}}
* [http://www.df7cb.de/projects/sdate/ sdate], a [[Unix]] program that outputs the date of Never Ending September

{{Usenetnav}}
{{Internet slang}}

[[Category:1990s neologisms]]
[[Category:1990s in Internet culture]]
[[Category:1993 in Internet culture]]
[[Category:AOL]]
[[Category:History of the Internet]]
[[Category:Internet slang]]
[[Category:September]]
[[Category:September 1993]]
[[Category:Usenet]]
[[Category:Internet memes introduced in 1993]]