Eternal September is a slang term that refers to the time period of the Internet since September 1993, when Usenet saw its heaviest influx of newbies into
Eternal September
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 providers began offering Usenet access to many new users.[1][2] Before 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 calendar.
It's September, Forever
The 'Eternal September' was a 1993 backlash against unwanted internet users. It never ended.
Two Takes on the Eternal September
September, and with it the start of classes at most educational institutions in the United States, is almost upon us. In honor of this, I’d like to look back this week on the September that started twenty-eight years ago in 1993 and is still continuing: Usenet’s Eternal September. Twenty-eight years in, I still don’t think we understand exactly what the implications of this change were, nor have we decided what direction Internet communities should turn in response. I don’t have all the answers either, but I’d like to suggest two useful ways of thinking about it.
The Attention Forum: October 23/24th 2025
The internet was initially sold to us as a force for connection – a borderless, democratizing set of technologies that would amplify voices, allow us to spread ideas, and strengthen civil society.
Be A Property Owner And Not A Renter On The Internet
The year is 2025. The internet in the shape that we've known it in the early 2000s is no longer there. Or, not quite in the shape that we've seen it before. This is not just plain nostalgia talking - the vibrant ecosystem of blogs, feeds, personal sites, and forums has been usurped by a few mega-concentrated players.
Half the year's gone and still no sign of the Great Meme Reset of 2026.
Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization
The social media ecosystem appears to be in flux. Twitter’s rebranding to X has come to symbolize a broader reorganization of online publics – political reshuffling, user attrition, and uncertainty over the role of legacy platforms. Simultaneously, the shift from text-based, networked feeds toward algorithmically curated, short-form video has accelerated, with TikTok setting the pace for the wider ecosystem [18, 14, 16]. At the same time, everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps. Commentators describe a digital public sphere in transition: smaller, more fragmented, less dominated by traditional social networking sites, and rise of more broadcast-oriented forms of media – with some even suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the social media era.
Mastodon's Eternal September
Figure 1: A ‘joke’ t-shirt made in 1994 commemorating Eternal September, taken from The Eternal September Wikipedia page The latest round of Twitter nonsense (changing the way “blocking” works) has caused another wave of people to abandon that site for pastures new. Nearly every one of them went to Bluesky instead of Mastodon. 1.2 Million people joined Bluesky in 48 hours. I wonder why that is? I bet there’s something about where people draw the line on Twitter’s behaviour and where they choose to go next. But I bet there’s something else to it too.
My journey to the heart of the forgotten internet
Slowly but surely, huge swaths of the internet are vanishing. But the artefacts of the early web are still out there, and they have lessons for the future.
Not now, not now...
36M subscribers in the memes community. Memes! A way of describing cultural information being shared. An element of a culture or system of behavior…
Every tech product right now.
2.9K votes, 59 comments. 36M subscribers in the memes community. Memes! A way of describing cultural information being shared. An element of a…
