The Internet Oracle Has Pondered Your Question Deeply - Revisiting an Old Friend
Long ago (but not all that long) The Internet Oracle (aka Usenet Oracle, fam. "Orrie") was a popular source of humor and entertainment. For a sample,
The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:
> My lawyer was trying to defend me for when I beat up my pal Edward
> "Skinny" Porkmann. And I heard him say it, right there in court, he
> said, Hipso fatso." I think he meant ME, and what kind of a lawyer is
> he if he insults me right in front of the judge? He claims he said ipso
> facto but that's no excuse because it was still a insult. Yes, I am
> fat, but does he have to say it out loud?And in response, thus spake the Oracle:
} Ahhh, supplicant, you don't know how lucky you are to have such a
} lawyer. Let him do his job, for goodness sake.
}
} A little-known 17th century federal law called the Weighty Clams Act
} (named after Alfred Weighty, the little-known 17th century senator from
} Kentucky) makes it a crime to speculate on another person's vital
} statistics, including but not limited to, height, weight, and blood
} pressure. This was to combat the influx of carnival hucksters who were
} stealing business from the physicians by out-guessing them at these
} important measures. The newly-formed AMA lobbied for these protections,
} arguing that only trained professionals in the latest medical and hair
} cutting technologies should be allowed to guess at a patient's
} conditions.
}
} Your lawyer was telegraphing a subtle but effective message to Edward's
} lawyer: ease up or prepare for a malpractice suit.
}
} You owe the Oracle a plate of steamed vegetables.
Archives at https://internetoracle.org/digests.cgi
What are your memories of a more light-hearted internet? 'xkcd' is still with us but other cartoons have gone from the internet and elsewhere (e.g. dilbert disappeared a year or two back, the syndication of Calvin and Hobbes finished in 1995). My own favourite was bash.org (but that didn't always go as I expected - as one my first stories on SN shows: "Janrinok - FOR TRAINING ONLY - do not release!"). Ooops!
Today we have progressed(?) to sites that display thousands of memes. Some of them are genuinely funny and required a degree of skill to create whereas others are little more than copies of somebody else's idea. Personally, I detest the majority of the TikTok videos that I encounter which often are nothing more than a platform for an 'influencer' to appear to be more important than they actually are. However, within the last few days there have been a couple of comments on this site that have had me laughing.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.