Eternal September

Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning in September 1993, the month that Internet service provider America Online began offering Usenet access to its many users, overwhelming the existing culture for online forums. The influx in Usenet users was also indirectly caused by the aggressive direct mailing campaign by AOL Chief Marketing Officer Jan Brandt in order to beat out CompuServe and Prodigy, which most notably involved distributing millions of floppy disks and CD-ROMs with free trials of AOL.

Before then, Usenet was largely restricted to colleges and universities. Every September, a large number of incoming freshmen would acquire access to Usenet for the first time, taking time to become accustomed to Usenet's standards of conduct and "netiquette". After a month or so, these new users would either learn to comply with the networks' social norms or tire of using the service.

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