O'Reilly Network: I Remember USENET [Dec. 21, 2001] Anybody--at least anybody on a computer at a major company or university--could participate in a newsgroup, and they did. Many of the online trends and words, from emoticons to flaming, originated in USENET and the mailing lists. Similar experiences were happening on online services like CompuServe, and on a growing crowd of stand-alone BBS's around the world, but nothing was like USENET with its energetic and highly educated crowd.