
The Internet Oracle - kimi
https://internetoracle.org/
======
Sharlin
One of the fun, easily missed little things in the original _Deus Ex_ is
correspondence with ”The Oracle” found on a couple of computers if you hack
into them.

[https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Oracle](https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Oracle)

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buddylw
Holy. Talk about nostalgia -- I used to read these all the time when I was a
kid in the 90s. I had no idea the internet Oracle was still around!

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sasebot1
can you explain in simple words.. what exactly is the internet Oracle?

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kimi
You send an email to the oracle asking a question (usually funny, but
sometimes very personal). The oracle will return somebody else's request (in
an anonymized form), and you reply to it. The result is publicly readable, and
a whole culture developed around it. Try it!

See
[https://internetoracle.org/about.cgi](https://internetoracle.org/about.cgi)

~~~
dwd
It's interesting how over time standard riffs and memes developed for message
responses, "the you owe Oracle x" which I'm always reminded of when I see "the
ol' switcharoo" on Reddit.

I always thought Zadoc the Priest stories tended to be lazy but maybe it was a
victim of it's own popularity and it got hard for everyone to keep up.

It was one of my favourite sites back in the 90's and I used to take the time
to vote on digests each week. Tempted to look back at some early ones to see
if they stand the test of time...

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dredmorbius
This was indeed a part of the early, pre-Web, 'Net.

I'd stumbled across TUO whilst at uni. Two particular oracularities have stuck
with me through the years.

One, I've shamelessly borrowed numerous times:

Q: What is the point of anything?

A: The sharp bit at the end.

([https://internetoracle.org/digest.cgi?N=690](https://internetoracle.org/digest.cgi?N=690))

The supplicant owed the Oracle a picture of a porpoise.

The other was one of the occasions on which the oracle instance broke
character.

The supplicant was in what was then still sometimes called Yugoslavia, asking
why what was happening there was happening -- a rather bloody and horrific
civil war slash genocide.

The oracle's response, paraphrased: I'm just a humble graduate student and
really cannot answer your question, but yes this is indeed horrible. Told
rather better than I'm recounting it here. The impression of two minds sharing
empathy across an anonymous interface stuck with me. It's small example of
some of the best that the 'Net can do. (And yes, occurred at the same time
that genocidal propaganda was _also_ being disseminated across Usenet.)

Likely some point in the 1992 - 1994 timeframe, most likely 1993, and
contained within one of the digests.

(I'll see if I can track it down more precisely.)

But the whole schtick generally: grovel, Oracle, payment, Oracle's backstory
(girlfriend, etc.). I guess they're a marker for a fairly small subculture.

Here's to having been there.

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dwd
Internet Oracle and alt.religion.kibology were fantastic in the day, but just
wouldn't work these days if they became even moderately popular.

Kibo for President!

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dredmorbius
Jason Scott is something of a modern-day Kibo, in my experience.

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textfiles
I try. But I'll never be the true Kibo.

(We went to college together, though. Worked on the same humor magazine and
everything.)

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dwd
There's a little bit of Kibo in everyone.

You were probably an influence and working on the same magazine I would
presume a sounding board for his own humour.

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baroffoos
I was just looking at the archives trying to understand what one of the jokes
meant and then thought how insane it would sound if you told the person that
the post they are about to submit in 1989 would be read by someone on the
internet in 2019.

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mountainplus
Very similar to another answerboard site
[https://www.straightdope.com/](https://www.straightdope.com/) \-- still
receiving weekly mails since forever!

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egypturnash
With the major difference that the Oracle pretty much guarantees you will
receive a joke answer to your question, while Straight Dope aims for
accuracy...

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vzaliva
I think I am still subscribed to it (since 90s) and ocassionaly receive an
update.

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slowenough
Quite bizarre:
[https://internetoracle.org/bestof.cgi?N=676-700](https://internetoracle.org/bestof.cgi?N=676-700)

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Nition
Funny, I've never noticed the homophone between "UNIX" and "eunuchs" before.

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CobrastanJorji
It's intentional. UNIX was like Multics, but without some bits. It was
originally spelled Unics and was probably named that by Brian Kernighan. This
is why UNIX is not an acronym for anything.

