It always blows my mind that the Google’s often-overlooked Groups search engine includes usenet postings going back to 1981, a time that people typically think of as pre-Internet. There weren’t nearly as many people posting as there would be by the early-mid 90s, but it’s an amazing archive. Sometimes I use the date-specific features just to find out what the first post ever to mention something was. (For example, the first time someone used “WTF” online was May 18th 1985.)

This movies group is a pretty neat example. The newest messages are from 1986 and they as far back as late 1981. Basically, when a lot of my favorite movies were coming out.

It’s weirdly anachronistic-feeling to see the nerdiest of computer nerds posting, not all that differently from how we do now, but about movies from 30 years ago; people worrying about spoilers for Return of the Jedi; people in disbelief that a fifth Friday the 13th is coming out; lists of at-the-time-upcoming movies, some of which never got made, or had different titles at the time; and this:

I wish Lucas & Co. would get the thing going a little faster. I can’t really imagine waiting until 1997 to see all nine parts of the Star Wars series.

There’s also rec.arts.movies which spanned from 1988 to 2004. And many many various other newsgroups, a handful of which are somehow still active today. Just add “before:YYYY/MM/DD” to a search query!