Eternal September

Back in 1993, AOL brought a whole bunch of new people to the internet and in particular to the previously academically-dominated Usenet news groups where a whole bunch of what we now know as internet and hacker culture was being created.

About a year later, someone coined the term "Eternal September" or "the September that never ended" to describe the situation we were now in, since most people were used to a blip in September when new undergraduates getting their internet access for the first time would blunder into well-established spaces and needed to be educated about "netiquette" - with the coming of AOL users (and the rest...) there would always be someone who didn't know how to behave or didn't know how to get what they needed without upsetting others.

You may recognise this dynamic if you've been around on STEEM for a while, the people who come in going "why isn't this new thing working the way that some other thing that I'm used to using works?" and you have to sigh and either explain or ignore. Sometimes the best you can do is refrain from toasting them over a large fire.

We (the people who've been around a while) are just going to have to suck this up, the same way the sysadmins who wanted to be left alone to play MUDD and chat about shit had to back in the day. And sometimes people won't respect the knowledge and experience we've built up. Oh well, maybe you'll get an apology in five years time when they work out that you were only trying to help. Or maybe you won't.

What are you going to do? Most people here will just be helpful, until the person is downright rude. It's our responsibility to gently guide the n00bs to what we think is better behaviour, while still keeping our ears open - they might have a point, even if that's hard to hear when they're saying something you think you've heard a million times already.