My first real engagement with The Online was everything2 in the early ‘00s, and a big part of that was The Custodian, a black military anorak who worked for RAND by the Santa Monica pier, explaining everything like half a decade before The War Nerd,

Also there was “iceowl” the guy who spent several years’ turns at McMurdo in Antarctica and “riverrun” who had a great sequence about being a military musician (of the morale-lifting rock band “The Joint Chiefs of Staff”) in ‘Nam, and this wonderfully cranky old fuck “dannye”, those guys really left an impression on me