Probably the closest modern equivalent to Usenet is Reddit--each newsgroup is roughly kind of like a subreddit, and, like Reddit, threading is quite the norm in newsgroups. The main difference is that Usenet wasn't centrally organized, messages tended to be rather longer than Reddit posts, and it's possible to cross-post on Usenet (post to multiple newsgroups with one message) in a way that it isn't on Reddit.

(The pre-web antecedent of Discord would be IRC, latterly stuff like AOL chat rooms.)

And if you think it's weird to read conversations nearly as old as you, I'm a millennial and I've read Usenet conversations older than I.

▲ dotancohen 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

  > And if you think it's weird to read conversations nearly as old as you, I'm a millennial and I've read Usenet conversations older than I.

I first read the Apollo transcripts when I was maybe 8 or 10 years old - this was deep into the 1980s but the Apollo missions were still before my time. Reading such material at 8 or 10 didn't feel unusual.

Now, rereading as I near 50, they are surreal. The conversations, and the moon itself, have not changed one bit. But myself and the world around me are unrecognisable to the 10 year old me still reading over my shoulder.

▲ tptacek 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Messages on Usenet did not, at least in the mid-1990s when I spent too much of every day on it, tend to be longer than Reddit posts. Reddit has better posts than Usenet.

	▲	kasey_junk 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		They were if you count all the binaries.