Pseudo
<jargon> /soo'doh/ (
Usenet) Pseudonym.
1. An electronic-mail or
Usenet persona adopted by a human for amusement value or as a means of avoiding negative repercussions of one's net.behaviour; a "nom de
Usenet", often associated with forged postings designed to conceal message origins.
Perhaps the best-known and funniest hoax of this type is
BIFF.
2. Notionally, a
flamage-generating
AI program simulating a
Usenet user.
Many flamers have been accused of actually being such entities, despite the fact that no AI program of the required sophistication yet exists.
However, in 1989 there was a famous series of forged postings that used a phrase-frequency-based travesty generator to simulate the styles of several well-known flamers; it was based on large samples of their back postings (compare
Dissociated Press). A significant number of people were fooled by the forgeries, and the debate over their authenticity was settled only when the perpetrator came forward to publicly admit the hoax.
[
Jargon File]
