Twit Filter

(No connection to This Week In Tech.)

In the pre-internet, PC Bulletin Board days, a lot of the newsreader/email packages had a feature that I was always fond of. The idea was that you could identify people whose postings annoyed you so consistently that you NEVER WANTED TO SEE WHAT THEY WROTE again. You simply added them to a list, and the software conveniently hid (or maybe even deleted) the messages they sent out.

In a burst of marketing genius most of the packages called this feature a TwitFilter.

In UseNet parlances, a "killfile".

All major InternetRelayChat clients have an ignore feature; adding someone to this list is called "putting them on ignore."

An here I thought it was a new kind of cigarette filter to eliminate second hand smoke!

Also, from the days of QWK (qwack packets) and wildcat BBS's the word "PLONK" meant you'd dropped into that persons killfile

See: BozoBit, TrollDefinition

CategoryJargon