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12 Dec 2001; compiled by Dennis
G. Jerz
In the late 80s, Wil Wheaton had the dream job -- he
was a child actor on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The appearance of a
quirky Usenet newsgroup named "alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die"
pretty much describes what hard-core Trek fans thought of his
character.
Wheaton's self-deprecating website, his knowledge of hacker culture, and his sense of humor eventually won over the ubergeek slashdot crowd, which led to an article in the geeky-but-kinda-mainstream Wired, and eventually a feature in the more-hip-than-geeky Salon. As an emerging spokesman for Internet libertarianism, Wheaton is successfully re-inventing himself, now that his child-actor days are far behind him.
In light of Google's recent release of 20 years worth of archived Usenet postings, I spent a bit of time tracking down the first Usenet references to Wesley Crusher and to Wil Wheaton.
14 Nov, 1987: The first Usenet reference to Wesley Crusher is an apparently unironic quotation from a dramatic Wesley scene: "I'm with Starfleet. We don't lie."
20 Nov, 1987: What seems to be the next reference is just a short blurb introducing a block of code: "Please don't flame. Wesley Crusher is watching."
05 Jan, 1988: G. "Murdock" Holmes starts posting with a .sig that identifies him as "Another Member of the Society to Reduce Wesley into a Little Styrofoam Dodecahedron."
07 Mar, 1988: Eric Johnson begins posting with .sig file that includes the line, "Crusher... Crusher? We don't need no Wesley Crusher!" (This is a riff on "We don't need no stinking badges" -- a line that many people have only heard [mis]quoted and out of context.)
19 Mar, 1988: A poster mentions that a wunderkind named Bryce Nesbitt was hired by the prestigious computer company Commodore; the poster then asks what Star Trek: The Next Generation scenario it reminds him of. He mentions Wil Wheaton as the actor playing the relevant character. The replies to this post include one who says he liked a recent episode featuring "Wesley and the Academy."
17 Apr, 1988: Roger Crew posts with a .sig reading: "Beam Wesley into the sun."
08 Jan, 1989: A posting by John Russell includes this hilarious .sig: "I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers." -- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in the Next Generation is so nice
26 Jan, 1989: Somebody (Jon Pugh?), who met Wil Wheaton at a convention reports (down a ways on the page): "He's a Mac owner and he laments the lack of user's groups in LA. Life's tough in Hollywood, kid. He was very nice and I think he loved the attention of people were giving him stuff left and right. He's still a kid though and brought his folks and a friend of his who was a stand-in (you know, one of the people who walks down the corridors)."