Clicked “Categories” and one was Lounge. Worked ok.
I guess I just don’t know the secret handshake yet. Just checked myself again no luck. I post almost every day.
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I would guess there’s a requirement for a minimum number of days since joining that you haven’t met yet, but I don’t know the actual formula.
I believe there is a combination of time spent on the forum, days spent, and the variety of posts responded to /read. If you only read/reply one or two threads I don’t think it will get you to lounge access.
Once upon a time, there was a land called USENET. This was before the dawn of Social Media. Users sent eMail to Mailing Lists, and other Users could subscribe to this or that list to receive rebroadcast content on this or that topic. USENET did not offer anonymity. Anyone could see exactly the injection point of any content, so there arose a Cancel Culture.
Those who wished for only Politically Correct thought to prevail hounded those who wished for Free Expression from lists hitherto devoted to more or less controversial topics.
And Big Ears were listenin’ for what oughtn’t to be said.
My favorite corner of USENET was a list called rec.motorcycles. It was traditional for Reeky participants to assume a persona before posting there — the more outrageous, the better. You could pretend to be part of a motorcycle gang even though you’d never dare to In Real Life (IRL). And this was the joke: Everybody knew it! Satire was fundamental to the discourse.
For a “brief” 
history of Reeky, see the (now defunct) web site:
Particularly note the section on “The Legend of the Spathorpe” brand of motorcycles (1992):
This will give you the gist of how discussions evolved there.
Sadly all good things meet their end — untimely or not, and Reeky is moribund at this writing.
And the Sabeans fell upon them and took them away. Yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword, and I only have escaped alone to tell thee! (Job. 1.14)
Mostly it was a lot less fun when people who didn’t understand satire — and weren’t with the program — started expressing repugnance for what was said and how it was said and started verbally attacking the ones who said it. Posters were reported for misuse of work-related computer equipment.
I write today to say that Reeky has been taken over by purveyors of cannabis. There are some 75 to 150 posts per day apparently repetitively touting CBD, marijuana, and various illicit drugs. I don’t imagine this was what the nabobs of political correctness intended when they tried to corral the creative juices flowing from Reeky, but that’s what you get, trying to exert authority where none exists.
Sounds a lot like the current day reddit?
Indeed! When I was following a particular subreddit avidly, I found it easier to download reddit posts through their API and dump them into a fake mailbox. Then I could use the filtering capabilities of my mail user agent (MUA) rather than having to make do with any of the various reddit readers. Thus, what goes around comes around. I found myself forcing reddit into the same mold as USENET.
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