It's not so much that people forget about Usenet as that they forget why it died.
It got spammed to death.
It lost control over its culture, and that culture was crucial to its functioning.
It was too problematic for ISPs (or others) to provide ready access to it: spam, harassment, child pornography, and copyright violations all posed massive concerns.
There was no viable business model for providing the service.
@Brook Ultimately, more the social-media elements than the technical-media elements, but the medium is the message, so they feed off each other tremendously.
My memories of Usenet start in the mid-late 1980s, when it was a small, mostly academically-selective community of a few thousand people, also coloured by my own youth, immaturity, and ignorance. But it left a warm sense of a place I've wanted to got back to. Of course you never can.
I've thought a lot about what made it good and bad.
Doc Edward Morbius ❌
Brook