Antipope.org exists because a drunk sysadmin misheard “autopope” as “antipope” during a UUCP feed setup in 1991 UK, and the name stuck through every subsequent era.
Key Takeaways
In 1991 pre-ISP UK, getting a usenet feed required either car-level money or bribing a sysadmin with alcohol over a UUCP modem connection.
The intended sitename was autopope.uucp, derived from the usenet alias “AutoPope – pontifications by email”; a mishearing produced antipope.uucp instead.
The setup ran on a 286 PC at 12MHz with a 2400 baud modem; Stross notes there was no spam at the time.
The name carried forward to antipope.demon.co.uk via Demon Internet around 1993, then to antipope.org registered in 1996 and colocated in 1997.
Stross explicitly describes it as “not a significant name” – purely a communications error.
