We used to stay on one or two threads most of the night debating things and tearing them apart sentence by sentence. The research skills of Freepers was incredible.
We could spot a troll a mile off anyone remember:
I remember those Ash Alerts well. Here’s another funny story, something was going on in Russia, I can’t remember what, things were really hot between the US and Russia and we all checked drudge like every 12 seconds back in those days.
I posted a humor thread stating Russia had launched nukes and that we had 17 minutes left and if we hurried we could still refresh Drudges page another few hundred times before impact. Well, some folks didn’t get the humor part and kind of freaked out, I felt bad that I worried some folks seriously (but they didn’t read the story obviously)