No one expected water. Where did it come from? It was not in the specs, it was not part of the interface. RFC 1030 merely hinted at the existence of moisture.
The first drops created posts, faint impressions containing only the letter s arranged in geometric patterns. Some newsgroups were favored more than others, and children flocked to them to watch the puddles. Adults moved to higher grounds, until the rain became heavy, and then they scampered down to protect their children with killfiles thrown over their heads.
More and more rain. Or was it hail? Newsgroups were created: s ss s.sss ss.ss.s . The wise stayed huddled in dry groups like sci.math.research or comp.protocols.iso. The foolish, well, the foolish were the first to be swept up in the floods. Of course there were floods; there was no place for the rain to go. And there was so much rain. Articles canceled, newsgroups deleted, entire .com and .edu sites washed away.
In the end, network traffic was down to a tenth and only about 700 newsgroups remained. The rain stopped abruptly almost six weeks after it started. Or perhaps it did not stop, but merely moved on: CompuServe and Prodigy reported problems involving the random occurence of the letter t a short time after.
Those that remained after the flood witnessed an amazing rebirth. Old posts came back stronger than before. The rec. and bionet. hierarchies sprung up spontaneously, and grew. And everywhere there was rebuilding, rediscovery, and the growing wonder of how they ever lived in that desert before the rain.