"Because it reduces social restraints and the impact of norms, group interaction via computer might also increase the influence of those who initially have minority or deviant views. This could lead either to greater innovation by groups or to silliness."
[McGuire, T., Kiesler, S., & Siegal, J. (1987). Group and computer-mediated discussion effects in risk decision making, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 917-930]

AGM is an acronym for the newsgroup ALT.GOOD.MORNING. Originally it was a newsgroup used mainly for people to wish each other "Good morning", but it has evolved into a newsgroup with no specific topic. Posters are people from all over the world, including but not limited to: U.S.A, Britain, Canada, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Hawaii, Israel, Italy, and New Zealand. Posters to AGM, call themselves AGMers.

Any topic can be discussed. Birthdays are celebrated, new jobs, illnesses, moves, families and friends are mentioned. Different people have various styles of posting, but generally posts tend to be of a personal nature, discussing issues that are relevant to AGMers lives. Some people posts poems or thoughts, others questions and dilemmas. Some post funny posts, one liners, or anything else they feel like sharing. AGMers get to know each other very well, and consider each other to be close friends.

There are some posts of a style unique to AGM, among them Bricks and Shapes. Bricks are posts where all the lines are of the same exact length, i.e. justified to the right and to the left. This is not formed by adding spaces, but by choosing words with the correct number of letters in order to form a square shape called a brick. (This can be viewed properly only when using a fixed-width font) Another art form of AGMers is the shape. A shape, similar to a brick, is a graphical form created by letters and words. As opposed to bricks which are square-like, shapes are just that - any sort of shape. The shape created is usually related to the words it is made of, i.e. a shape discussing Dutch clogs, will be shaped like a clog. Some posts use both bricks and shapes.

Many people find AGM to be unique in the world of Usenet because it is quite friendly. Newbies are greeted warmly, and encouraged to post. The general atmosphere is warm and fun.

Because of the nature of newsgroups, it is impossible to know how many people read AGM. Phil Plasma once asked people to add their name to a post during one month, and got aprox. 100 followups. My server doesn't receive all posts to the newsgroup, and I receive aprox. 300 posts weekly. AGM is small enough for many people to know each other, but new people join every day.

Dr. Holly Patterson, wrote her doctoral thesis on AGM. She sent out questionaires, which were answered via E-mail, and collected data about AGM. In a five week period, she counted 4047 posts to AGM. Of these 3537 were AGM style posts, written by 203 different AGMers, the rest were crossposts and spam. 112 people responded to her survey. 54% were from the USA, 15% from the UK, 13% Canadian, the others were from the rest of the world. 7% of the repliers were under the age of 18, 42% were between the ages of 19-30, 43% were between 31-50, and 9% were over 51. 43% were male, and 57% were female. Of those surveyed, 60% read AGM daily, 13% read it weekly, 16% read it occasionally, and 10% read it at some other rate.

A secondary hangout of AGMers are talkers, especially Castle of Lost Dreams (COLD) and Prisoner (named after the T.V show). Many AGMers spend a lot of time on talkers.

Talkers are like MUDs, i.e. stable environments that exist even when nobody is there, peoples identities remain even after they leave. Unlike MUDs, talkers are not ongoing games, and you do not create tools or rooms. Talkers have set rooms with messageboards. Users can move from room to room, and make a room private so that nobody else can enter it without being invited. In each room you can talk to the people or write to the messageboard and read from it. You can also have private conversations between users of the talker. There are additional commands unique to each talker such as ".beer tom" which on COLD would cause the message to appear: "user pours tom a beer". The pace of a talker depends on the users, but is usually quite quick, similar to IRC.

Besides the newsgroup and the talkers, an AGM homepage is maintained by Richard. The AGM Review, a newsletter summarizing the events of AGM, is created by Duz as often as she can, and posted as a webpage. An electronic gallery of scanned AGM pictures is kept in SDL's backyard. Recently, AGMers headed by Roderick, created a domain named AGM.NET. The aim being to bring together all AGM related sites, and make them more easily accessible. The results of this joint effort, can not yet be assessed, though the project is being greeted with a lot of excitement.

AGMers communicate via E-mail but also via snail mail. They trade postcards and letters. Some AGMers have been known to make two hour long overseas phonecalls just to wish one another a happy Xmas.

AGMers enjoy real life meetings, called IRL's. An IRL can be attended by three AGMers or by 60. Many IRL's take place thruout the year, all over the world. Recent IRL meetings were held in Holland and in Washington. Mini IRL's are frequently held in Canada, London, and anywhere else where you can find more than one AGMer. The largest IRL takes place in the summer. The first one took place in 1995, in Arizona, and was labeled: AZAGM. It was attended by around 40 people. The following year, the meeting was held on the border of Wales, attended by around 70 AGMers, and labeled UKAGM. The 1997 meeting, CAAGM, is planned for August, and will be held near Montreal.