A petitioner asks question to the Oracle via email, and in short order the answer arrives, also by email. As "payment", the petitioner must answer a question sent to him from the question queue.
A representative (and famous) exchange is:
The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:
> Why is a cow?
And in response, thus spake the oracle:
} Mu.
Many of the oracularities contain Zen references and witty wordplay.
A complex Oracle mythos has also evolved around the figure of an omniscient, anthropomorphic, geeky deity and a host of groveling priests and attendants. Other staples in conversation with the oracle include:
An assorted mythos of recurring characters -- or in-jokes -- has accumulated over the years. These include the worthless High Priest Zadoc, the Oracle's girlfriend Lisa, an assortment of deities, and the caveman[?] figure Og. Many Oracle fans have mixed feelings about the mythos, as passing off an in-joke reference or story often becomes uncreative.
The "Oracularities" are compiled into periodic digests by a team of volunteer "priests," who cull the responses and select what they consider the best. These are posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.oracle
.
The Oracle was started in the mid 1980s by Steve Kinzler[?], as an indirect descendant of an older game program written by Peter Langston in 1975-1976 at the Harvard Science Center[?].
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