Textfiles
Textfiles (also known as Flatfiles) are a kind of computer file downloaded from a Bulletin Board System via modem. The end of a textfile is often denoted by placing one or more special characters, known as an end-of-file marker, after the last line in a textfile. Textfiles are the first place you should look if you want to build a bomb, commit credit card fraud, learn to write Visual Basic or burn down your middle school. Of course, if you want to do any of these things successfully, you might be advised to look elsewhere.
NIRVANAnet and Wildcat! BBS were well-known among the InterNet community for their quality textfiles. Hacker slang for textfiles were "T-FILEZ" and "T-PHILZ".
The Anarchist's Cookbook
The Anarchist's Cookbook was originally a book made by an anonymous hippie as a protest against North America's war in Vietnam. The book's answer to the then-republic's imperialism was basically a bunch of "recipes for social change" that was directions on: How to blow up your hands, get high off of household materials, hack phones, and other such fun activities for teenage youth to do in the 1970's. The book spawned a pre-internet meme known as "Bananadine". Bananadine was a copy of a hoax from the Berkeley Barb in March 1967 involving a way to get high off of smoking banana peels. Despite this blatant misinformation, thousands of desperate teens have tried and claimed to get high off this for decades. But the biggest thing is, The Anarchist's Cookbook started one of the largest and first underground internet-phenomenas which continued for quite some time, with many of these systems and textfiles surviving to this day.
Some time in the early 1990's a teenager copied The Anarchist's Cookbook to a textfile. Making textfiles from old media such as Paladin-Press publications and taking sole credit for them was a standard thing done by kids in the 90's. It became very popular due to it's angst-ridden agenda, drugs, and pyro material; making it perfect for teenage losers. It was wide-spread throughout BBSes and was re-made several times along the way, some of which allegedly by the popular phreaking group Temple Of The Screaming Electron (totse). Like a broken telephone this badly re-written manual degraded each time with the addition of more angst, patent nonsence and additions to the already obsolete plans each consecutive one changing all the credits to the last author who changed it. In fact, several filename extensions, albeit un-official, were created on it including .ana (Anarchy Textfile), .hac and .phrk, as well as others. The original author of the the Anarchist's Cookbook, a nordic believed to be called Maut Evdokjit, has attempted to remove all versions of it from constant circulation.
There are probably at least 100 versions of the textfile on the internet now since its first appearance 20 years ago, but most are have basically the same outdated, inaccurate, dangerous and stupid instructions.
Other topics
Popular topics of textfiles include ASCII art, computers, drugs and huffing, Freemasonry, Computer Games, hacking, phreaking, politics, piracy, sex and the paranormal. Many work/office Intahnet files are also counted as text-files. One of the oldest textfiles is the first decade (1923–1935) of Short Talk Bulletin, the monthly periodical of the Masonic Service Association. The first usage of the .txt file extension, however, was with the IBM 5153 which was used to designate user-written documents. Depending on who you ask, TWITTER and Usenet content may or may not count as a textfile. Most of the hacking and anarchy files were written by 15 - 19 year olds, and later on it can be used to blackmail them for embarrasing things they wrote years ago.