BIFF, later sometimes B1FF, was a pseudonym on, and the prototypical newbie of, Usenet. BIFF was created as and taken up as a satire of a partly amusing, partly annoying, mostly unwelcome intrusion into a then fairly rarefied community. BIFF had a VIC-20 at first and a Commodore 64 later (as these were both computers looked down upon as low-end by the majority of the veteran Usenet community). BIFF posts were limited to line lengths of either 22characters (like the VIC-20) or 40characters (like the Commodore 64) to look like they'd come from those machines.
Origin
BIFF was created by Joe Talmadge, who abandoned the character after just two postings. From then on, Richard Sexton took over and was credited by Talmadge as popularising BIFF.
Richard Sexton: I make no claim to inventing BIFF. Blame Joe Talmadge. Joe wasn't too busy one year at HP and invented a whole cast of characters such as SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR MAN, Bobby Joe (Dedicated Wobegon listener), Joe Supportive (soc.singles reader for 1.5 years) and of course the big bad BIFFSTER.
Joe Talmadge: Oh. Hey. Don't blame me. It's Webber's fault. Anyway, I may have invented BIFF, but Richard made him famous. Richard is the Roy Crock of BIFF; meanwhile, I fade quietly into obscurity.
Versions have since been posted for the amusement of the Internet at large.
Richard Sexton: I posted a few BIFF articles from my account at gryphon, but now there are about 20 people, well connected, posting BIFF forgeries. You probably don't want to hear that the people doing them had to find something to occupy themselves after they dissolved the backbone cabal.
Cultural significance and later decline
BIFF served as a satire of an exceptional behaviour in a fairly homogeneous environment.
The explosive growth of the web led to the rapid decline of BIFF, as Biffisms became no longer exceptional and the Internet rapidly became a much larger and much more heterogeneous environment, leading both to newcomers not being aware of BIFF's existence and to BIFF becoming less contrasting as an exception in the increasingly "noisy" Internet.
An example Biffism
This was posted on the Usenet Oracle mailing list digest 775-06:
The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:
> Oh great oracle, > > what do you do with a supplicant who leaves his .sig at > the end of his questions? > -- > -- And in response, thus spake the Oracle: