It never died, it reach a low point of participation about a decade ago, and has slowly been gaining steam again ever since. Some portions of Usenet have always stayed active even through the tough times. As social media dies due to various reasons, people are coming back. Have been for years.
GP of the reply chain was referring to how at a point in the past Usenet was allegedly more difficult to access. That's why some of my responses were in the past tense - I was disagreeing about how, back then, it was more difficult to access. Hence the use of the past tense. All in perfectly proper English.
bla bla bla, Usenet died because the "high IQ" (according to you) snobs on it were (are?) annoying as fuck posting these twisted explanations instead of accepting they were wrong about something