Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Beatrice, Nebraska
Posts: 18519

I found the column I wrote for the Asylum main page and out of boredom I'm going to reprint it.

quote:

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*The people all take their seats. A subdued murmur filters through the curtain as the people take their seats and participate in small talk. After a few moments, the lights come on, and the curtain begins to slowly rise, revealing a semi brown-haired, blue eyed, 6'1" 275 lb male, dressed in a Valentino's uniform. The crowd quiets down, and the man on stage looks at them all, takes in a deep breath, and begins:*

I was bored this evening, and decided to see if my old web site was still around, despite the contract with Tripod stating that all pages inactive for a month are deleted.

I found it.

I designed it when I was 15, and first started using the Internet. I remember sitting in the computer lab of the public library, using their computers since I didn't have one of my own, and dreaming about how cool a site it was going to be. I never updated it again, but the thing has gotten enough hits to roll the counter over once. The page offers a little bit of information about Final Fantasy Tactics, and that's about it. I got an e-mail from some guy in New Zealand telling me how cool the site was last year. Every now and then I still get an occasional e-mail about the site, although the mail has stopped now.

Those were the days, back when I would sit at a computer, and play MST3K's Caption This! because it was funny to make fun of still frames from film on the Sci-Fi Channel. I also met my first e-friends playing CT. After a few of them thought I was cool enough, they let me in to their "private" sector of the Sci-Fi Channel's web site. We called it "private" because we were about the only people who knew about it. It was called The Buzz Bin, but they recently removed Sci-Fi Buzz from their servers, as they had threatened to do many times before.

Back in the day, I wasn't known as "SocialParasite," or "Orestes," or "ComaWhite." I was a cross between "Bomber Man," and "anal probe," which I came up with while registering my Tripod site. The first evolution was "Proberdude," but "Proberdude" only lasted about twenty minutes. When I registered for my first e-mail account at Excite!, which I still have today, "Proberdude" became "Proberman." "Proberman" stuck with me for many, many years. In fact, "Proberman" died when I first came to The Stile Project Forum. But I digress.

We also had a little BBSs we frequented on the Sci-Fi Channel's site, which can be found here. There may be a few more, but I've forgotten where they are. Unfortunately, I came in at a very xenophobic time. Shortly before I joined, there had been a major knockdown, kick-'em-in-the-teeth flame war with some asshole from Seattle who went under the handle "Wyrdrune." The group accepted me, but only after I proved I wasn't going to flame them at the drop of a hat.

We had many heated discussions at times, mostly on the subject of homosexuality (I've nearly fine-tuned many of my arguments on the subject because of my time there) over at Sci-Fi Buzz, and I did a little story writing on the BBSs.

Wyrdrune eventually returned, more psychotic than ever, and we eventually moved. We resided at a message board one of the members was kind enough to build on her AOL account. We later moved again to a more private board because Wyrdrune found us. I know it seems like we were running and hiding, but it became impossible to carry out a conversation without him taking over the board. We also couldn't ban IP addresses, so we decided to move on to a board where we had enough control over that we could safely resume conversing.

We now reside at Slugfest on an Ez Board forum. As a minor note, if any of you attack our current home, I'll have your IP banned, no questions asked. We don't take kindly to attacks. Anyway, our community now lives a lazy existence, and we have sort of drifted apart. Busy schedules with school, and work, and raising kids, and home repairs, and other things that make up the American Dream.

After a while at the current home, a friend of mine pointed me out to the Stile Project (pre-forum days). I was totally shocked by what I saw: people eating shit. It wasn't just the abundance of porno that I was given access to which kept my attention; it was also some of the weirdest, most outrageous movies I had ever seen. I quickly took a liking to the pages shocking and fresh content, and when the forum opened, I eventually joined in it, too.

I believe my first handle there was "Sandrock," which is one of the Gundam mobile suits from the anime series, "Mobile Suit: Gundam Wing." When I first showed up, I wasn't exactly the mega-cool poster I've turned out to be today (yeah, right). It wasn't until many, many forum resets and handle changes that "SocialParasite" came about. After a while, everyone accepted me, or at least put up with my existence. Then I was introduced to the next level of chat: IRC.

Up until this point, I used ICQ and various Java chat applets for chatting with people. I first used IRC to publicly apologize to Stile for wishing death on him. Yes, it was rather silly, but I did it anyway. Of course, I didn't do it in a chat room, so he never heard. I later figured out how to join #stileproject, and apologized in private. He said everything was cool, and all was well within me.

I later joined in the antics of #wotsp back during our Darktree days. I remember how much fun it was to chat with all these people that had amused me for so long in real time. It was a shame that garycoleman had to fuck things up for us, but life moved on. I still remember the little bastard flooding me so hard and so fast that it caused my modem to malfunction until I rebooted. Now that I look back on it, it's kinda funny.

Gary wasn't a jerk in private. What you saw in public was just a show, but when you got him to talk to you one-on-one, he was funny and fun to talk to. Not everyone shares my sentiments, but that's their own perogative.

I also remember when Stile went from super-cool forum administrator to mega-stupid jag-off administrator. I remember the ban-fest he had one night, and how Anti-Stile kept getting in through anonymizers to post a few more posts, and then get banned. Rinse and repeat.

All of that and a few more ban-fests now lead us to where we are now. I remember when we were hated for breaking away from Stile's grasp, and how we all swore we'd never go back. Of course, a lot of us did go back, and we aren't hated over there any longer.

It amazes me how a group of "rebels" have banded together to form their own community, and how we haven't died yet, or abandoned this place to return to the MotherLand.

Now, I'm 18 years-old, I haven't touched my crappy web page since a couple of years ago when I added contact information, and I feel as though I am one of the more liked members of the forum. I'm not saying I'm the most loved, or the über-poster; I'm just saying that as a general rule I'm not hated. Come now, do you really think my ego is that big? Shame on you!

And so, in closing, Asylum, I salute you. I salute you, and thank you for all you have offered me, and I hope that in some small way, I've given back even a small fraction of what I've been given.

*Final curtain drops, the lights go out, and the people go home*

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The pinnacle of Failbot technology.

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Registered: Apr 2003
Location: . o O
Posts: 6374

Nerd.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9454

That's cool. It's neat to hear about people's entry into the Internet. For most of us, it was simultaneous with the Internet becoming the Internet. Thanks for posting.

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Registered: Apr 2003
Location: . o O
Posts: 6374

Geek.

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Registered: May 2004
Location: New York
Posts: 809

Tool. (but I'll throw you a [p] Nanoceph for it)

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: The Bottom of the Toyem Pole
Posts: 9454

I see that no one else is sharing. I remember how excited I was when I wrote and posted my first html file. I was trying to start a blog before I even knew what they were but the hassle of coding it and the little powerbook 190 that i was working on kept it from blooming.

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Registered: Apr 2002
Location: On a collision course with reality.
Posts: 334

My first web page was in late 1995. My web site was one of the first 200 pages on the internet. Frames were new and cool. It had my name, and my resume, and Cool Links. Back then all you needed was a cool colored bitmapped background and you were cool.

Things have changed. For one, I'm no longer cool .

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10433

I just tried to look up the first pages I made on archive.org, but they have one listing for the first and it is broken. The second site I made will load pages but no images.

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