Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk,alt.religion.kibology Path: news.cinenet.net!tor-nx1.netcom.ca!streamer1.cleveland.iagnet.net!qual.net!iagnet.net!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!world!kibo From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) Subject: Re: The Net is Contaminated By CLUELESS NETJUNKIE WANNABES! Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) Message-ID: X-Hello-To: Archimedes Plutonium Date: Wed, 4 Mar 1998 09:41:28 GMT X-Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 6505 centons, 81 microns, .02 pharlap References: <19980303220401.RAA28606@ladder02.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: world.std.com Organization: welcome datacomp X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.3.6b2 Lines: 120 Xref: news.cinenet.net alt.cyberpunk:20509 alt.religion.kibology:56676 X-Cache: nntpcache 1.0.6 (see ftp://suburbia.net/pub/nntpcache) In alt.cyberpunk, pixiefuel@aol.com (PixieFuel) wrote: > > Would this be called my manifesto? Hell, I really don't know. I'm just a > teenage girl bordering my Sweet Sixteen and all I can think about is how > grateful I am to have experienced a chunk of the online world before it was > contaminated. Hey, do you have a boyfriend? There's this guy, Lee S. Bumgarner, who would be just *perfect* for you. > I first called a bulletin board system when I was 11 years old and was in awe. > I was laughed at as people played their Tele-Arena, their Pit, their Trade War > 2001, and their Barren Realms Elite games. I became accepted as a little gnat > first off, bothering people for information, but when they saw I'd cause no > harm, I was accepted. I was accepted as an online entity. I think they called > me Brownie (as in the Girl Scout troop). Anyhow, before I go off on any more > of a tangent, the world was good back then. Kids in school thought you were > powerful because you used words like BBS and modem. Today they're common > knowledge terms except they are used in a way that most online veterans > despise. Oh, come on, "modem" isn't bad if it has the word "cable" somewhere near it. And "BBS" wouldn't be bad if you said something like "I'd like to shoot Jerry Springer in the navel with a painful series of red-hot air-rifle BBs." > And as you walk down the street you hear "Do you use online? I have an e-mail > address and my own web page! It's way cyberpunk!" > > Oi vey. Real cyberpunks don't say "oy vey", they say "shazbot!" > That's one phrase that pisses me off "Do you use online" as if the whole system > is just called "online". And it really gets to me that nobody respects the > internet today. Back in 1994 I think, I was calling a local Maximus board and > was so excited about the new UNIX shell-based internet service that would be up > and running. The World Wide Web was like this amazing thing that I could soon > go on. Back then I think maybe a total of a few thousand people would go on > there during a day. Now it's that many a second. It's preposterous! The > consumption rate of bandwidth these days by ignorant people tampering with > their Prodigy and AOL tools reminds me of Brave New World. Sooner or later, > we'll be decanting screenames. If there are any left by then. I think that now you're only allowed to join AOL if you take a screen name like WEENER9999999999996573 because WEENER9999999999996572 and lower are taken. Eventually AOL's just going to have to put out a "Sorry! We're full! Use WebTV instead!" sign. (We may safely assume that WebTV will NEVER be full.) I think that a better system would be if instead of screen names people could just use photos of themselves. And just think, then the sex spams would be zero lines long. > Yet I find programs now that do that. > > If you can't get the vein of my argument here, then stick around, because I > hear the public likes a good feather-ruffling, and that's what I'm going to do. > Being a teenager who likes to learn, but not teach her know-how, I get > thoroughly irritated when people ask me questions about BBSes that I know but > can't answer in as simplistic Layman's terms as they would understand. "First, > I dial a number with my modem" .. "wait, wait, wait, how do you dial?" And then when you actually *do* answer correctly they think you're talking down to them and get mad. Just think, when you get out of school you could go into the tech support field and get paid to do that all day! "Now move the little picture of the arrow to the little picture of the disk and press the button twice really fast... no, faster..." And when someone *with* a clue calls you and asks you a good fun technical question you're not allowed to answer for legal reasons. Working tech support: a form of hell that didn't exist ten years ago. WE MUST ACT NOW TO BAN TECH SUPPORT FOREVER! > [...manifesto trimmed...] > > I miss the old days. The "new" days in short reek like nasty digested chicken > grease and vomit. I'm tired of all this "BE IN THE NOW, SURF THE NET, GET > CAUGHT IN THE WEB" hype! I hear there was this guy who got caught in the Web and the fire department had to come out and put hot water on his tongue to unfreeze it. I'm sorry, that didn't make much sense. I better go look up the correct recipe for hot water in AltaVista. > Every movie now has a web page, every tv show, every PERSON. It's really sad! I notice you didn't say that everyone has their own Usenet newsgroup. > [...] > And here I sit. I feel almost betraying to my computer for upgrading it to a > 14.4 and an SVGA monitor from it's 286/Monochrome/2400 baud glory I've had for > the past 4 years. I also feel bad about using AOL, but the only reason is > because there are no local internet services left that have my precious UNIX > shell *sniff* I believe it is time for you to start your area's only real ISP. Unless, of course, you're in The WELL's area, in which case you need to devote every cent you earn towards buying The WELL just so you can dissolve it to make Lee S. Bumgarner happy. > Anyway, I have to eat my dinner, so I leave with one request. If you get this > and it affects you somehow and brings at least a tiny tear to your eye about > the days of yore on local bulletin board systems, then please post this message > to anyone else out there who might possibly remember the good times. I remember before they had lowercase letters. And each bit was stored on a separate punched card. And that was the ON-LINE storage. > And reply. I like mail, I miss real humans Lee S. Bumgarner's definitely available. And he's cool 'cause he's only got half a Web page. -- K. I'm not a real human, I'm a REAL POSEUR!