Slowly, the sewer gates of France creak open.
March 19, 2007 6:50 AM   Subscribe

I am a robot. Interstellar Scrotum arrived on everything2 mysteriously in the year 2000. Fifteen months later he was gone forever. In between he produced writing, quirky, strange, and sad.
posted by nasreddin (22 comments total)
 
Someone posted anonymous gibberish on a website? On the internet? Via http??? Crazy.
posted by jonson at 8:53 AM on March 19, 2007 [1 favorite]


WTFMetaFilter??
posted by jimmythefish at 8:58 AM on March 19, 2007


Mmmm I think this kind of thing would make a good comment in a thread about something else... but as a post, it's not that much.
posted by Citizen Premier at 8:59 AM on March 19, 2007


People still read/use Everything2? How quaint.
posted by illiad at 9:16 AM on March 19, 2007 [1 favorite]


This post is useless without. I mean, *I* post on e2! Where's MY FPP?

Do people still read UF, illiad? *runs*
posted by WolfDaddy at 9:42 AM on March 19, 2007


Ahh, Everything2... the Wikipedia that time forgot.
posted by funkbrain at 9:59 AM on March 19, 2007 [1 favorite]


Did people *ever* read UF?
posted by DU at 9:59 AM on March 19, 2007


People still read/use Everything2?
Yup.

Do people still read UF
Yup.
posted by Luddite at 10:54 AM on March 19, 2007


A good example of what "user-generated content" can mean. That said, I'd still take this over the crap being posted on Digg any day.
posted by metasonix at 11:04 AM on March 19, 2007


Ah, E2, it's been a while. I started four years ago -- and I was a late user at the time. When it was strong, it had a great (and rare) sense of community, with all these injokes, user-user marriages, meetups. Like Metafilter perhaps, but with more personal anecdotes and stories. Lately I've noticed noders who have slowly drifted to Metafilter, probably after all that 'raising the bar' stuff.

Another good noder: Moloch13. He had a very good series of nodes about his underground life.
posted by suedehead at 11:53 AM on March 19, 2007 [1 favorite]


E2 is like Wikipedia plus self-indulgent crap.
posted by klangklangston at 12:07 PM on March 19, 2007 [1 favorite]


suedehead: I also started four years ago. I don't go on E2 much anymore because it's too much like being the last pagan at the oracle.

I am sorry that these stories are not as well-received as I hoped. I liked them a lot. Here are some more good nodes to read:

Autobiographical Statement: Indexed By Rivers

The best compliment an actor can receive

Five Scenes From a Lost Meteorology

Villages in Germany are five kilotons apart

The Three Men I Admired Most: Manhattan, 9/11/01
posted by nasreddin at 12:55 PM on March 19, 2007


These other people suck, it is awesome nasreddin. In fact I remember reading some of these years ago, especially the "I Like My Cat" one, and not thinking much of it at the time. It seems better now.

So, we don't know what happened to Interstellar Scrotum? Is he dead, or just vanished?
posted by JHarris at 1:35 PM on March 19, 2007


I have to say, I'm surprised the place is still around. I was a user on the original incarnation, the two-node 255-character-writeup one. For a while, I spent way too much time there.

And I have to say, I think all the "raising the bar", as well intentioned as it was, hurt the place. The in-jokes and self-referential stuff going on was very good for community building. I stopped noding because I felt that there was an expectation that everything added would be only of the highest-quality.

I still drop by from time to time and check private messages, and every time it seems fewer and fewer people are on. The 25 people I see on right now is probably the most I've seen in over a year.

I'm just glad to run across some of the people I used to chat with here, or on Last.fm, or elsewhere on the nets.
posted by evilangela at 2:16 PM on March 19, 2007


Yeah, E2's raising-the-bar thing drove a lot of people off. When it caused Pseudo Intellectual to quasi-leave I knew something was broken.
posted by JHarris at 3:15 PM on March 19, 2007


I always wanted to love E2, but the servers are so. Damned. Slow. I'd click on a link and go to another browser tab and then forget about it because it would take the new page five minutes to load. It seems their servers are a bit snappier these days, but the moment is past.
posted by lekvar at 4:45 PM on March 19, 2007


Did people *ever* read UF?

They must've. I have all this neat stuff from them.

But hey, I probably deserved that rejoinder, so touche. ;-)
posted by illiad at 5:37 PM on March 19, 2007


Everything2 failed, from what I can tell, because of their policies. You know, "Everything is NOT a BBS," "Node for the Ages," dislike of personal nodes, and so forth. When Wikipedia stomped its way into existence, suddenly Everything2, which had been desperately reinventing itself as a dictionary/how-to/dry-informational-zone, was out-competed. The users who had not been rewarded by the system (those who left poetry, bits of fiction, and personal anecdotes) had since migrated elsewhere, leaving only those who node for numbers and trusty ole Webster1913.

Little bits of text and art like this is why I read Everything2; nobody needed another dictionary.com. Too bad, guys, too bad.
posted by adipocere at 5:50 PM on March 19, 2007


I don't go on E2 much anymore because it's too much like being the last pagan at the oracle.

nasreddin: exactly, perfectly put.

E2 is like Wikipedia plus self-indulgent crap.

Precisely why it was awesome.

E2 was such an important place for me at such a personally important time that I'm very sad to see it die slowly, with more and more fled users. When I felt really bad, beat, I'd go to E2 and browse around, knowing that sooner or later I'd stumble across a node that someone had written that would encapsulate the essence of what I was feeling, and feel better for a while. That was the charm of E2, a collective record of personal experiences, and like adipocere and evilangela pointed out, when they started trying to get rid of that, well, E2 started dying.

Here are some amazing ones, (in my opinion) the best of the best.

You love these machines. These machines are dead: a love story.
Revelation of the Lamb in Four Parts
How did I get here, Sarah?
America if I only had the money. Here are your new commercials:
posted by suedehead at 7:09 PM on March 19, 2007


I've never considered e2 as any sort of rival to wikipedia at all. Sure I did stop going on it after I started using wikipedia on a daily basis, but that's like saying that wikipedia is superior to The Rotten Library. They're around for different people and purposes entirely.

Anyone want a few more?

Someone's sprayed graffiti on that hideously ugly piece of public art!
The annoying orange orb outside my window each morning
Impersonating someone famous

And my all-time favorite:
No user serviceable parts inside
posted by griphus at 12:23 AM on March 20, 2007


I personally enjoyed it. Thanks.
posted by ageispolis at 12:59 AM on March 20, 2007


lekvar

The servers are fast now, though for all I know that may be because so many people have left.

I have mixed feelings about E2. Overall I like its format better than Wikipedia -- instead of everybody and their grandma editing a piece to death, numerous people can write about the same subject, and they don't have to do it in a encyclopedic tone. On the other hand, it can be rather insular and elitist.

In any case, I just posted a couple writeups there a few hours ago for the first time in about a year.

adipocere

Maybe I just arrived late (I joined E2 in March of '03), but I never got the impression that fiction and such was discouraged. Bad fiction (and bad poetry, which at one point overwhelmed the place) was discouraged. Anecdotal writeups that weren't daylogs were discouraged (though I have to admit some of those are my favorites). But like I said, maybe they had that attitude before I came.

As long as I'm here, I think I'll post some of my favorite pieces from my homenode's bookmarks:

Cyclopean
Freeze, Motherstickers! This is a fuck-up!
Gravity: Not just a good idea; it's the law
The terrorists have already won "ANY BREAKFAST BAGEL SANDWICH" at McDonald's!

And finally:

Making Rage Against The Machine Guitar noises with your mouth is the best form of political protest
posted by Target Practice at 2:02 AM on March 20, 2007


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