Nostalgic Linkspam
Jul. 16th, 2010 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarpInternet stuff that was very important to me in high school.
* X-Entertainment's Neverending Nathan Bitner thread.
In the 80's, Mattel held a contest asking kids to send in drawings of a superhero, which would be made into an action figure and sold nationally. The winner was a kid named Nathan Bitner, who designed a guy named Photog with a camera for a head.
The figure, however, was for some reason never put into production - a heinous crime, in XE-guy's opinion. In the comments thread, people start looking into the matter, and discover that the same Nathan Bitner may once have worked for Bungie as one of the designers on HALO... where he left to form his own software company... about which someone has made a long, acrimonious post on the Bungie message board...
The investigation continues, growing more and more complex - and more and more invasive - for 2,404 comments. This is major trainwreck stuff. It was this thread that made me paranoid about putting personal information online.
* True Porn Clerk Stories, by Ali Davis
Ali Davis is a comedian who worked for a couple of years as a clerk in a video store with a large porn section in its basement. This was originally a popular blog/message board thread which she used as a kind of journal, but she's now turned it into a book. It's extremely thoughtful and funny - Davis studied sociology, and clearly had some knowledge of psychology, too. Her observations about her patrons are simultaneously withering and deeply compassionate.
This was something that had a big influence on me when I first read TPCS in high school. I'd been making kind of cruel little parody webpages since middle school. One of the meaner ones, which I put up when I was twelve, somehow got over a million hits, about a thousand comments, and god knows how many deranged emails. More people saw that one page than everything I've ever posted here combined. I knew that what I was doing wasn't worth much, and I think it made me very cynical about people. TPCS's humaneness was something I needed to see at the time. It made an unbelievably big impression on me.
It's kind of funny, but True Porn Clerk Stories probably had a bigger influence on my non-fiction writing style than anything else I've ever read.
(Fiction writing style is, of course, all Anne Bishop.)
* X-Entertainment's Neverending Nathan Bitner thread.
In the 80's, Mattel held a contest asking kids to send in drawings of a superhero, which would be made into an action figure and sold nationally. The winner was a kid named Nathan Bitner, who designed a guy named Photog with a camera for a head.
The figure, however, was for some reason never put into production - a heinous crime, in XE-guy's opinion. In the comments thread, people start looking into the matter, and discover that the same Nathan Bitner may once have worked for Bungie as one of the designers on HALO... where he left to form his own software company... about which someone has made a long, acrimonious post on the Bungie message board...
The investigation continues, growing more and more complex - and more and more invasive - for 2,404 comments. This is major trainwreck stuff. It was this thread that made me paranoid about putting personal information online.
There’s only one way to solve this mystery for sure. We all pool our money and hire a private investigator.
When the private investigator, preferably someone named Lomax, shows up dead with bizarre symbols carved into his body, we will know we are on the right trail.
By that point we will each need to set up a love interest for ourselves, the rest will fall into place.
- Steve
* True Porn Clerk Stories, by Ali Davis
Ali Davis is a comedian who worked for a couple of years as a clerk in a video store with a large porn section in its basement. This was originally a popular blog/message board thread which she used as a kind of journal, but she's now turned it into a book. It's extremely thoughtful and funny - Davis studied sociology, and clearly had some knowledge of psychology, too. Her observations about her patrons are simultaneously withering and deeply compassionate.
This was something that had a big influence on me when I first read TPCS in high school. I'd been making kind of cruel little parody webpages since middle school. One of the meaner ones, which I put up when I was twelve, somehow got over a million hits, about a thousand comments, and god knows how many deranged emails. More people saw that one page than everything I've ever posted here combined. I knew that what I was doing wasn't worth much, and I think it made me very cynical about people. TPCS's humaneness was something I needed to see at the time. It made an unbelievably big impression on me.
It's kind of funny, but True Porn Clerk Stories probably had a bigger influence on my non-fiction writing style than anything else I've ever read.
(Fiction writing style is, of course, all Anne Bishop.)
no subject
Date: 2010-07-17 12:51 am (UTC)Must. Get.