| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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girlfriend after many years and realizing you never actually understood her at all. I haven't posted here since 2000, and I was never really central to the narrative, but it's still fantastically and somewhat perversely nostalgic. |
-- ~1992-1995, I think. people said a lot of stupid things. anger, twitchy rage, hatespeech, putrid flames. the owners of the BBS were rabid drug addicts. one of them reportedly went from weighing a scrawny 115 pounds to something like 225 muscleman bulk in less than a year, then deflated back to a normal 150. everyone on the BBS was fucking everyone (myself included). early adapte/ors. twitchy, non-techy types who somehow managed to configure Trumpet Winsock and screech their way on to the freakin' Internet before it was capItalIzed. no one had secrets in this environment because no one knew what "Internet" meant: NETWORK OF NETWORKS. none expected their erotic fantasies or detailed accounts of blowjobs performed on fellow BBS members screenname:x/y/z to go beyond the 12 people who subscribed to the "Poetry" forum of the BBS. fast forwared 20 minutes and the Internet became mainstream. a lot of folks on that BBS lived (and continue to live) in genuine and well- earned fear that archives of what went on there will one day wash up on text files sites or Usenet or on the New York Times best seller list. some of the forums did land on text file sites but what shows up today is harmless. when the meltdown finally came the owners made what was to me a surprisingly poised executive decision -- surprising considering what freakin' cokehead nihilistic steroid inhalers they made themselves out to be. the boards were destroyed. annihilated as best could be done in ~1997, when the BBS closed. the owners ritualistically deleted every word, then physically destroyed the hard drives which housed them. i had no respect at the time for how those guys operated their BBS but i respected their move to simply destroy what trace of it they could. before insignificant cultural transgressions by insignificant people went "viral" these guys saw what reputations and professional lives would be destroyed if the content of that BBS reached beyond its intended audience. as well, this "poised" decision came from no lack of self-interest. lawsuits, public shamings, and reddit lynch mobs (even before they existed) lurked like ambitious zombies starved for insignificant brains. (if i had an editor this screed would contain fewer uses of "insignificant" but i should pile it on to reflect my disdain for the gratuitousness ease and unintended effectiveness of contemporary public shaming.) the owners of that BBS put their disdain for the paying customers aside, explicitly choosing not to loft said customers' stupidities into orbit. i have always admired that. discussion threads from those days occasionally barf up in appropriately confined contexts of those who (still among us) contributed to them. a lot of people have died or disappeared, and one day our reputations will no longer matter, and no one will care. until then, the secrets are safe. it is like a thickness of thieves. i hope the same stays true for whatever the hell went on here. like you, Tom, I was never central to the narrative. |
close to 11pm central time, i can't see any of the text. so i'm doing this from memory. when i started posting here--maybe around 1999--i just assumed that everything i wrote would disappear forever the next week, month, or sometime soon. i've never been particularly hateful or sexually perverse, as far as i can judge. stupid, of course; and i suppose it's possible that some sentence of mine somewhere on these boards could be tweeted, facebooked, or somehow transmitted across the world and ruin my life. not that there's much of a life worth ruining. which gives me a sense of security. i remember ...'s story about those bbs-ers of the ancient past who had manually deleted all their data and took sledgehammers (in my imagination) to hard drives. last night i had some strange dreams: a combination of illness, alcohol, and a radio lab episode on sleeping (and dreams). tonight i might dream a twilight zone sort of dream...this 21st century world in stark black and white...where the people of the earth start destroying drives, data and all memory of computers. not to be a luddite. i just have a healthy fantasy life. either that or i'll dream of bronze birdmen. there are about eight bronze statues by a mexican artist named jorge marin currently dotted around the city: in parks and squares and other outdoor public spots. one of them looks like he wants to carry me off. they just came here from dallas; antigone has probably seen them. |