90 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
90 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
s$
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$$ .d""b. .d""b. HOE E'ZINE #1039
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[-- $$""b. $$ $$ $$ $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
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$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ss$$ "Dead Alive"
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$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ by The Extremist
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$$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ 03/16/00
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[-- $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ $$ -- ------------------------------------------- --]
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$$ $$ "TssT" "TssT"
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I started calling bulletin board systems around 1992, I believe.
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Bulletin boards were an obscure thing, and although millions of
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people were on them, BBSers were a small, invisible minority of the
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population, no matter where they lived. I think that that fact alone
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tainted most of the writing that was done at that time. The audience for
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our writing was this underground society in which we had some high amount
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of respect. Even some newbie calling a Public Domain board was already
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somewhere beyond mere mortals, although not terribly so.
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The BBS scenes, both public and underground, thrived on the
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constant influx of new people coming in, trying to integrate themselves
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to these communities. In the underground scenes, people were looking up
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at the legacy that the high figures from the past had left behind them
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and trying to follow their steps into the elite, whether this was serious
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or not. The old timers would bash on the new people, and those hardcore
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enough would rise and take their place among the great. The particular
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thing about bulletin boards is that, due to long distance charges, there
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would only be a handful of people in any given area. A local community
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would form out of the available people. That community would be tightly
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knit together, since there weren't that many other freaks like us that
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would call bulletin boards. Tons of little villages were created. Some
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boards gained notoriety over larger areas, and the most elite people
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would call Long Distance to get on them. Some of these boards, their
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users and the groups they were in had so much status in their scenes that
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BBSers knew them all across the continent.
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At some point, the internet came. Following its arrival, there
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was a huge effervescence in all of the scenes that were transposed on
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there. It was like a giant virtual convention that would never end. The
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ANSI art scene, for example, greatly profited from this and severed its
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ties with the warez scene, on which it was dependent for the diffusion of
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art releases across the continent. All of the villages could gather
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together, all the time, exchanging local productions all over the place.
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Mega groups came out of the best elements of the smaller villages. In
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fact, the BBS scenes where the precursors of the wave of giant mergers
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that's going through the business world today. Technology brought us
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together, and bigger entities came out of it. We just were there
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earlier.
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Conventions are usually yearly events that last for a few days.
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After every has done their share of drinking and PPV porn watching in
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their hotel rooms on the company's bill, everybody goes back to their
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"village" and keeps working on whatever they are doing, be it writing
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software or reading comic books. For the BBS scenes, the internet was a
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convention.
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The big problem is that BBS users never went back home. We kept
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on getting the free porn in our hotel rooms and getting drunk on company
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pay. We didn't bother going back to the village, where we had to keep on
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evangilizing the incoming masses about the glorious past of the scene.
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After a short while, there were no newcomers to the village. People went
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straight for the convention and got all the free porn, without having
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toiled away on obscure local bulletin boards.
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The media thought that our virtual convention was cool, convinced
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half the planet that they had to be there, AND IT CAME. There is no way
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in which we could handle that influx of newcomers. To top it off, they
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had the gall of forming their own lame and boring scenes, on which they
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could revert back if we were too harsh on them. So in short, they came
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to our convention, and they took it over. To keep our integrity, we had
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to wall our scenes up in a corner of the convention floor. But since
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BBSes died, there were no more villages from which new members could come
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from.
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So eventually the convention theoretically became the village. But
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the thing is, there is no such thing as a Global Village. It's just a
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mess of smaller villages badly together. And instead of having a
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hierarchy of villages like we used to have, we have a general anarchy.
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It's not as glorious as it used to be. There is no more top to be at.
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The people yearning for the past are often looking up to the big groups
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of yesterday, complaining about how there is no such thing today. The
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truth is, the elite groups of the past were small communities like the
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rest, except that they were idolized.
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So what we must now concentrate on is not on having a large
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community which can be hierarchized give elite status to a few, but
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survive, live as a small community in a sea of other communities. There
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is no group towards which we stand in awe anymore. Is that bad? I don't
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think so. If we look at the zines scene, I think we have brilliantly
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passed the obstacle. We have a nice community of people bitching at each
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other, and I love it. I was always on the very outskirts of it, but now
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I have decided to come in and live in there. This is the new age of the
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zine community. Looking back at the past, today's scene seems just as
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big to me.
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[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
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[ (c) HOE E'ZINE -- http://www.hoe.nu #1039, BY THE EXTREMIST - 3/16/00 ]
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