"Ooh, I have a 'BLOG'!"

The supposed novelty of this "blog" craze cracks me up. It's like, "ooh, look, there's this new thing where I can write something articulate and post it on my blog to share with all my friends!" Except, "blogs" have existed since at least the early 1990s (and arguably long before). It's called the Internet.

It reminds me of a fellow I used to work with in the Valley. Let's call him "Wizard." Wizard was one of the true, genuine Internet geeks, who "blogged" before it was coined as such. He would dial into his shell account and cruise the boards, making posts and thoroughly engaging with other prehistoric "bloggers." (We're talking the Well era and even before.) When I got my Netcom account, he looked at me incredulously and said, "you do have a shell account, don't you?" (He assessed my worthiness as a Net geekster as to whether I knew what a "shell account" was.)

He and his cohorts had nothing but disdain for this new ISP called "AOL," and took sheer delight when AOL's servers crashed in the Spring of '96. ("All those damn idiots attaching 50MB photos to their emails..." he would chuckle derisively.)

Around this time also, some Internet geeks were experimenting with a "home page." Wizard was suspect of this experimentation, as it signaled a path that might actually make the Internet experience accessible to the masses (gasp! say it ain't so!). So, Wizard didn't enter this realm gracefully. He created a "home page" with the following text, and nothing else:

"Yes I have a fucking home page. Now go away."

It was scathingly patronizing and condescending. And he loved showing it to people!

I have to confess to feeling a sense of camaraderie with Wizard when this "blog" craze erupted. (Same with the "wiki" craze. "Ooh, look, we can post a page to the Internet. And then we can edit it!"). I don't mean to sound superior or anything (even though I know I do...) But this "blog" isn't the greatest thing since sliced bread. We've "been there, done that" for a while now, haven't we, Wizard?

;-)