The good, the bad and the Webly, page 2
This Sunday Sunday SUNDAY on PAY PER VIEW! In this corner, Netscape, the feisty Web veteran, noble spawn of Mosaic, and a perennial crowd pleaser. In the other corner, the Battle from Seattle, weighing in with somewhere around $70 billion of corporate muscle behind it, Microsoft Explorer! Which will win in this fight to the death for the lion's share of the browser-iffic Web viewing crowd? They both take a licking and keep on clicking — except when they're crashing.
As the self-infatuation of Web creators seemed to reach critical mass, the man who was among the first to shout "Don't believe the hype" threw in the towel. The perpetually and deliciously crabby Mirsky abandoned his two-year-old daily, the Worst of the Web, citing disappointment with the site's limited success and noting he was "just sick of doing the same thing every day." Though there are plenty of other places on the Web that will gladly tell you what sucks, Mirsky had a snark all his own. The Worst was the most, and it is missed.
Bring on the hubris! As the publishing world whipped itself into a collective frenzy so ecstatic that visions of Bill Gates were being reported east of the Mississippi, Microsoft's Slate debuted in the spring. Edited by Michael Kinsley, the magazine was often intelligent and insightful. Amazingly, the rest of the Web did not wither in the light of its glory nor grind to a screeching halt.
After promising for months to finally, at long last, bring intelligent conversation and community to the Web, "Virtual Community" author Howard Rheingold launched his Electric Minds — an eclectic mix of posting and journalism — in November. Participants in ongoing Web communities as diverse as Bianca's Smut Shack, Cafe Utne and Salon's own Table Talk, waist-deep in their own love affairs, flame wars and thought-provoking dialogues, were too busy to take notice.
Hey, it was all in good fun, Mr. G-Man! Last winter, Exploding Heads creator Daniel Burford, whose site allows visitors to detonate the craniums of such loathed figures as Rush Limbaugh and Tom Hanks, was paid a visit by some federal agents who did not find his exploding Bob Dole neck-topper droll in the slightest. As it turned out, Burford was the least of the crotchety senator's problems, as, bean intact, Mr. Dole went on to tank in the presidential election.
After last summer's TWA flight 800 was cut short minutes after it took off, the Net was abuzz with rumors as to the cause. Online veterans tend to take most theories with a grain of salt, but one, a journalist of some repute by the name of Pierre Salinger, embraced the speculation mill with all the charming innocence of a bona fide newbie. Salinger reported a half-assed online rumor as fact, thereby securing his status as most gullible Net denizen of the year.
Yes, it may be the most ridiculous trend to hit the Web since Spam haiku, but this year there was no denying that the pork product of choice was Bacon. As in Kevin. The popular pastime — trying to determine how many degrees separate anyone who has ever graced a movie set from the eternally boyish star of "Footloose" — probably filled more hours of lost worktime than Doom and the Teri Hatcher fan page combined. A bonanza of copycat sites, a series of magazine articles and a back-to-Bacon book all followed.
Last year's mad scramble for domain names resulted in a spirit of hoarding that would not be seen again until the great Tickle Me Elmo shortage of this Christmas. But with all those domains, and only a marginal comprehension of the interests and attention span of the Web audience, corporate sites languished. Could it be that with a world of cleverly artistic sites, chat, MUDs and more porn that you can shake a ... um, stick at, nobody really cares that much about Tater Tot trivia or Hugo Boss' urban survival guide?
While that first flush of enthusiasm for all things HTML-coded may have abated ever so slightly, there's still no shortage of stunningly lame home pages to be found. Armed with highly varying senses of aesthetics and the rudiments of spelling and grammar, college students, bored corporate drones and the obsessive lovers of the great indoors from all walks of life proudly shared with the rest of us their graduation photos, lists of all-time favorite CDs and rambling ruminations on the state of the world. In the midst of all this masturbatory glee, some folks with original and intriguing points of view actually managed to create a forum where they might otherwise never be heard.
Those who until recently considered the Web a He-Man Woman Hater's Club may have noticed the changes as chicks continue to blast open the doors of online communication. Veterans like geekgirl Rosie Cross, cybergrrl Aliza Sherman and Net Chick Carla Sinclair were joined by the playfully fierce babes of Bitch. Coming soon: Bleach, brightening the concept of women's journalism beyond girly-rag style butt-blasting exercises and tips for satisfying your man. The Web a masculine enclave? As IF. |