Web Weirdos #

3 August 1998

I first got on the web and started emailing in Autumn 1994, when I started uni. Back then, Mosaic was the web browser of choice. Anyway, I’ll never forget the excitement of getting my first mail from overseas (a girl in Canada, for the record). But that was marred somewhat by being flamed for the first time a few months later. It came as a shock at first, that someone who didn’t even know me would wish to vent their cyber-spleen in my direction. But after a few years, you just get used to ignoring the occasional obnoxious surfer, and learn to steer clear of trolls.

I thought long and hard about those early days on the web before I went ahead and began publishing this journal online. It seems that cyberspace is full of dismal homepages, so why should I just add to all that with more unnecessary data?

Nothing, nowhere, never, unless it is important. Just because bandwidth exists, don’t squirt more bits at me.

– Nicholas Negroponte

But then I got to thinking - why the hell shouldn’t I “publish and be damned”? If I have the capability of publishing whatever musings and diatribes I wish, why shouldn’t I? If you don’t care for what I have to say, that’s no big deal. You can just surf on elsewhere. A lot of people seem to have this hang-up whereby they feel potential web content should meet certain levels of validity before it can be published - but who is to decide what, to quote Negroponte, is important? I think the only obvious answer is that every individual has to make that decision for themselves, which is why this journal entry did not include details of what I had for breakfast, what a busy day I had at work, or what I thought when I saw Yasmine Bleeth on the cover of the new FHM. Sorry world, you’ll just have to live without that knowledge. And now, I leave you for today with the first feedback I’ve received regarding this journal, as it seems oddly relevant:

…does this deserve a mention in your rather arrogant middle-class web diary?…It attempts to be rather dominant / aggressive / sarcastic etc, and all those other things…Maybe you should take a good look in the mirror.