In which Old Man Jet-Poop goes on and on about what it was like in The Good Ol' Days while the young-uns wish they could get a ride to the mall and look at girls
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, today is my
seventh anniversary as an Everythingian.
Back in the day, I was living in
Portales, New Mexico, working a very nice job that went to
hell all too suddenly. I was residing in a small but exceptionally
gorgeous house right next to the campus of
Eastern New Mexico University. One weekend, my brother came to visit me and said, "Hey, you gotta check out this site I've discovered. You'll love it." He pulled up the old
Everything1 site and signed us up an account (He used "
Jet-Poop" as the name because it was the same name he used when playing
Quake online. He still uses it over at
SomethingAwful and a few other sites. I've offered to change my name here, but he says to keep it.) We'd planned to share the account -- sometimes I'd write something, sometimes he'd write something -- but he never ended up using the site much.
Still, in my early days as a noder, I referred to myself as "
we," assuming that my bro would start noding any day now. That never happened, but I kept up the
plural affectation for quite a while. Eventually, someone remarked upon it, and I invented the "
Team Jet-Poop" concept on the spot. For a while, a few people may have actually believed that I was really a seven-person tag-team of writers, though I suspect the stuff about the
lunar headquarters, the
rocket car, and the pet
crawling eye probably gave the joke away.
By now, most of you have probably already heard what
E1 was like -- only two writeups per node and not enough space to do more than summarize most topics. No
chatterbox, no
quests, no
Honor Roll, not much editing or deleting. At the time, we thought it was great, and I'm able to remember what it was like and laugh.
Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.
But it wasn't a particularly grand thing. You know how we see some newbies come in and start noding about how
girls are just so stupid and they don't care about anything but money, and
fuck 'em anyway if they're stuckup, how they're
punk as shit like a motherfucker, about how they've got
this really great bong, and they've named it "
Mr. Dunlap" after their
homeroom teacher who's such a
prick? You know how fast you reach for the downvote button? Well, back in the E1 days, we noded shit like that all the time. I had several writeups about private
in-jokes that my brother and I shared. No explanation, nothing that made sense, just the punchline that always made us laugh like ninnies.
November 13, 1999 was the best thing that could've happened to Everything.
Of course, with the advances in the database came a great deal of
excitement,
controversy,
transformation,
success,
loss,
laughter,
tears,
rage, and more.
April Trolls Day stirred things up,
the Stile Project came over and made a stink,
EDB got his tubes tied. Scores of trolls came over here and tried to knock us down, and we sent them home crying to momma.
DMan came and went.
kenata came and went.
Asamoth came and went. Same with
themusic,
juliet,
JeffMagnus,
moJoe,
Uberfetus, and so many others.
sensei,
Hermetic,
stand/alone/bitch,
ailie,
wharfinger,
ideath,
deep thought,
knifegirl,
arcanamundi,
Gritchka,
Quizro, even
dem bones himself.
I miss most of them very much. I wish we could somehow bring them all back. But they've made their mark here, they helped shape the site, and I'm grateful that, for most, their writeups still remain here where we can appreciate them. Their absence doesn't make E2 a better place, or a worse place -- like life, we watch friends move in, impact our lives, and move on. But I still miss them very, very much.
I thank
nate for creating this wonderful site. I thank those we've lost for helping to make E2 so fun and so wonderful. I thank
you for working hard to leave your own unique impact on this website. Never for a moment forget that this is the best damn thing the Intarwebs have ever coughed up. I pray it lasts forever.
Mugs up! Here's to seven years, and another seven, and another seven, and more. Here's to
Everything2! (/me quaffs frosty brew)