1. What is your name?

Joe Bryant.

2. Tell us something about you, your background, and what you've been up to lately?

I fit comfortably into E2's core demographic as a British white male software developer in my early thirties. My most impressive recent accomplishment was to marry my lovely wife. (She wasn't my wife at the time, obviously). That was a few years ago now, though, so I suppose I need to come up with something new to maintain my high status.

3. How did you discover Everything, and how did you become a noder?

I was introduced to it by user nevermind_me, whom I knew out in the Real World. I was inspired to write until I could vote, mostly so that I could downvote a terrible series of writeups called "The alphabet is a playground", which are long-gone.

4. What are your favorite writeups -- both your own and from other noders?

My favourite writeups of my own are my fictional ones: Healthy Paranoia, wink, That man bit me, and evil twin. I don't imagine them to be especially good fiction, and some of my non-fiction writeups are probably better writeups, but they're the things I'm most proud of having written. When I post a writeup reviewing a boardgame, I'm not too fussed how people vote on it, but when I post fiction I desperately want everyone to like it.

My favourite writeups of other people's are Final tape recording in the cockpit of the space-ship, because it's hilarious, Guns don't kill people. Robots kill people., because it's awesome, and there's a spider in my keyboard, because it is deeply moving. I also absolutely love sam512's Ed Stories, which made it very strange to meet Sam for the first time because in my mind he was a famous author and in his mind he was just meeting some people at the pub.

5. What are your favorite and least favorite memories from E2's history?

I find the occasional bouts of angsty drama a bit annoying, but I firmly believe the nature of tedious Dramatic People is that they thrive on being discussed, so they can all remain nameless. Take that, you tiresome self-important types.

My favourite memories have been meeting noders in real life and making friends with them. The first few Theatre Quests were pretty awesome, too - performing noders' plays in front of a paying audience. I'm very proud of making that happen. It's a shame it fizzled out a bit but I suppose each of us only has so many sixty second plays in us.

6. What keeps you coming back?

I still like to read with you and write for you. Incidentally nobody ever thanked me for coming up with E2's official tagline. You're welcome.

7. What do you hope for E2's future?

I'd be perfectly content for it to just carry on as it is, indefinitely.

8. What does E2 mean to you?

Like, I suspect, many noders, I see two sides to E2.

Firstly it's the place where I hang out with my friends. I've made many real friends here, and a number of internet friends, who, I concede, are probably "real" in some sense even if I've not personally laid eyes on them.

Secondly there's this whole business with writing articles and voting on them.

The two sides are increasingly divorced, for me. I have a feeling this is common among longer-term users.

9. Who are your favorite noders? Which ones do you miss the most?

Picking favourites is too weird when I see some of these people at the pub. I do miss amnesiac though.

10. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?

James Stewart.

11. Please fill in the blank: "E2 is to the Internet as ___ is to the world."

Israel.

Everything2 Decaversary Interviews

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