1. What is your name?

M. "Rude Boy Chi Grub" Hotel

2. What is your quest?

More than four hours of continuous sleep.

3. What is your favorite color?

Clear.

4. How are you, and what have you been up to?

Generally exhausted. I hung up my E2 reins, finished college, got a job making noise and breaking things, and started a family (in roughly that order).

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

I found E1 through slashdot, made a few entries, then left. I came back to the site several years later through the slashdot E2 sidebar widget... I can't remember what node exactly had a title that resonated with me at the time, but it was one of icicle's (maybe Seriously, though, who the hell did I think I was going to become?). I came back and for a long time E2 was the right place for me to be. It was a good place for me to offload a lot of loneliness, then rejoice in the friends I eventually made, then snipe at the people I eventually pissed off, then make useless suggestions to strangers.

6. What do you see as the most significant changes that have happened to Everything over the past decade?

It lost its edge, humor, and severity. Or I lost sight of its edge, humor, and severity. Either way, my perception of the site has changed more drastically than the site itself has changed.

Also, my homenode image is overlapped by my user stats in the zen theme, and that makes me cry real tears.

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

Mysteries I haven't solved. Odes to lost times. Books that will never be written. Genuine adventures. Educated discourses written by knowledgeable people.

Some of these are still there. Some of these are gone and lost forever.

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

There was once a vast family of hundreds of otherwise outcasts that grew up a little in E2. And then they outgrew it. Every time any one of them looks back, they look back with a little bit or more of shame and regret, like we look back on any relationship that we failed to maintain in some way. Since that family moved away, E2 has been in steady decline (for one reason or another). Some of the family still speaks to each other, some of the family damaged each other irrevocably.

A girl is standing on a beach on Long Island, one hand shading her eyes, the other placed demurely on her long skirt. She was my sister.

I am stuck at home 8 or 7 or 6 years ago. Someone in the family could always make me feel less stuck.

A dead fish in the pond is really a rock. We find out by poking it with a stick.

A barber spins me around in Columbus and makes me watch the Doo-Dah Parade while I get my hair cut. My future wife calls me handsome for the first time that day.

A quiet nice moment at night by a disused schoolhouse.

There is a better moment in a house in North Carolina where someone hasn't yet realized it is too late for talking. I hear the subtle sound of rain in distant trees and ask them to listen. They do and it is perfect.

We wanted to hold on, but we are people and people do nothing if not change.

These impermanent things are different or gone now.

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

Focus.

10. What does E2 mean to you?

It used to mean home. It may mean that to someone, but my home is somewhere else now.

11. Is E2 a writing site, a community site, an online encyclopedia, or something else? What should it be?

Fuck if I know. It was more a community than anything, with a writing interface. The most bullshit convoluted chat interface on Earth, where you write 5000 words and if they're strung together pretty enough, people treat you with a bit of respect. Some of us wanted to give an honest stab at writing and a few of those made the transition. Most of us were sad or hyperintelligent or useless or horny sons-of-bitches who were happy to have the company. This is fine.

Should. It should be whatever it is. I lost interest in damming its course and guiding its users some time ago. At a time it was beautiful and raw, and that is a thing it will never be again. I think there are still people like my old family, out there, looking for their connections, but E2 is a 10-year-old dinosaur in an age of blogs and twits and walls. Those connections are made differently now, and E2 is no longer the hoary saloon it once was. If that's what it wants to be, the users will take it there again. If they take it there again, it will be a resource-draining thankless labor of love that gets outgrown by its userbase time and time again. That is the nature of every educational institution.

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

I like the sharpies, the NYNVB, the BAP, the mutants, the left coasters, and everyone else from the family. I miss them all except the fucking sharpies, who can all eat a bag of dicks.

13. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?

A slightly shorter Thurston Moore, guest starring Devendra Banhart's beard (which lost weight for the role) and Harry Potter's glasses.

14. Any questions that I didn't ask that I should've?

Just one: Why?

No reason. Just seeing if you're a semi-omniscient warmongering supercomputer in charge of a hypersecret interrogation facility.

Everything2 Decaversary Interviews

If you have questions or comments, please contact Mr. Hotel or Jet-Poop.