1. What is your name?
Jet Poop of E2, this is
amnesiac from the year 2011, i.e. the future, it's been a long time
since I rapped at ya, but I am in the future now, none of my story
contains any details from the future that will change the past but it
does contain a spoiler for Kafka's 'The Trial' but seriously if you
haven't read that yet then fuck you.
I joined E2 at the beginning
of the last millennium, childless, barren, riddled with cancer, barely
able to write my own name, cursed with myopia of the eyes and worldview,
my overgrown fingernails turning in on themselves in concentric spirals
as my claw-hands punched spasmodically at the keys of a Dell Personal
Computer, I certainly possessed no markup skills. My initial username,
or 'noder name' as we used to affectionately call it, was akf2000; a
haphazard and ill-advised portmanteau of my initials and the model of
that season's Ferrari Formula 1 car, but at least no one else thought of
it, and to this day it remains in the top 5% of available usernames on
any website.
I cured myself of the cancer I made-up and taught
myself the markup language, E2ML as we used to affectionately call it.
Before any of this happened, and what I should have begun with, is that I
read ToasterLeavings' seminal 'You be needing my wisdoms bad' writeup,
but before that I found E2 which was linked via Slashdot.
Chronologically-speaking it was Slashdot > ToasterLeavings' seminal
writeup > made-up cancer necessary for the plot > Dell PC.
I
can still vividly remember introducing my wife to E2, she sat at the
Dell, whilst formatting a recipe for chickpea curry into E2ML that still
exists to this day, and proclaimed "we don't need a TV anymore, we have
E2". It was a ridiculous statement to make and I beat her severely. In
the future a paradigm shift occurs and domestic violence is funny,
there's no point trying to explain it.
In time I became
proficient at E2ML, mastering superscript and subscript at the nexus of
Wikipedia and Social Media. E2 had given me a platform for my poetry,
pure expression that flowed from my wrist without even needing
proof-reading, I didn't even get tired. After realising my username was
holding me back I changed it to amnesiac, this was in no way related
to the Radiohead album but to cause doubt in people's minds I did node
the album because I like symmetry more than common sense. My new name
was proving to be a hit in a way that letters followed by numbers could
never be. I became more confident in my abilities and managed to get rid
of a number of opponents using my newly acquired sociopathy, the first
to go was stand/alone/bitch who I despised for saying 'sammiches'. I
became an Apple Mac user. I wrote my 2nd favourite writeup, 'The E2
Arranged marriage registry' where I wrote the following: "he was
surprised by the hospitality of the locals and the locality of the
hospitals", which I was inordinately proud of, I think is worthy of a
great-ish writer. Approximately 5 years after reading ToasterLeavings'
seminal writeup I wrote my own and it was called Teh Passion of the
Christ, an incredibly simple story from the point-of-view of myself
watching the film The Passion of the Christ and not understanding
Aramaic. That writeup made me more proud than just about anything I can
remember doing on E2, I realised I had a talent for the absurd that
didn't have an outlet in my banking job. I also made prophetic and
disparaging remarks regarding the events of 9/11 during the events of
9/11.
I then moved into what I now know to be Phase 3; the
complete domination of the user-base using nothing but the force of my
personality.
It was during Phase 3 that I was banned and all my writeups deleted.
My
treatment at the hands of the E2 management is perhaps one of the most
disgraceful episodes of the site and when you consider that guy who made
a hoax bomb call it's really saying something. The list of my
innovations is too long for me to go into and modesty prevents it but
someone else should definitely do it, why hasn't this been done? I think
I invented the term 'reverse softlink', anything beginning with
'reverse' is mine. But what am I know for? certainly none of my
innovations which also included the Friday Lunchtime caption competition
wherein I launched the career of RalphyK who was published on the BBC
Website and as a result lead to him making movies. Nor am I known for
my generous financial aid, for example monetising the very first Hate
Quest or buying Witchiepoo's children Christmas presents following
her relationship breakup, or transferring 75 cents by PayPal to
TheBooBooKitty who was, and probably still is, utterly destitute. I am
filled with revulsion.
None of those things are remembered, I
have been whitewashed from E2 history; everyone there is guilty, I am
Josef K taken outside and shot, I am the mother of the disappeared in
Argentina, I am actually one of the disappeared, I am Aung San Suu Kyi, I
am Nelson Mandela, I am Ai Weiwei, I am all the world's aboriginal
peoples. I am also Bobby Sands.
It's really quite amazing to me
that a unique force of nature, someone just trying to kick a bit of life
into proceedings, can not be accommodated by a supposed liberal/
progressive community, that even then the mob-rule means the
crucification of the outlier, I am also Jesus in that respect.
Of
all the things written about me I like the story of the small orphan
child who wrote me a letter, "thank you, amnesiac, for putting a bit of
life into these bastard fucks for a few years, they're all bastards and
they deleted all your writeups, you were better than all of them and
they feared you, even though you never had any power you were the most
powerful of all because you had the truth". Yes, small orphan child, but
do not fill your heart with rage, hush now, because I am in the wind, I
am the blossom on a tree in spring, I am the spread of democracy in
Arabia, I am the Basel III requirements for increased capital ratios.
:: Questions 2 to 8 not considered appropriate to a being who exists as pure consciousness. ::
9. Who are your favorite noders? Which ones do you miss the most?
There
is one person left amongst you, I'm being quite genuine here, a man who
is working at least 5 levels above you all, whose mind I was in awe of,
I actually used to stop myself from talking to him directly in case I
'broke' that spell, actually it was more that I felt really unworthy, so
I'd use someone else as a foil to get them to say stuff. I hope they
know who they are, I won't ruin them by association. I have NEVER
understood why more people don't see it.
10. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?
Justin Long
Everything2 Decaversary Interviews
If you have questions or comments, please contact amnesiac (though he's not currently a noder, so he won't be able to read private /msg's) or Jet-Poop.