Well, "they" say a 10-year anniversary is a good time to look back, to see where you’ve been and try to see where you’re going. Tom and I celebrated our 10th year together last year by … well … me trying to remember the exact date and not succeeding! We laughed, enjoyed some happy memories of the years, but mostly congratulated ourselves on having made it that far. Many couples and organizations don’t, and sometimes if they do, they find they’ve become something quite different than what they were.
I think E2 can do all those congratulatory things, and bask in the glow of still being what it set out to be: a place for writers to write. Has it changed? Of course – there’s a thriving community now, and the noder population has settled down into a fairly committed group of talented writers that still welcomes new users. E2 still provides that place for writers and would-be writers, a place to learn to write and write well.
There have been bumps along the way; talk to anyone that’s been here a while and you’ll get your ears filled with the stories of drama, confrontation, and the like. But keep talking and you’ll hear more about the good: the friends that have been made, the nodermeets, the relationships that have happened, and the superb writeups that keep us coming back for more. Though some might differ, I think the good truly outweighs the bad.
E2 has evolved, indeed, possibly into something its creators never envisioned. I don’t know; the one time I started to discuss E2 with one of its founders, we were both too drunk to make any sense! I hope that Nate and the rest of the original gang are happy with their creation, and I suspect they are, or else they’d have thrown in the proverbial towel long ago. Maybe it’s just grown too big and too important to many of its users to let it go.
I reject the notion that E2 is somehow “past its prime”, or that other one we hear sometimes, “2001’s calling and it wants its website back”. These beliefs miss the fact that there is still a place on the Web for sites such as E2. Of course, there are flashier (pun intended) sites on the Web now … Facebook, MySpace, Digg, our parent Slashdot … and many others that I don’t know about but you might. They’re all good, in various ways, at what they do … but none of them does what E2 does. And what it is that E2 does, as opposed to other sites, is hard to define (at least for me), but anyone who’s been a writer of nodes for any length of time, and truly interacted with E2 and its community, will know what I mean.
If you don’t mind me trotting out a few hoary sentiments, let me say E2 has made a huge positive difference in my life, and yes, I had plenty of “real life” before I found E2. It has brought me friends, experiences, new ways of thinking, and the opportunity to take quick glances into the lives of other noders, people … friends … doing things and living lives that I could barely imagine. As a noder, later Content Editor, and now Admin, it has expanded my horizons and continues to do so, for which I am grateful.
So, happy birthday, Everything2; I raise my E2 coffee mug to you! May you be here in 2019 for me to make a feeble attempt at a 20-year anniversary writeup (assuming I can still read the screen at that point!). May you go on being that part of cyberspace we are pleased and proud to call our own. May you grow and evolve, never losing sight of what you are, and continue to amaze us all!