Under the
aegis of
RumourQuest 2006, I'm going to lay down some
truth for you. See, things aren't as
peachy keen as "
they" would have you believe. Things are happening here. Things that will be very
unpopular. E2 is changing in
big ways, and it is up to you and me to stop it. This is why I, along with some of my other
fellow senior noders, have formed a
ephemeral organization called the
Triumvirate. First, let me lay some history down on you:
A long time ago, there was this great
empire ruled by bunch of Italian dudes that lived in
Rome. Under this
empire, the known world was brought to
heel, roads were built, savages were crucified, and grapes were stomped. It was
all good. The people of
Rome were happy. In their happiness, they grew
complacent about their leaders. Their leaders, as has happened to leaders since time immemorial, grew
corrupt and entitled, cruel and capricious. The once glorious
Roman Empire began to suffer. Enter, the
First Triumvirate.
Roman society was not entirely
lax. Three powerful men,
Gaius Julius Caesar,
Marcus Licinius Crassus, and
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, took it upon themselves to redirect the will of the
Roman Empire from outside the regular channels of power. They held no special status within the halls of the government, but instead exercised control over the
Mob, ordinary Roman citizens that indeed held the true power in the Republic. Between 60 and 53 BC, they made things right.
After that, it all when to
Hell. But that's
neither here nor there.
What does that have to do with
E2? Well, lately, there have been
changes. Subtle at first, but they have crept in, like some sort of
insidious cancer. The famous "
Raising of the Bar" is the milestone we use to reckon events. Think about it. Back when the standard of writing was actually going
up. When daylogs and
GTKY nodes where spit upon like
gypsies in copper lit streets. When the
Old Gods rained fickle curses and blessings around like
wildfire. Heady days they were, my friend. Then,
something happened. Something bad. Something that nobody wants to talk about any more. The
old guard, the people from
Holland, Michigan that built this place from the ground up started to fade away. Names like
thefez, and
nate started getting sparse. The usual row of
@ symbols started to thin out. Mutterings about changes started to filter down to the users... then,
darkness.
The troubles really started during the
Big Outage. The reason we were fed was that the servers where being moved to the
University of Michigan in
Ann Arbor. What was really going on was a legal battle between the original creators of the
Everything2 engine, the so called
mutants group. Who or what it was all about, I don't know. What I do know is that the site came back... different.
It was subtle at
first. New gods, new editors, new directives.
Kinder gentler direction. The rescinding of the "
raising of the bar". The new acceptance of
day logs. The disappearance of the
Everything Death Borg. The recording of the catbox by
ascorbic's off-site logger...
That's
the straw that broke the camel's back. The E2 of old seemed to have been replaced by an old
pod person. I recall doing a full on
Donald Sutherland "O" scream and pointing at the monitor from across the street.
This wasn't
right.
More bizarre happenings... happened. Dem Bones "
retires" scant months after leaking the "
The New E2" concept, his final
April Troll's Day being the rather unfunny "
Google buys E2" concept. The server instability, the constant invasive
googlebottings, and finally the transfer of the reigns to a
Canadian citizen,
Lord Brawl. Seemingly unconnected, random
events that fell into a somewhat convenient schedule. "
They" hadn't expected me to be paying attention. "
They" started to get sloppy. I finally unraveled their monstrous plan.
Google had in fact
bought E2. The "
Holland Outage" allowed the legal wrangling to finish and saw the server transferred to a
Google data farm. Catbox logging kept the
firebrands under heel. The massive bottings cataloged our collective
input. The ownership hand over to a Canadian citizen?
Jurisdiction change that negated old copyrights.
Why does
Google want E2?
Advertising copy. I've seen my own words come up in everything from
toothpaste to
car loan ads. They are marketing with
your words.
The time of the
Triumvirate had arrived. At first, I considered
Asamothing my nodes and leaving it all behind, content to be written off as another
old timer that lost the taste for
noding, but now I couldn't be sure that my nodes would stay
deleted, if you know what I mean. I sent out
feelers, careful to establish a
catbox persona that painted me as a
harmless eccentric, not to be considered a threat to the
New Googlian Order. I found others that held new pieces to the monstrous puzzle. A certain
German bank employee that had seen the accounts that laundered the ill gotten Google advertising cash, and an
author that endured a bizarre
copyright lawsuit over his previously e2 available works. This user had also been privy to the secrets of the
gods group before being cruelly robbed of his buttons. We decide to
band together to try to haul the whole
house of cards down around our ears to get the truth out. Thus, the
Triumvirate was born.
Why am I writing this
here? Truth is, this
unsanctioned quest, like
HateQuest 2006 before it, is a part of what the Google catalogers call the "
chaff", the section of nodeshare that doesn't have the
profitability margin needed to
gobble up and spew all over the
Internet.
They see it as a "
necessary evil" in order to keep the fresh nodes coming. I write this here, at great personal risk to my self and the others in our
Underground for one reason: to let
you know that you are not alone.
We Remember the True E2. Together, We will take it back. Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici. Join us!
for RumourQuest 2006... or is it?