In recent years, I have noticed an influx of young people using the patented everything2.com brand website noding system to do noding of one kind or another (no one has ever explained term to me). These young people (like you) are usually tatted up, pierced up, dumb as a stump, living off the government dole, and not a single one of you has even a single fucking pubic hair. And so, it falls to me to tell you about the past, some of which is summarized in The Anals of Everything2 History. One of the bits of old history of this place, ostensibly known as a "website" (Internet kiddie term), relate to its founding by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 as part of a Cold War initiative to collect intelligence on the Soviets. This much you know.
Back in 1955, when I was still in Berlin, living physically inside of the Berlin Wall, shooting motherfuckers running to the west with a high-powered rifle while actual soliders went to get some tail, I sometimes needed an outlet for my creative talents. Naturally, I was drawn to everything2.com brand node-by-mail system. I did not know at the time it was being run by the White House as a way to lure Germans into giving them information about what was going on inside the Berlin Wall. I thought it was harmless fun. Instead I was being drained of my natural money-making ability to write award winning novels by the intelligence services of a sworn enemy of the people. This was something I wouldn't realize until the early 1970s when I sold out to those sworn enemies in return for a house in Baltimore with my mother and a generous one million dollars a year stipend.
Back in 1955, when I found an ad for everything2.com brand node-by-mail system in the back of Nude Fraulein magazine, I was instantly intrigued. The ad required that you send them a word or a thing you were interested in knowing more about and they would send you any information that had been submitted to everything2.com along with a list of hardlinks and softlinks. You could choose any five of these and send them back and you would get the information on those things along with a new set of links. It was crazy!
Not only that, but if you had something to say about something, you could write it down in a steno book, tear off the page and send it back to everything2.com brand node-by-mail system. And it would be added to the information available to other people who read Nude Fraulein magazine (and other publications they advertised in). You would need to give them the hardlinks and softlinks you wanted to use, which set up the whole project, which in turn was a blueprint for everything2.com brand website after the Internet went live in 1999. You would also get a report on "upvotes," "downvotes," and if anyone thought your information was "cool."
There were limitations. It would take a week to click on a link. When you got the new pages, sent in the link choices, and waited for a letter back, it would take some time. When they were understaffed it sometimes took up to nine months. You were also limited to how long your writeup could be and in the 1960s you had to color code your links (which pissed a LOT of people off and ninety-percent of the ten users quit over it in 1967).
Today, we have a different kind of thing going on. Instantly you click on a link and go there. This way you don't get old too fast and have time for saiboating.