1. What is your name?
Luke Somers
2. Tell us something about you, your background, and what you've been up to lately?
I knew I wanted to go into physics ever since I was little, watching Star Trek reruns on the tiny B&W kitchen TV. That or astronaut or baseball player. If it hadn't been for the Challenger accident, I might have actually seriously gone for astronaut.
Lately I've been working on nanoscale devices incorporating electrical tunneling through fluids, at Rutgers.
3. How did you discover Everything, and how did you become a noder?
The user 3.1415 was one of my suitemates in college. He told me it was really cool site and promptly abandoned it.
4. What are your favorite writeups -- both your own and from other noders?
My own? Character Development. No one teaches this, and it's a travesty.
Others? Gah. So many to pick from. I guess The Fight Club / Calvin and Hobbes Connection. It's transformed how I think of both.
5. What are your favorite and least favorite memories from E2's history?
I like writing things that explain difficult topics so it's not too hard to understand, and I like writing things that people like to read. When a writeup on a tricky subject ends up with lots of upvotes, I feel like I've actually accomplished something.
My least favorites are all the many times I've put up something really dumb. And one time I put up something reasonable and another user tore into me.
6. What keeps you coming back (or not coming back, as the case may be)?
At this point, Metro City Chronicles and The Life and Times of a Fallen Angel.
My noding is sporadic, to put it mildly. There was a 4 year gap. When I came back, it was to write a scathing review of a book. When thinking of where to put it, E2 just came to mind, and that got me back to at least checking in once in a while, popping off a writeup occasionally.
7. What do you hope for E2's future?
Mainly, don't die. Gaining some more regular users would be nice too!
8. What does E2 mean to you?
If I want to explain something, just sort of ambiently, I come here.A non-user friend described it as "that writers' commune wiki", which I thought was cute while simultaneously irritatingly inaccurate.
9. Who are your favorite noders? Which ones do you miss the most?
None specific - I was never strongly into the community.
10. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?
Ben Cotton, maybe.
11. Please fill in the blank: "E2 is to the Internet as ___ is to the world."
I'd say "A globe constructed by random people who penciled in the parts they knew and were spurred by the effort to explore", but that's more just E2 is to the world as that is to the world. It's hard to find an analogous meta-respecting relationship here.
12. Any questions that I didn't ask that I should've?
What is the air speed velocity... wait, isn't that redundant?
...It seems very likely that you did not construct the perfectly ideal interview, but nothing springs to mind.
Everything2 Decaversary Interviews
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