1. What is your name?
Wade Rockett, also known as Quizro.
2. What is your quest?
To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with my God. Oh! And to punch Hitler. Which I will accomplish by inventing a time-traveling jetpack. That dispenses pie. Wait, what was the question?
3. What is your favorite color?
Jade green.
4. How did you discover Everything, and how did you become a noder?
An intern in the IT department where I worked told me about Everything (the original one.) He said it was like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: a compendium-in-progress of every piece of information known to humanity. I loved the idea, and immediately started contributing nodes aimed at a target audience of geeks who might be stuck on a distant planet and urgently in need of information about ox-drawn carts.
5. What do you see as the most significant changes that have happened to Everything over the past decade?
I think the most significant change was the shift in the site's mission away from collecting and archiving "everything" toward becoming a weird headless death cult of writer apostles -- that is, a site that produced quality writing and which taught people to write well. It became less about amusing yourself and more about informing, entertaining or persuading an attentive audience of your peers. As with any major change in the life of a community, we gained some things and lost others.
I think that all of the subsequent changes to E2 were a result of that shift from being a freewheeling, geeky in-joke to something more serious and intentional.
6. What are your favorite writeups -- both your own and from other noders?
Oh, geez. Igloowhite, Roninspoon and riverrun produced some nodes which are still vivid in my memory. Nodes like In Los Angeles, something is always burning, Welcome to role playing game, Two stories of the pistol and LZ Waterloo.
Best rant ever: You noders still fucking suck, but your needing my wisdoms bad.
I was deeply moved by the positive reception that Why the world is more beautiful with a creator got from readers. That semi-autobiographical piece was probably the most emotionally revealing piece I've ever written. Reading it still makes me uncomfortable, which confirms for me that I was on the right track. It also marked a major turning point in how I thought and talked about religion and spirituality.
I'm still very happy with the daylogs I wrote as moloch36. You probably won't be surprised to hear that they were the product of a crushing sense of despair and futility I felt while working at an IT help desk. The posts could have been better-written, but I love everything about the character and his world. I think my favorite is the Halloween tale the molochs tell among themselves, Why there is no moloch13.
If you would like to contact DMan still cracks me up. As does Dearest Cecil.
7. What are your favorite and least favorite memories from E2's history?
Some of my favorite memories are of weird, funny, spontaneous conversations in the Chatterbox. The first Everything2 Cinco de Mayo, cooked up by me and knifegirl, was hugely fun. We spoke terrible Spanish (well, my Spanish was terrible) and noded about all things Mexican.
I vividly remember reading I was a prisoner in a Mexican whorehouse and realizing that the game had changed dramatically. It was as if a door had opened into a part of the house that I never knew existed – it was the beginning of a very exciting time.
I'll never forget the first time I met other noders in person, and was struck by the fact that I could somehow tell just by looking at them that they were Everythingians. I felt like part of a tribe, or a secret society.
Apocalypso NOW! SoCal Noder Gathering XP 2002 Professional Edition was the peak of my E2 experience, but also the beginning of the end for me. In hindsight, once Kenata started puking in the bathtub the shark was jumped.
Hermetic's suicide would have to be my least favorite E2 memory. And then...fuck. Read the daylogs from September 10, 2001 when Adam died. Then go to September 11, 2001 and read how people were just starting to come to grips with that news when something even more horrific happened. Suddenly it was possible that dozens of our friends were among the thousands dead.
The runner-up for Least Favorite E2 Memory would be during Good God it's hot! A 2003 Vegas gathering when a noder wandered off alone into the Nevada desert and was missing for more than an hour.
8. What keeps you coming back?
The compulsion to keep my Inbox clear of msgs.
9. What do you hope for E2's future?
I hope that people who become a part of the site find it as fun as we did, and don't get up in arms over stupid shit like we did.
I also hope that the admins add email integration so that I'm alerted whenever there's a msg in my Inbox.
10. What does E2 mean to you?
E2 was the nearest I came to being part of a movement in art or literature, like the Dadaists. It was an amazing time, crazy and experimental and silly and sometimes a bit pretentious. It's one of my fondest memories.
But the most enduring thing about the site would have to be the friendships I made. That's what the site means to me now – Facty and Ouro and Spoon and all of the other people I still keep in touch with – that's E2 to me now. Many of us haven't been active on the site for years, but we're still a community.
11. Is E2 a writing site, a community site, an online encyclopedia, or something else? What should it be?
Jesus, are you guys still asking questions like that? How does a site continue for 10 years when the people on it still don't know what it's for?
It's all of those things, okay? It's about writing and community and sharing knowledge. None of those things excludes the others.
As to what it should be, that's up to the people who are a part of E2 now to decide.
12. Who are your favorite noders? Which ones do you miss the most?
I've mentioned a few already – the full list would be way too long, and I would end up feeling terrible because I forgot to put somebody on it.
There are a few noders who've gone dark that I miss, like knifegirl, pingouin and WolfDaddy. I miss being part of something that Jet-Poop is part of. And I still miss sensei.
13. Who would play you in the Everything2 movie?
Greg Grunberg maybe?
14. Any questions that I didn't ask that I should've?
Nah, we're good. Thanks for pulling this together.
Everything2 Decaversary Interviews
If you have questions or comments, please contact Quizro or Jet-Poop.