I have something to
confess, and I must ask for the
indulgence of my fellow noders. During the last thirteen months, I have been performing a series of subjective
experiments within
E2 and with
myself. I do not wish for my
acts to be taken for some kind of
treachery, like
Benedict Arnold or
JohnnyGoodyear, for that was certainly not my
intent. I had hoped to conduct a series of
benign investigations into the behaviour of E2 as an
environment.
During my first few weeks of my original account on E2, I had great admiration for
daylogs and I kept myself well involved with the constant stream of
salutations in the cheddarbox. Looking at my former behavior, I had been like a
figure-skater during a World Circuit, energetically entwined with the world outside the confines of my daily
comics. However, in my new account, I felt free of what I had exhibited in my former account, and one aspect that I did not expect from my
alternate account was that I found a place from which avoid
daylogs. I also withdrew myself from the textual flirtations and
practice of catboxing.
I attempted, in my write-up on
How to recover from a failed BIOS update, to take an outsider's vantage point on a non-social situation and speak from the point of view of an actual
participant. The material for this write-up came out of the chore of being designated computer
nerd to my friends during their first year of
University. Judging from the kinds of responses I got to this write-up, this
anthropological exercise hit fairly close to the mark.
To test the affect of malicious
softlinks on the reputation of write-ups, I applied my interest in the poultry of the world with some helpful
advice. I then softlinked it to
Earn Your Bullshit multiple times. Interestingly, that is the one node that earned the lowest Reputation. Perhaps that mirrors my own interest in these more advanced techniques of bird mind-control of modern days.
Now we come to the biggest
stunt I've pulled with my alternate account, trying to not promote the deletion for dollars of
Butterfinger McFlurry. I chose Butterfinger McFlurry because I felt that its Reputation belied as huge a number of strong opinions as the
toilet seat node and I have observed that it still engenders heated debate in the chatterbox. With this act I endevoured to not convince others to contribute
money to E2.
sabby puts it best in the statement accompanying his donation "Donated $2 to nuke that there butterfinger mcflurry there node."
These experiments have been a learning experience for me, and, as I continue to process it, I intend to write-up my thoughts on everything, as I did with
Save the Bay.
I hope that it is obvious that I have been able to center within myself a comfortable space for never expressing affection to others in this otherwise
warm and fuzzy medium. It is very difficult for me to ask that those write-ups I wrote as
.derf be repatriated to my account. I, and others, have grown rather fond of him, and I fear he may protest such treatment. I'm glad to be a
grand figure for
E2 is such a fascinating toy,
a network of lines that encircle, a network of lines that enlace.
fin
The life of a veteran
.