With the twentieth anniversary of the founding of everything2.com brand website fast approaching, I noticed most of the archivists have died, and so, as the resident wise old man it falls upon me to present events in conjunction with this anniversary. As you know, the long-serving former wise old man, dannye, passed away a few years ago and I was elected into the role with help from Russian associates with whom I have never talked about anything with other than adoption issues. As a disgraced formerly fully-tenured professor of ethics with the most intelligent mind you've ever seen, I decided to research the history of everything2.com brand website in the pages of the 84-volume, leather-bound set The Anals of History, which I can now sell you at the discounted price of $70 per month for eighty years, non-negotiable under any and all circumstances.
The following information is compiled from that and other sources. Here is the anals of everything2 history, as presented by your close personal friend, Berhardt Goats.
Early Days: Nerds with Issues
In 1957, a group of World War II veterans founded The Everything Development Company as a way to develop everything at the same time. They were unsuccessful in this. Then, in 1977, a group of very nerdy boys who wore horn-rimmed glasses, played with giant computers that filled entire rooms, and who could only make "meep meep" noises when they tried to talk, took over the name and began to develop "a product." This "product" would be, at first, everything1, and then everything2 after the nuclear generator for the original "product" melted down and the location had to be abandoned. The "program" was moved to Michigan, where the "product" became everything2.com brand website, and the purpose of it was to provide new learnings to people twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays, except for an hour or two in the middle of the night when they would just stick a puzzle up in its place for no apparent reason.
The nerdy boys would meet a Fonzie-like character named Desmond T. Bones after moving to Michigan. While their "product" was excellent, their inability to speak beyond making "meep meep" noises required a front man like Robert Plant or Count Basie to sell the product to the masses.
At first, Desmond T. Bones was not accepted by the Board of Directors at The Everything Development Company, but then some of the World War II veterans who had founded the company filed a lawsuit demanding compensation for the theft of the name. Always wise, including street wise in nature, Desmond T. Bones realized that the veterans just wanted to get paid something for using the name, so he promised them one percent of all profits made by the website for the next thousand years. These men were already in their late eighties. It wasn't as if they were going to need to be paid for a thousand years anyway. The nerdy boys saw that hiring Fonzie-like character Desmond T. Bones could do much for ratings in a wartime economy.
The Rise of the Vermin
After the November launch of everthing2.com brand website in 1999, the site was soon teeming with a certain form of Internet life that can appear to be human but may not be. This form of life that everything2.com brand website was teeming with was never seen, identified, or even named.
At the same time, a group known as The Originals had seized political power on the site by 2000. The driving force behind their short term success in driving the direction of the site was their need to maintain two different standards for new noders and noders who had earned their bullshit. Some of The Originals were muscle brought in from Venice Beach to delete writeups by new noders that weren't "factual enough" while themselves posting stories about lesbians with shoes on their heads using urinals. A revolution was brewing and it was like Russia in 1917 on the site. The anti-immigrant policies of The Originals would eventually be their downfall, but the Revolution of 2001 was a modest one until September of 2001 when horrific events happened and a community was soon formed around shared loss and pain. It was much like a Turkish prison in World War I, although not as much so as I would have liked.
The Originals soon disappeared after they demanded control over a node that had been written in by a newcomer who wasn't of the kind of background they liked. Desmond T. Bones, in his Fonzie-like wisdom, held up the node and said he would cut the node in half and give on half to the Original and one half to the newcomer. The Original said, "Go ahead," while the newcomer said, "Please, Mr. Bones, don't destroy your site on account of me. I can just use MySpace to node on. Don't trouble yourself." With that, Desmond T. Bones decided the fate of the site going forward and he was in complete control of the gross steerage.
The Community Revolution
During the period of time known to Time Magazine as 2001-2002, the Community Revolution took hold. A real world (non-Internet) community known as Everything, Kansas was started. There was a "Noder Meet" every weekend somewhere in the world, a wide variety of entertaining and informative writeups were published, bringing the site closer to its original goal of "Providing New Learnings Twenty-four Hours a Day." A cast of characters assembled. People were happy. People had chaw. People were doing amazing things. Soon, noders were having sex with each other, marrying each other, and making babies together. At first this was because most noders are so physically and emotionally repulsive that only another noder could love them, but then it just became a habit.
As the site failed to capitalize on my suggestion that we turn everything2.com brand website into a dating site for people who wrote "nodes," millions were lost, but people were hanging out together in the woods drinking beers, playing video games, and making love in the dark. It was like Woodstock, but far more lame. Top noders were making appearances on Oprah and Nightline and Jeopardy. Things appeared to be on the rise.
Raising the Bar and the First Serial Killer in E2 History
Everything2.com brand website, sometimes called "E2" for users of shorthand, was experiencing a time of wonder and growth. There was a growing disparity between those noders who were capable of winning a Daytime Emmy Award and those who clearly were not. Some of the so-called gods had a plan to drive away the rabble and attract more writers who were maybe capable of some day winning a Daytime Emmy Award. This became known as raising the bar, a name that disguised a less than innocent purpose: Ethnic Cleansing of a sort, where the village idiots were brought into a small, wooden shack and shot, and prizes were given to those whose work was in some way approaching the quality of writing needed to win a Daytime Emmy Award.
This was also a time of many noder meets, and during this time, three noder meets had casualties. While going out into the woods to urinate (linked in case you aren't sure what that word "means"), three noders at three different noder meets were beaten to death with a log. The only noder present at these noder meets was one Berhardt Goats, who is still on the run, although his guilt has never been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The Golden Era and the Retirement of Desmond T. Bones
E2's Golden Era, which lasted from about 2003 through some time in 2006, came to an end with the retirement of Fonzie-like wise ruler Desmond T. Bones. Since his early work with Everything2 Development Company in the 1950s, Desmond had grown old and frail. Now in his nineties, there was a grand retirement party and send off to the wise old Fonzie-like leader.
After that, factionalism took over E2, and at first it was a Cold War, but it became increasingly hot. Mass graves are still findable on the website known as everything2 brand website from the Succession Wars and the War of Raising the Bar. Thousands of noders were needlessly slaughtered and driven away during this time.
The Failures of Reconstruction
In the wake of these bloody wars and their aftermath, a much smaller E2 core population tried to drive forward. Word had come via the Pony Express that Everything, Kansas had failed. All were dead due to a serious lack of provisions and preparation. Lord Asamoth began coming on behalf of disgruntled former noders and the families of those slaughtered needlessly in the war and took away their nodes. New noders, and noders loyal to the site and not to various factions, tried to revive the site and managed to keep some semblance of limp-wristed non-Fonzie-like control over things for a few years.
Three Old Ladies and a Drunken Sociopath
Known in some historical texts, including The Anals of History, as the Dark Ages, there was a two year period where there were no active noders aside from three old ladies and a drunken sociopath. This period is best not studied too closely.
The Next Generation
In the ruins and mass graves of E2's past, a new group of noders, many of which had been hiding in the woodwork for years, came to the forefront and remade everything2.com brand website into a new place, something of a Coffee Shoppe for the Weird. Like little flowers and mushrooms straining towards the light (for different reasons), these brave new regulars delight in the return of many of The Damned, who sometimes visit to see what is new and from time to time will drop new learnings on us all through the act of "noding," which is covered above and in the instructions for everything2.com brand website. The Damned is, of course, the name by which those who were traumatized in the wars are called because you can always see the spectre of war and pestilence swarming around their haunted heads.
Will this Coffee Shoppe for the Weird be successful? Does it have the potential? Praise be to Junior Soprano that there isn't another war. The war widows still weep. You can hear them in the spaces between the nodes.
***Most information copied directly from The Anals of History, copyright 1931, Random House***