I am a fledgling publisher
I intend to publish what people indicate they want to read, rather than trying to make them want to read what I want to publish. I believe this anti-
advertising stance is rare and valuable.
When I started on E2, I thought it was great to have a place where you could just be
altruistic. Then I discovered that I need money to live, and the more I could get, the more I would be able to
change things for the better. I found E2 while looking for
websites that leveraged the connectedness of the Internet because I saw it as a way to rapidly increase the well-being of the human race. But as long as writing the great stuff that's here doesn't put food on the table, people are going to spend a lot of time doing something that does. That means less quality thoughts are written, shared, and helping to increase our well-being.
I see that E2 has had 103 users today. It gets this kind of usage every day because it provides something valuable. It provides the kind of value that is rare and beautiful and nearly impossible to buy. Too often, when it can be bought, those providing it become "sellouts". I see
selling out as a result of the instinct to herd on the part of the consumers from whom the money is coming. We follow our leaders because it makes us safe. When those leaders recognize their position, they exploit our desire for security. E2's beauty comes from a general sense of
leaderlessness. We all tend to make our own way here.
By now you are perhaps sensing where I'm going. I'm guessing that some E2 users will be disgusted by the idea that E2 could put food on the tables of the best E2 users - the ones who inspire, teach, and improve us the most. I believe that E2 cannot legally earn a profit. Both of these things - the disgust and the legal prohibition of profit - are outgrowths of the age-old misconception that earning
money is a
dirty business. It is not.
People earn money by doing things we like. There is another group of people who get a lot of money, but they don't actually "earn" the money; they just take it from us and call it "
taxes" or they use advertising to get us to want what they have to sell. They are the leaders who have recognized and decided to exploit our herding instincts.
So my argument is that we should be happy to identify and reward those who inspire, teach, and improve us the most through their efforts here. I wrote all this to introduce the following announcement:
Litmocracy is my website and I'm doing this out of my own self-interest. I also have
promised to donate $1 to E2 for every user who uses my site for at least a month. All profits will go to the E2 donation box, but hopefully my efforts will provide me with the kind of exposure that will eventually put food on my table.
If it isn't November 1st yet, it isn't too late to suggest any changes to the first edition. Aside from the daylogs whose authors have permitted me to use them (as indicated in the writeup), there isn't much to the book:
- The title is Everything2 Remembers September 11, 2001
- Writeups are chronological
- Authors are indexed alphabetically.
- Davidian wants me to use his real name, but I don't know it.
If you can contact anyone who has a writeup from that day and they allow me to include their writeup, that would be great. The writeups of SEF and graceness no longer exist, although they gave me permission to use them.
Some users mentioned using their real name, but not as a requirement. If you would like me to use your real name, please let me know. As it is now, I cannot publish it until Davidian tells me his real name, and all other authors are identified by their E2 username.