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jayfurrBriefly put: I will be a guest panelist at "ROFLcon", a con dedicated to Internet pop culture memes this weekend in Cambridge, MA. I will be part of a panel at 2 pm EDT on Saturday, specifically, called "Heroes of Usenet". (Pause for the "Sweet Jeebus" reaction on your part.) The con organizers say it's gonna be streamed on the Intertubes at http://www.roflcon.org/live -- there will be four sessions going simultaneously so I assume you'll have to pick which session you want to watch.
More verbosely put: I'm a guest because I was a HUGE FARKIN' LOSER in the early-to-mid 1990s, spending far too much time on the Internet message boards of the day: purely text-based things that we called Usenet newsgroups. On the panel with me will be Laurence Canter (1/2 of the "Canter and Siegel" or "Green Card Lawyers" Usenet spam team that offered their services helping people get green cards circa 1994), and Brad Templeton, former moderator of the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny and former chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Several other luminaries were to have been on the panel with us but have had to drop out due to health or family issues, but it's possible that others may still be added.
Regardless, I question why on Earth anyone would want to come hear me talk -- I have a nightmarish vision of sitting at a table facing an empty room. Assuming that a large number of the conference attendees will be MIT students who were infants or not yet even born when I was staying up all night being an online loser instead of doing my graduate school homework, I wonder if any of 'em will even know who I am. Hopefully they won't. Notoriety based on extreme lameness is the sort of thing you hope will get forgotten eventually.
Usenet newsgroups are still out there but a lot of internet service providers don't make access to them available any longer and hence you've got to access them via an interface like Google Groups (for example: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.appalachian). If you're REALLY REALLY BORED you can search the Google Groups archive for my name (but be aware, I went by 'Joel Furr' in those days).
You can read more about ROFLCon and see a full schedule at http://www.roflcon.org.
More verbosely put: I'm a guest because I was a HUGE FARKIN' LOSER in the early-to-mid 1990s, spending far too much time on the Internet message boards of the day: purely text-based things that we called Usenet newsgroups. On the panel with me will be Laurence Canter (1/2 of the "Canter and Siegel" or "Green Card Lawyers" Usenet spam team that offered their services helping people get green cards circa 1994), and Brad Templeton, former moderator of the Usenet newsgroup rec.humor.funny and former chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Several other luminaries were to have been on the panel with us but have had to drop out due to health or family issues, but it's possible that others may still be added.
Regardless, I question why on Earth anyone would want to come hear me talk -- I have a nightmarish vision of sitting at a table facing an empty room. Assuming that a large number of the conference attendees will be MIT students who were infants or not yet even born when I was staying up all night being an online loser instead of doing my graduate school homework, I wonder if any of 'em will even know who I am. Hopefully they won't. Notoriety based on extreme lameness is the sort of thing you hope will get forgotten eventually.
Usenet newsgroups are still out there but a lot of internet service providers don't make access to them available any longer and hence you've got to access them via an interface like Google Groups (for example: http://groups.google.com/group/alt.appalachian). If you're REALLY REALLY BORED you can search the Google Groups archive for my name (but be aware, I went by 'Joel Furr' in those days).
You can read more about ROFLCon and see a full schedule at http://www.roflcon.org.
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no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 05:40 pm (UTC)I mean, let's face it, that's got to be one of the biggest reasons I bust my ass so much for the Komen folks and for the cause of finding a cure for breast cancer: I feel a need to prove I'm not completely worthless.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 07:11 pm (UTC)To the extent that such an idea has any validity at all, it is never the people who should have it who have it. Hitler, so far as I know, didn't sit around bemoaning his worthlessness, nor do most charismatic but evil dictators, who could frankly do with a little less self-love than they have. I have always thought that the idea that bullies don't have self-esteem is ridiculous and now science is bearing me out.
What are the units of worth? I'm having trouble coming up with a metric which wouldn't put the vast majority on the worthlessness list (never won Nobel Peace Prize, never saved infant from drowning, etc.) or conversely put everyone, including Hitler, on the not-worthless list (intrinsic worth as human beings! God loves all of His creation! we are each genetically unique and can respirate!). What exactly does human worth consist of anyway?
no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 08:02 pm (UTC)Screwing up comes with the humanity package. Being a good human doesn't mean never screwing up; it means doing your best to recognize when you screwed up, getting up off the floor, and going forward. Again and again. 'Swhat we do.
The fundraising work you do for cancer is awesome, Jay, and I'm glad you do it. That's like getting up and going on. Repeatedly kicking yourself for being lame doesn't accomplish anything, though. That's more like staying on the floor. (I tell Trip the same thing often, too.)
That said, I think the panel sounds hilarious. :) Not sure what Canter is doing there, but maybe the "Villains of Usenet" panel got voted down?