Webmasters? Bah. I think not. Our Rants Section.
Man... I knew as soon as I saw this thing get started, it would be weird. The news guy was all flustered, stuttering somthing about ww.highersource -- but he left off the first W and the .com... Your typical news guy. Some know their way around the net, most do not.
I hate to watch news people talk about the net.
As soon as I heard the "ww" connection, I knew we were in for yet another "and all you internet people are really deviant" weeks. One "expert" on CNN mentioned that cults often recruit on the net because -- AND I QUOTE "technical people are often more gulible and more trusting." I shit you not. She said that.
I'm sick of news people, who don't know AOL from firewall IP tunelling, telling me all about "The NET". Like, shut up and stuff, Beavis.
This is Varak, telling news people to SHUT UP. You don't know what you are talking about. All you are doing is confusing all the net.sheep out there...
My pop called me and asked if I knew the people who killed themsevles. I ask you... if these full-blown batshit fruitcake nutball wackos were construction workers, or social workers, or Congressional Democrats even, would the news people be going on (and on and on and on) about how gulible Democrats are, and how construction worker types are too trusting? The Democrats thing is probably a bad example, but you get what I mean. I'd like to see that on Larry King Live.
Anyhow. The site is here to make you laugh. And to complain about the media's misrepresentation of the Internet. And to say the batshit fruitcake nutball wackos were not webmasters. They were HTML monkeys, and maybe a few graphic artists among them, but not webmasters.
And oh yeah, before you flame me for spelling errors here... REAL WEBMASTERS DON'T USE SPELLCHECK. We have HTML monkeys who scury around checking our spelling.
;-) I've been up for like 48 hours now... I'm going to go to bed. Night.So 39 people kill themselves and the press runs rampant about the group being involved in the Internet. They even go so far as to say they were webmasters. The real story is, this group did mediocre template HTML at best. This is a far cry fr om being a webmaster.
If you are involved in the Internet in any way, you most likely also received a call from your friends or parents asking something along the lines of "Did you know them?" or "what was this all about?". This action made by the uninformed was a direct result of the media like CNN, which ran this story as if the CULT did the suicide because they were on the net. The truth is these wackos could have been selling daisies at the airport, but the web was an easy way for them to support their cult.
Heck, to blindly follow someone as in a cult you would have to be a follower. When was the last time that you found a webmaster, a position that requires that they make decisions all the time, be a blind follower?
If you expect sympathy for these losers that take their own lives based upon the hope that they will meet a UFO you are reading the wrong page.
Of course if you want to check out some other info on this make sure and take a look at Disinformation Suicide Page and my compliments go out to Xenophile.
We know David Siegel has been making the tour doing his talk on "Creating Killer Web Sites", but I do not think he should have been taken this literally. I mean look at his work and there is not one to die for yet!
On the other side of the coin, look at the opportunity for other web groups that have a "no death clause" in their contract or can in writing promise that "We will be there to do your maintenance work". There are a few companies now needing contractors.
Wednesday night - 9:00pm: I hear on the television about a cult that commits mass suicide...
Thursday morning - 7:45am: My mother (250 miles away) calls me to say, "Did you hear about those Internet people who killed themselves? Did you know them?"
As you can guess, this didn't thrill me to be woken up by a woman who previously believed that the Internet was more like a walk down smut alley than a trip down the super-information-highway. Now she believes its not only a haven for cyber-prostitutes, but a forum for suicidal visionaries who use Star Trek: the Next Generation metaphors to explain why they think grey aliens are really Lucifarians.
But I guess that my mother's ignorance really illustrates a point. When we dont know something about something else, we tend to believe what Dan Rather tells us. And of course he is never biased and he would never use buzz words to sensationlize his boring little story about a bunch of 4-day-dead cult members. Of course not.
Its actually pretty ironic that the Internet gets the worse press when, in truth, it can be the best source for information untainted by the need for hype enough to keep up with the Pepsi commercials. And, yes, its also an excellent source for pictures that would make Larry Flint blush and information on how we must all shed our "containers" and meet Do and Ti the next time some commet passes while a Lunar eclipse takes place on Palm Sunday.