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A Poke in the Eye of the Online/Multimedia Industrial Complex


Vol. 1, No. 1

Unabomber: Freelance writerās revenge

Why do we care so much about where the Unabomber put his feces? OK, he sprinkled it in his garden, but letās face it: The FBI was the one eating it for almost 18 years while he mailed out cute handcrafted, birch-wood bombs. We care because heās our secret hero, not only because he bombed politically incorrect people like airline and timber industry execs (take that! for that cruddy food and for ripping down whatās left of the forests), but because he coerced the New York Times to run his manifesto. Now thatās a true feat. And it had to have pissed off his unpublished-writer brother. You can outwit the FBI for over a decade, but getting the attention of the stodgiest editors in the world is a task of mammoth proportions. And from what we can tell, they didnāt even edit it and add in "Mr." So-and-So every time a proper name was mentioned on second reference. The scandal of it. Heās either a poster boy for Luddites everywhere or their bad apple. He wrote eloquently about the dehumanizing nature of technology, but, oops, killed a few people in order to get published. Hey, with the Times, thatās probably what it takes.
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InfoConstruction Highway

Not to sound too much like Andy "Vote to Save My Job" Rooney, but did you ever wonder why there are so many "under construction" signs on the World Wide Web? If you havenāt heard about the vaunted Infobahn, Infohighway, CyberSuperByteway, etc. (have you been living in a shotgun shack in Montana or something?!), itās supposed to become more popular than TV, radio, movies, strip clubs, water slides and miniature golf combined. But why do we always seem to hit pages that have glorious black-and-yellow signs saying "UNDER CONSTRUCTION"? Theyāre cute, sure, and some have been downright artsy little signs or hard hats, but how do they get away with this? How many times have you tuned in to a TV show and, halfway through the sitcom, you get a message: "Sorry, writers still working through jokes." OK, maybe they should work through more jokes before going on the air, but thatās not the point. We here at 3-MR have a couple rules of the road everyone should follow: *Finish the basics of your Web site before telling people to visit. *No more construction signs. A "coming soon" section of your Web site will suffice. *If youāre working on a section, donāt provide links to it or put it in the contents until itās completed. If you really believe the Web should be a professional domain for global business (and maybe it shouldnāt), try not to derail it with detour signs.

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Buzzword Bashing
[part of an occasional series]

Mismatched Metaphors:
cybermall, cybercash, cybernaut, cyberia, and other cyber-happy references

Doozy Double Entendres:
Web spiders, cobweb jokes, "caught in the Web," any graphic that looks like a spiderās web surfing safaris, surfās up, surf watch

Broadcast Boors:
"online" when it isnāt: NBC Online during the Nightly News ("the stories behind the news" whatever that means·), and E.T. ("Entertainment Tonight") Online, with absolutely nothing to do with being online.



"3-Minute Roast" is a weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.

Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
Lefty Periwinkle - First Amendment Expert
Mark Glaser - Unpaid Editorial Intern

* If you hate our rantings, send a reply message: "Bill Gates is funny
and you aren't," and we'll discontinue service.
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This e-newsletter is copyright 1997 Mark Glaser

 

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