You know .. what I love about the internet in general and SI in particular is the chaos* of it - the newness, the freedom, the sense of an art form that evolves with each post, the confrontation and the friendship and the intelligence that seems to ooze out of the whole ball of wax by some miraculous unguided process.
And that is harmed when posters are paid for posting, imho. Sure, the hypesters do it - but they are sleazeballs, so it is natural for them. Proponents of The Truth should be above that.
* - Chaos - near me here is a small point enclosing a harbour which (point and harbour both) were once owned by a man who had helped found a club named CHAOS - 'Cannon Hunters Association Of Seattle' ... there were about five or six members, each of whom paid for a real actual cannon with the bore of a roll of toilet paper, and mounted them on their respective boats, to be fired on ceremonial occasions. One hot dry August day, John Wayne (yes, that John Wayne - a member of CHAOS) was about to drop the anchor of his 130-foot ex-Canadian minesweeper 'Wild Goose' in the harbour of his fellow member, and decided to fire the cannon to alert his friend of his presence, that he might bring screech (a rum-like moonshine) and be festive. Trouble was - the blast of flaming toilet paper reached the dry grass of the point, and great thirsts were developed before the ensuing blaze was extinguished. It was all they could do to save the log house with the bone-dry cedar shakes.
So ... I figure, if those guys were around today, and had nothing better to do, they would be FBNers - just for the love of it, the esprit de corps. And the flames. |
