A Genuine Response to a Snotty, Cynical FAX SEX
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Created on 2019-11-27
This post is in response to a semi-recent post on baud.baby's FAX SEX phlog:
gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20191030.txt
Okay, okay, I know it was a mostly tongue-in-cheek post and we're just being
silly, but I think it's a good time to look at a certain type of problem that
exists everywhere, but is very prominent in technology: This idea that you have
to be all or nothing. Tech news is the worst, and try reading hackernews, bleh,
not every company has to be the next facebook, but why do we have this type
of gate-keeping in hobby communities?
Can't a person just enjoy gopherspace for a while, and have a small gopherhole
that they update infrequently? This isn't an indictment of Cat's message, by
the way. I think it's entirely accurate and fair, but rather of the hypothetical
person Cat was talking about. Why do the feel the need to quit the www
completely?
Look, I think gopher is neat. But a replacement for the www? No way! The web
is many things to many people, and can do all sorts of different things. Gopher,
on the other hand... Well, Gopher is a medium for transmitting text, and not
really good at much else. It's great for screaming into the void--like a lot of
people do on the web, but you can't *completely* replace the www with it.
So why do they try? Why not set up your gopherhole, and tend it like a garden
in your back yard? If you know you're not going to use it often, don't plant
flowers that need constant upkeep (A phlog), just go out there and water it
once in a while, when you feel like it. Keep it short and simple. And keep it fun.
Also, for cryin' in the soup, would it hurt you to put up a contact page, in
case somebody wants to talk to you?
Oh boy, here I go replying to a month old phlog post. SUBMIT.
