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425 lines
25 KiB
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TO JASON SCOTT, FROM MOGEL
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Well, hey there. I decided to write a huge slew of post-'90s
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scene-history babble right here. This is going to be very minimalistic,
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because the actual purpose is to give you some possible background
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information for (a) your own knowledge and/or reference (b) some
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information about the 'zines both below AND already in your archive.
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I'd rather *not* have this published anywhere... I could write
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something, sometime, if you're looking for that.
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First off, if you have any *specific* questions, please ask them.
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Because I wasn't exactly sure what you're looking for, this might end up
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being a lot of silly ramble. I'm also a bit tired today, but I want to
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get some of these archives up. I hope you get something out of this long
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thing.
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I started BBSing in '90, but most of that was just calling up
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local Philly boards, getting a sense of the culture, and so on. Although
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I noticed people trading those "t-file thingies" around, I never actually
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paid much attention until '93, when I downloaded some Phrack and cDc
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issues. Needless to say, they had an effect on me--I'll spare you the
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sentimental thoughts for another time.
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I observed that all of the heavy t-file boards of the Philly area
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were virtually dead. Sure, we had a *slew* of very inane 'HACKER' bbses
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(which always related to BBS-hacking or phreak BOX files, heh). I guess a
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lot happened that year--I also first got on the net, with a hacked
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upenn.edu account. I decided to put up my own bbs (MogelLand, which was a
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play off BlottoLand), and I downloaded like mad.
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After a month or two, I had a very sizable collection of t-files.
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My BBS became fairly unique, and a whole slew of locals called it. Some
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of them I got along well with, of course, and we shared a similar
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obnoxious attitude. We decided to "start a t-file group" in early '94.
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There were a few other awful, awful groups in our area at the time (one is
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"the hackers warehouse", which is on your site currently), and we made fun
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of them a lot. My BBS became kind of a PA-center for text activity at
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that point, and HOE began.
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As mentioned, HOE was basically intented to be a trash-zine, as
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another effort to get a t-file group. None of us expected it to be
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downloaded, or paid any attention to. But they were.
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As the HOE files started getting downloaded, we started getting
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random callers from outside of PA. And we started getting a lot more
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obscure stuff. I was virtually exposed to every 'popular' pre-1994 t-file
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group there was, give or take a few. Probably the most distributed
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e'zines at the time were cdc, phrack, fuck, uxu, and blah. It seemed
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*everyone* had read (at least a few of) them, and every text-based BBS had
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copies of them.
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One e'zine that was really popular was VaS, which was started by a
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guy named Studmuffin the same year, in Detroit. VaS was really bad, but
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it managed get a following of some of the more obnoxious e'zine folks--it
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was basically South Park-level humor, full of racism and ha-ha-poop, but
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at least the creator was self-aware and it was somewhat of a parody.
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Eventually another guy, TPP, took over VaS, only this guy didn't really
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"get it"--he thought that VaS was totally serious, and the
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intentionally-offensive joke was lost. I think they may still release.
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ANYWAY, another contemporary t-file group was BGR (the brotherhood
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of gods and retards). I saw them scattered in your ANARCHY section and
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whatnot. BGR was actually the compositive of BOM, BAR, and GOD--three
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totally different 'HACKER/ANARCHY' t-file groups from the New Jersey area.
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One of the most prolific writers was Abigwar. He took notice of HOE and
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started writing for us.
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Two more things happened: Black Francis, a local guy from Philly,
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read HOE and loved the concept. He started his own zine, RED (later
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renamed to PEZ, and it was also pretty popular in the area. Also, in late
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1994, everyone realized how easy it was to set up 800 numbers illegally.
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My BBS got one. I got a huge ton of LD callers, and my BBS was virtually
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always-busy.
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This is where I first got into contact with a bunch of other guys,
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and actually 'networked' with other text file writers. The strange thing
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was, HOE was originally concieved as a stupid joke, but it was getting
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distributed to BBS's with other t-files. I had called a few cDc-related
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BBS's (Demon Roach Underground, /<ingdom of Shit, Cool Beans!, Ripco) at
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the time and started exchanging emails with Obscure Images, Franken Gibe,
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Swamp Ratte', and Drunkfux. My own BBS had some callers like James
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Hetfield of MiLK, Pip of The Angry Youth of THO, and a ton of other folks
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that would later become e-zine writers.
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It's interesting to note that a TON of e'zines in '94 were
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directly influence by Gweeds/Guido Sanchez in BLaH. HOE, THO, MiLK
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certainly were. In early '95 I also became more internet-friendly, and I
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ran into Y-Windoze, and we became instant-friends, for no explainable
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reason. Later I discovered that he was Baphomet from PuD, and PUD was a
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direct inspiration of BLaH. IBFT, Jason Farnon's thing (JF also wrote for
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'Anti-Warez Association', on your site) was also a BLaH-inspired thing.
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It's strange how many 'zines started from BLaH, particularly because the
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*actual* quality of BLaH is questionable. Most of it is the
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attitude/enthusiasm, I guess. Not to sound corny, but a lot of people
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viewed BLaH as one of the first t-file groups to bring an 'iconic',
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group-like feeling into the post-90 BBS world. They just had a very
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identifiable attitude.
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In '95 I also discovered the dumb world of IRC and ran into Gweeds
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for the first time. Also, DisordeR of the 'zine FUCK. Me, DisordeR,
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black francis (bF), Rattle (some sysop of the time), and Jamesy created
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#zines, which became a popular IRC staple for t-file guys. Eventually we
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moved to #ezines.
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This time was particularly confusing because it was the last days
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of big BBS activity, and slowly people who would more ocassionally
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interact were suddenly able to interact all the time, in a more 'global',
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internet sort of way. IBFT came out of this time--they had a very clear
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style, it was the ultimate "You Suck"/rant-style 'zine, basically. It was
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very appropriate for the time, because that kind of attitude was really
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popular (and still is?) in '95.
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The movement to the internet actually 'hurt' the e'zine scene a
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lot, although you wouldn't think it--"more connectivity" kind of took away
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some of the subversive magic that t-files had, I think. Interest started
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dropping, and at some points a lot of us felt that the only people that
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cared about t-files anymore were the editors themselves, the writers, and
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a few random weirdos. All we had was a badly run etext.org, and a few
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obscure FTP sites.
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Of course, there were other communities. The writers of SoB in
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Texas had a BBS and internet clique of 15-20 guys that interacted very
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insularly. The Sweden folks of uXu were similar. The cDc people were
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very exclusive and didn't talk much to outsiders easily. I'm
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psuedo-friends with a few of them, but the average e-zine writer/reader
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isn't. cDc clung to the 'hacker' image above all during this time.
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Anyway, the lack of overt-interest made a lot of us get bored. bF
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killed pEz at #25, Pip and Jamesy started and killed a ton of e'zines
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(MILK, MILK AND TEA, THO, GASP, STD, and others, I'm sure). For some
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reason, my BBS became a bit of a hallmark for some portion of the '95
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community, and it made HOE get more attention that perhaps it deserved. I
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did make effort after HOE #50 to improve the quality, though. It's a
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visable improvement. After I released HOE #81-89, which was a fairly good
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release, it was _such_ a pain in the ass to release those files... and I
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thought about how HOE was inherently a cDc-ripoff. Even if we did our own
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thing, I felt that we'd always be totally biting them (I guess everyone
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was, in some sense)... so I killed HOE at #90.
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There was kind of an upset, "things are really dead this time!"
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feeling after that. A few months later, bF and this ANSI guy named Eerie
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were joking about starting another 'zine. They invited me to write, and I
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suggest that we make this new 'zine a big MERGER 'zine, in which tons of
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burned out writers and editors join up for one big production. Thus
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"DTO", doomed to obscurity, was born.
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The early issues of DTO didn't trickle into the scene that well
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(bad organization with so many people involved, ironically)--so people
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started making "post-HOE" e'zines. The most notable one was Kreid's y0lk,
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which took the obnoxious/trashy HOE thing to a maxim, and released almost
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anything submitted. Y0lk became popular, strangely enough, and had a few
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of its own spin-off y0lk-wannabe groups (Pork and w0ol come to mind).
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Kreid eventually became a DTO writer.
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DTO was a really pretentious and obnoxious idea, and most of the
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writers were very militant about it. The editors were Shadow Tao, Murmur,
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me, Eerie, Black Francis, and Jamesy. Basically, DTO totally ended up
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dominating the 'scene' for a good year or two, and there was almost no
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other 'zines. And when new 'zines popped up, we usually ended up making
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fun of them and they'd give up. It was pretty immature and corny, but
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that's what "SuperBand" projects end up being, I think. There were a few
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'zines made during that time, I guess.
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I'm fearful of listing *extremely* obscure information, since
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you'd probably get as much from just reading the files. Murmur, Jamesy,
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and a kinda doofy guy named Neko ended up spurring quite a lot of life out
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of Illinois. Notably, Quarex was one of those guys, he made an amusing
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thing called Grill.
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I suppose sometime in late '96, The early '90s BBSers who had
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moved to the net were finally starting to psychologically detatch
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themselves from area codes, and there was more random interaction in the
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scene. The 'scene', as it were, is very hard to get a handle on. There
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are hundreds (or thousands) of silent readers for what we write, and
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sometimes it resembles being blindfolded, screaming into a cave--is anyone
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listening?
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There has been a bit of a re-surgence in t-files in the last year,
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who knows why. I think in the last year or two, the 1994-> people (as a
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whole) have finally started accepting this paradigm that text is, in fact,
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a socially interesting event, and a recording of our lives and past. So
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there's a more stable feeling.
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I think I'll just dump this interview I had in HOE #1000 here.
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If you really wanna publish something on your scene page, you can
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certainly use this.
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---
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OH HOLY SHIT IT'S AN INTERVIEW WITH MOGEL
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by CHRISTOPHER CROWE
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Crowe: Let's dispense with some questions!
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Mogel: Interviews should be more interactive. Everything should be
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more interactive. I wish people had buttons. I don't mean
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that. Who cares what Ted Koppel really thinks?
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Crowe: For those who don't know you, give us a general "who you are"
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kinda run down.
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Mogel: Well, I don't know who I am. I like to think of myself,
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ideally, as just some weird guy that sits in the corner and
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bellows awkward social commentary every few minutes. But, you
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probably don't mean that.
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Crowe: I think everyone already knew that much.
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Mogel: I think that I've been online since 1990. I've been involved
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in various "online communities" over the years. I'm generally
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known for being a "text file guy". E-zines, more specifically.
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Although, "E-zine" is such a vague term, isn't it? There's a
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whole slew of stuff included in there. I'm generally associated
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with a community of folks that make up the 1990s version of
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"text files" and "underground digital zines". I use the word
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"E-zine" by default, but I'm generally associated with those.
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I don't know who I am. Who am I? You tell me.
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Crowe: I'd venture to say that's your niche. You've done quite a bit
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of work in those areas--although a lot of it seems to be humor,
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socially-related, and satire. What would you say is your
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favorite?
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Mogel: My personal favorite "area" of e-zines? Uhh, Probably the honest
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stuff. That sounds vague. You know, E'zines have been around
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since the '80s. They started as these little ASCII text files
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that were traded around. The original idea was this:
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Anybody anywhere could write a message and have it, in theory,
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be spread far and wide. It was a strange sense of new-found power,
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really. I mean, before the modem, a kid couldn't do that. He'd
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write something, or say something to his friends. It couldn't be
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spread in a medium where just some random stranger could
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download, read it, and, hopefully, say "WOW!" or (even better)
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"YEAH! ME TOO!". That "me too!" effect, although a common
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expression used be AOLers on UseNet, is a critical direction to
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making good text files. And "being honest" doesn't always mean
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write-in-a-direct-to-the-reader style--it means, addressing
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things in a manner that's going to actually mean something to
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them. So, uhm, that's why I love the honesty. There's a
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certain "trashy" look that e-zines are always going to have.
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It's not a professional thing, and it rarely pretends to be.
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That aesthetic is something that TV could have capitalized on,
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you know, if they weren't so overly-focused on money.
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E-zines are more about the message.
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Crowe: How did you come into these things?
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Mogel: The first e-zines I stumbled upon were the more self-glorified
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cDc, and the much more trashy BLaH. cDc totally inspired me.
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Some of the files in there were totally hilarious and brilliant.
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Of course, a lot of it was total crap, too. This was early 1993
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and a lot of your average computer guys were STILL on BBSes, and
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the mass-move to the internet had not quite happened yet.
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Regardless, in 1994, I decided to do what 40% of the local-BBS
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world was doing: "START MY OWN TEXT FILE GROUP". Since then,
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I've written for quite a few. The most pride probably came from
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the earliest issues of DTO.
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Crowe: Deserved or not, you've pretty much regarded as being at the
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front of the 'zine movement. Probably one of the most well
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known "zine guys" on the net. In your experience, how has the
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text file scene evolved? How has the "web" changed it versus
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the old BBS or even telnet/gopher?
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Mogel: It's definitely not deserved. In the bigger scheme of text
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files, I'm definitely still new. I jokingly refer to 3 periods
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in e-zine history. These terms are only in-jokes with me and my
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pals, though. There's the "oldschool", which is roughly
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1980-1987. This is basically all the original and founding
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e-zines. Some people would say that everything that has been
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done with text files was done in those years. This was totally
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back when BBS-centered e-zines were what was up. The move to
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the internet slowly happened during the next phase. And, in a
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way, this was the true "pioneering" days. Things like PHRACK
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were going to court for publishing stuff. cDc and The Neon
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Knights were quite popular.
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The "middle school" is basically all the e-zines that things
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like cDc inspired. Things like BLaH, FUCK, UXU, IBFT, and so
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on. There was a HUGE slew of these. Sometime around 1993, when
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the internet really took off, these was a real down time for
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this stuff. Some people say that it's never quite recovered.
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It's kind of silly, because, in theory, the internet provides
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*more* fuel for the original idea of an e-zine. Don't get me
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wrong, there has been a resurgence. In 1994, I tend to call
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that "the new school". It's basically when everyone on the BBS
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world, like rats from a sinking ship, hopped to the internet.
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The difference? Well, there's not really a "community" anymore,
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I think. BBS's were full of groups of kids, wanting to be
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subversive, and they'd call up and download these funny-ass text
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files about blowing up mailboxes, or fucking the dead, or
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whatever. With the internet came a new idea that "ANYONE" could
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view these files, and it kind of killed the magic for some
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people. I'm not bitching, though. I mean, to some degree, you
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have to make community happen. You can't just expect random
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people to bump into each other. People who just sit around and
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whine about no community are generally the same types of people
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who nobody would want to be in a community with anyway. (How's
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that for a mean generalization?)
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Crowe: There is a tendency for the new zines to be "angst", "teen
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angst", or "social commentary". Where do you see this heading?
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Where do you see the text file scene heading towards in general?
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Mogel: The angst is typical. DTO had a lot of angst. Basically, uhm,
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I think "angst" is just an emotion, like any. Emotions are
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tasty. But you have to swallow, digest, and shit them out. You
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can't just stick them in your mouth and let them sit there.
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God, that's a terrible analogy.
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But what I mean is... if you use angst as a tool to do something
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cool, that's great. I think it's also common because a lot of
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young people that would be into e-zines are probably going
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through "big changes" in life. Youth is generally a time for
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misdirected anger. Your PAL Y-WiNDoZE wrote a pretty on-point
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article about this topic that's in HOE #90.
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As for "The Scene" (where is that, anyway?)--I have no idea.
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Text files are absurd. I've been half-heartedly trying to
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flagship a sort of neo-new school e-zine movement (yes, I say
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that sarcastically) with the resurgence of HOE. I have no idea
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if it will work or not. Probably not, but it can't hurt to have
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a little fun and try, ya know?
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Crowe: If your not having fun, why do it?
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Mogel: Because you're on a mission from GOD. There *are* e-zines out
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there, but for most of them I rarely pick up something special
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out of them. I feel like, if they were gone tomorrow, I
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wouldn't give a shit. I totally agree, which is eventually why
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I painfully *forced* DTO to die.
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You know, now that I think about it, I think entropy will win
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out. Like, the world would be totally chaotic and pointless.
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My room is messy--I have to *do something* to make it clean.
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So, I have low expectations for the scene's future (people have
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been generally passive), but I'd like it to be a good one,
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somehow.
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Don't get me wrong, there's just so much you can care about a
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group of people who are willing to publish a text file describing
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the TRUE nature of poop.
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Crowe: What about other types of Literature, especially net-based
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stuff. Fiction, Fan Fiction, etc? Other 'zines?
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Mogel: You know, like, "what the hell is the point of text files?
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Well, write for the heart. Write crap. Write totally fucking
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weird shit. There has to be meaning in there *somewhere*."
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Man, I'm so down on 'realist' fiction right now. I see no
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point. It's like a completely accurate painting. What
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function does it serve, other than to impress people with how
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'hard' it was to paint? Expressing things isn't supposed to be
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a complicated exercise, it's supposed to be about expressing
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things.
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I'm not about tooting my horn, although I'm sure some people
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would argue with that. But, still, there's a billion 'stories'
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out there. What's the point in trying to represent reality
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*exactly* as it is? Firstly, that's impossible... and
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even if it weren't, how boring. So, it's up to us to use
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innovative and experimental-style juices. There's not nearly
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enough of that. The problem is that people tend to throw that
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label around so much. "I don't understand this... It must be...
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EXPERIMENTAL!", so basically anything that's inarticulate and
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incomprehensible gets that label. "Lit" on the net. Hmm. You
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know, I've always loved The Onion (www.theonion.com). They've
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basically patented every use of "sarcasm" ever. UXU still
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publishes, although far from regularly (www.uxu.org). That's
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all that rolls off the top of my head, unfortunately. I read
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Film Threat, which is a weekly indie-film e-zine mailed out.
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Crowe: Tell more about HOE, and do you have any other projects coming
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that we might find interesting?
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Mogel: HOE changes. In its most recent incarnation, HOE is basically
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my attempt at pissing all over everything I've ever done. But,
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at the same time, embracing what e-zines are *really* about, to
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some kind of gross, logical extreme. But it's also fun. The
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idea is this: You write something, we publish it. No matter how
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ridiculous, weird, stupid, crazy, silly, etc, it is. "How
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awful," most people would say, "No quality control!" Somehow,
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however, HOE has managed to become pretty fun to work with.
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Our "reject ALMOST nothing" policy has brought us a ton of
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*totally* diverse writers, numbering over 45, and we've been
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gathering a real community of folks. In a lot of ways, it's
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more of a community than ever before. For me, anyway. And by
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writer I mean regular writer. Someone who writes at least every
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other month.
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The idea, again, is this: who the fuck cares? E-zines have
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*always* been trashy. Why pretend that they're not? Instead,
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let's have fun with it. Let's totally run with stupidity.
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|
Let's get naked and dance on main street. In fact, this has
|
|
made some people find new, incredibly creative ways to be
|
|
post-modern and stupid. And at the same time, it's attracted a
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|
few people who don't "get it". People who submit to HOE as if
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it were any regular style e-zine... and that's always good for a
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|
few cheap laughs.
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Crowe: You just gotta respect that sort of lackluster policy on
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|
content. What, if any, is the future of your website, DTO.NET?
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|
Any direction on that front?
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Mogel: Actually, Jamesy now runs DTO.NET, and Murmur is somehow
|
|
releasing issues... although very slowly. But it's a total
|
|
dinosaur. Like a monster. There was something really noble
|
|
about DTO: wanting to make an e-zine that aspired to have
|
|
*actual* quality and style and diversity.
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|
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Crowe: I used to visit dto.net weekly. It was an inspiration, along
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|
with DTO itself for a lot of my early zine work. It would be a
|
|
blast to see it back!
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|
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|
Mogel: well, DTO was monthly for our first 2 years. The problem
|
|
was we were total dreamers. I was probably the least dreamy of
|
|
everyone, and that was a problem. I'm totally into doing
|
|
creative stuff and having fun. I don't care about being "BIG".
|
|
But the rest of the people highly involved really had big ideas.
|
|
We went to this rolling, weekly format. At least 4 new articles
|
|
every week. For a while it was nice, but it began to feel very
|
|
*forced*. I wasn't having fun anymore. I dragged my heels. We
|
|
ended up just bitching all the time. Basically, it was a text
|
|
book case for "too many cooks spoil the dinner". But I am glad
|
|
I did it. It's satisfying to pull something creative together
|
|
with a bunch of friends. And I think that should be anyone's
|
|
goal when doing a community-oriented literary production. Which
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|
most e-zines are.
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|
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Crowe: Like you, I like the community of the whole "scene". I would
|
|
like to see it support itself, and especially each other.
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|
That's basically my site's (www.lit.org) goal. I like doing
|
|
collaborating work with people, I find it rewarding. I like
|
|
sharing my ideas and seeing what other creative people are up
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|
to.
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|
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Mogel: I think that's pretty noble. I'm a big fan of idea-exchange
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|
and communication. We're in a medium of pseudo-"art", but
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|
that's no reason to pretend we're not also in the business of
|
|
communication. In some ways, we have more liberty than anyone
|
|
else anywhere in expressing whatever we want.
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#EOF
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