What's the biggest example of the domino meme in my life? I'm gonna have to go with "I got bored on the sleepy overnight shift at the data center -> Russia invaded Ukraine".
Struggled to think of something that fit... most of the cause/effect stuff in my life has been pretty straightforward.
I think: AOL Chat Room -> owning a champion schipperke.
1. I got bored on the overnight shift and started volunteering for LiveJournal's support team.
2. I kept getting put in charge of more and more shit, because I got shit done
3. I got laid off from said overnight shift, and since it was the tail end of the dotcom burst, decided to try college again.
4. I told everyone I was going to have to pick up a job that would work around classes, probably waiting tables, so I was gonna have to stop volunteering.
5. Like three LJ employees went to Brad and said "I know you have no idea what she does, but if she stops doing it, bad shit will happen."
6. Brad hired me and told me to keep doing it.
7. I spent the next 2 years cheerfully doing like 7 jobs so Brad didn't have to deal with a lot of the things he hated.
8. This freed him up to work on interesting technical problems, including how to best support text in non-Western Latin encodings.
I remember you from that time (I was a major lurker). Specifically a long post you made explaining moderation and safe harbour provisions (?) that I credit as sparking my interest in the legal underpinnings of the internet.
But I didn't know much of all this.
I kept my mouth shut at the time because I was still trying to fix it internally, then when I quit I was trying to avoid fucking over my team members who couldn't. Then I had a nervous breakdown for a year or so, and then I was starting up a competing service so it wouldn't have been a good idea.
i believed you when you said it, but didn't realize you'd been in the maelstrom! mad respect.
a bunch of essays about the fucked up shit behind the scenes at internet institutions, especially by marginalized people, would be pretty awesome.
hell, maybe a zine...
I keep saying that I'm going to write a book someday, but my memory is such shit I know I've forgotten like 80% of the interesting stuff and the rest is just grudges I'm going to hold until the heat death of the universe, heh
People like to look down on grudge-holding, but I see it more as "holding people accountable for the shit they do, even if only in my mind" and that's worthwhile.
It occurs to me a lot of words of yours already exist in various places. I'm also reminded when Terry Gross wanted to do a book about her show, she hired a person who collaborated with her on selecting the interviews that are the heart of the book.
Just sayin, you have a lot of material already.
Haha yes.
I have often wondered whether it was indeed that one group that supposedly kicked off strikethrough (WfI), and whether they were real?
They never left much of a trace - though that would've been harder to find then than it is now.
They existed, in that it was one vigilante on a crusade who was picked up and manipulated by an organized group of people who I still don't talk about because I have been almost swatted enough times in my life
