September 24, 2005

• EARLY INTERNET EXPERIENCES: THE SITE FIGHTS

  
  

  This is a repost from Sept. 26th, 2004.  (Some of the text below is from my unfinished “essay”: “A Short History of the Web” accessible from the “ComputerBS” section of “AllThingsMike“. The images are all early composites I created as “awards” or “banners” and were originally on the “Site Fights” section of my website.)

  
  

  “The ever revolving inanity that is The Site Fights”

  
  

  
  There are lots of schemes on the internet. A lot of people thought they could make a difference, make history, or merely make money by doing something with the web. Some would build stores, losing rather than making money as they sold goods worldwide at a loss. Some would build communities, and offer free webspace to budding webmasters so they could put links and advertisements everywhere in hopes to get customers. And some created competitions, another way to add your “link” to thousands of sites. The first and most famous of these webcompetitions is the Site Fights. Think of a ponzi scheme, or a pyramid scheme, where one is offered riches by sticking with the program, and following the steps, the carrot always dangling just so much ahead of the stick. The Site Fights offered one a chance to “win in the Dome.”  The dome in the site fights was merely the last rung of a very tall ladder.
  

  
  

  To “win in the dome” one had to pass through an endless loop of smaller competitions, and had to choose a “team”, one of twelve, each promoting a different interest, and each creating more and more websites with almost the same look and feel, each linking to the site fights, and each feeding on itself.
  I chose a team with which to be identified, and submitted my site. It was one of thoses decisions, in both real and virtual life, which seems so small at first, but which snowballs into a monster. I can only seriously call two people “friends” that I made while in the competition.
  I entered my site on February 12, 2000, a day which will live in infamy.

  
  

   

  
  

  “Feuding and Fighting For Fun and Friendship.”

  
  

  
  The rules are astounding and mundane. The rulebook is long, seems to repeat inanity after inanity, and makes one wonder what kind of substance into which he has stepped. You are admonished to paste URL’s and images into your pages, before the Site Fights crew even visits, and these are the first of many items of “site fights stuff” which will end up littering my website. I “spun off” my poetry section from AllThingsMike, renamed the new site: ElectricPoetry, and entered the fray.
  I had now idea, as usual, what I was doing. Merely navigating the waters of internet seas, hoping to meet some shipmates.
  I read all the rules. I visited some of my team member’s sites. Some were very interesting. But early in my association with the Site Fights, I found that most pages on most of the sites I visited had two things in common. They took forever to load, because they were graphics heavy with “awards” and  “plaques” and they all seemed to exist only as a platform to exhibit these graphics.
  I searched for the content, and was given a roundelay of unsubstance and unreality. These people were members of a team, and supported each other. The means of support was creating and maintaining images on your websites geared toward the fights. Some of these images, the “spirit flowers” even had to be “virtually watered” in order to survive, or else they “died”, and when that happened, the resulting image looked like so much plant waste on your page.
  I couldn’t find a lot of content. There were a few things which were needed on anyone’s pages in site fights. A guestbook, a hit counter, and a place to put your awards. And the most important thing one needed in the site fights, I would soon find out, were supporters to vote for your site. This was accomplished by the “Vote Exchange” a very clever waste of time, which would cause me to eventually spend up to four hours a night in the process of “voting” for my supporters, so they in turn could vote for me. It was a never ending circle, and if a circle turns around too many times, it creates a rut.

  
  

  I spent about a year with my website in “competition”, and nobody usually took the time to read the poetry, because all one’s time was spent “voting”. In order to receive “votes”, a “fighter” would agree to “exchange” votes with other fighters. I had about a hundred “supporters” who merely “supported” me because I in turn “supported” them. One fighter even created a spreadsheet program (which became very popular) so that one could keep on top of all the “supporters”, and make sure they voted for every site on their exchange. Before long, my site started to advance through the rings. I rarely had time to create new pages, because when I got home from work, I spend about two to three hours “voting” for other sites. The process fed on itself very well, and eventually, I found I was doing hardly anything else except “voting”. Eventually my site got to the top rung of our “team’s” competition before I called it a day.

  
  

  Besides voting for other sites, in order to receive votes for mine, one could promote “Spirit” by posting “Spirit Shouts” on the main Site Fights competition website. The more “Spirit Shouts” a certain team entered, the more visible that team was as a repository of “Spirit”. I wrote in one of my early blogs at the time: April 11, 2000: I’ve just “got back” from “surfing some more sites” with potential VEers, and was struck with the true “Spirit of the Site Fights”. I admit, I was pretty overwhelmed with the process at first, but now rather enjoy visiting the other sites, but not only that. Pretty soon you are part of that vast community I’m always talking about. As I “go back” and notice new additions and changes on the different personal sites,  and as people visit my sites and give praise, you get to a point where you realize that this spirit is the spirit of true community. We might only be joined at first because we agreed to Vote Exchange, and the longer you are in the Fights, I surmise, you start asking every website that comes in the door to VE with you. Seriously, I do feel a “sense of camaraderie unheralded till now.”

  
  

  Because I’m a poet, I found it fairly easy to write “Spirit Shouts” and before long, I was not only the most “spirited” member of my team, but when the team “closed down” (right as I was about to advance out of team competiton into another rung of the ladder) I was asked to become “Spirit Leader” of the new team. Besides the arduous task of starting all over again in competition, I would have to spend time, as Spirit Leader, maintaining the “Shouts and Tasks” pages of the team’s website. The team on which I was a member (“The Seryn Elves”) probably closed down because the person running the show wanted to get off the computer and have a life. When I agreed to become the “Spirit Leader” of the new team, I delved into the experience with gusto, and began creating the “Spirit Pages” of the new team’s site. I even created a new “internet personality”, “FullMoonFyre”, and created a graphic for this new personality. After about six weeks of “creating”, I found I was spending up to four hours a night on the new endeavor. All my endeavors on the internet have been creative. I call AllThingsMike “an electronic experiment in art”, but participating as a webmaster for the Site Fights took more time than I was eventually willing to give, and I bowed out before the new team even got started. (Last time I made a perusal of the teams in the Site Fights, “Elanteria” wasn’t listed, so I’m doubtful it ever got off the ground) I felt terrible sending the Team Leader an email bowing out, but when I finally stopped my participation in the Site Fights, I felt like I was being let out of a long prison stay. The “camaraderie and support” I craved became mundane “tasks”
  and “chores”. My “creative juices” weren’t stifled by this experience, however, and I have found other outlets (including Xanga) for exercising my creativity.

  
  

  Sorry this has turned out to be a rather long post, but I came across my SITEFIGHTS folder the other day, and had almost forgotten all the time I spent in early 2000 on this endeavor. I received internet access in 1999. so this was fairly early in my “internet experience” and because of the vast amount of graphics needed for the many plaques and awards, I learned how to use the Micrografx Picture Publisher program to create my images, and am still using the program today.

  
  

   

  
  

  “Spirit Shouts”

  
  

  Here, for the first time since 2000, are a few of the “Spirit Shouts” I wrote. I didn’t even realize I still had these examples of “Inspirational Poetry” which merely served as more fodder for the Site Fights Mill. I wrote over thirty of these “shouts” in a three month period. A fighter could post a “shout” from other members, and  could repeat his own shouts on different days, but because of who I am, I decided to treat these as poetry, and I wrote a new one each time I shouted for a long while. These three examples were written in April throught June, 2000.

  
  

  1.

  
  

  What with all the strife and terror in the world
  It sure does my heart good to be here
  Shouting for the Seryn Elves
  Is comforting to me
  Is really soothing and theraputic
  And wonderful you see.

  
  

  With all the things we have to encounter
  in our lives,
  It sure does my heart good to be right here
  Shouting and fighting
  And singing out with my team
  The
   Seryn
    Isle
     Elves
  What a wonderful thing…….

  
  

  2.
  In the valley of the shadow of Seryn
  A fair elf stood beside a fairy tree
  And watched with awe and wonder
  The bands of children with whom he played
  Had left the forest in droves
  He looked around
  And declared,
  “Heigh Ho, the Elves of Seryn
  Will miss the children of the forest
  Will miss the spirit they have brought
  But we will take up this spirit
  With our voices SHOUT
  And let the rafters of the building shake”
  He turned and waved goodbye,
  And hugged his Elven friends,

  
  

  THE SPIRIT WILL GO ON,
  HE BELIEVES NOW MORE THAN EVER.

  
  

  3.

  
  

  The spirit sneaks up and it sits
  It simply sits
  No one notices it

  
  

  Unheeded and unneeded
  Unheralded divine
  The spirit sits and it waits

  
  

  Then it creeps into the consciousness
  It appears as a small sprite,
  And it grows
  It
  Grows
  And it grows
  And it flows
  And it flows
  As it grows.

  
  

  As I fight, and as I make friends,
  And then
  The spirit grows
  I am proud to be a Seryn Elf
  Oh so proud to be an Elf myself
  I am glad to be alive today
  Hooray Hooray

  
  

  Hooray

  • 6:21 pm
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