Blood on the Bandwith

April 26, 1998

By Morgan Carlson

I've been an Internet rat for a few years now.... I've been everywhere,
from homepages to message boards and from love pages to hate pages. I've
chatted in dozens of chat rooms and given my opinions of the world at
large in guestbooks across the land. Hundreds of Fiona-loving websurfers
sing my praises, and countless Bush fans hate my guts. In short, I'm a
Web geek.
In my first few weeks of Internet surfing, I frequently chatted at the
Sierra On-Line website (Sierra is a big computer game company). It was a
cool place to chat, and I met a kick-ass girl named Suzanne during my
travels. She was a geek's dream - always up for some Internet gaming or
some wild cybersex in the Kid's Educational Games chat room. I miss
her.... she was even cute AND wore glasses..... sigh..... (In an
unrelated side note, Sierra closed the chat area because it seemed that
nobody was actually talking about Sierra products. And people were
terrifying the children there, too.)
But anyway, she told me about this place called Firefly. It was an
on-line community of sorts, with themed venues to discuss your favorite
stuff, and the prerequisite chat rooms and mailboxes. So Suzanne and I
continued our relationship there, and I fell in love with the place. It
was so much fun! I became a regular, and the two of us became a popular
couple amongst the Firefly faithful.
So, I found myself going to Firefly on a daily basis. It was such fun
to check my mailbox to see who had writtten while I was gone. And
Suzanne and I got to terrorize a whole new set of kids. Life was pretty
sweet.
Then, I went home for summer, following freshman year here at Hofstra.
Suzanne and I gave some lame attempts at snail mailing and we slowly
drifted apart.
To make matters worse, I returned to Hofstra and discovered that
Firefly had revamped their whole system. They had replaced the familiar,
happy interface with some sleek, "passport" driven system. The deal was
- a virtual passport would be accessible at all times, and all you had to
do was click on the appropriate button (such as "mailbox" or "venues")
and you would go to that area. Firefly was no longer stylish.... just
purely functional.
Everything I loved about Firefly - the simple charm, the community
feel, Suzanne - had gone up in smoke. I stayed out of loyalty, but it
just wasn't the same.
But, as the weeks went by, the new Firefly kinda grew on me. The
passport was pretty quick and efficient, if not charming. Everyone on
Firefly still got their own personalized mini-homepages, which was
great. And I met some cool people - especially Jenny and Lisa. Life
gave me a lemon.... but I made lemonade.
So Firefly remains as my home away from home. But now it seems - and
these are only rumors, but still - Microsoft wants a piece of Firefly.
Apparently, Bill Gates is fascinated by Firefly's passport technology
and is snatching it up. Here's the problem - once Gates has the
technology, Firefly is just a needless expense. We Firefliers will be
tossed aside regardless of our feelings.
These rumors may be untrue, but not unrealistic. Who's to stop Gates
from pulling that kind of shit?
Firefly may not be the place it once was, but I feel about it the same
way people feel about their favorite restaurant: the service isn't that
great anymore and it doesn't have anything new to offer, but it's
comfortable and you know everyone's names already.
It will be a sad day if Firefly goes down..... like losing an old
friend. We geeks like to roost.... and I'll have to find a new home.
Sigh. Anyone care to put a nerd up for a night or two?
- Morgan -

ecent.