The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - Whoa

Whoa - when did NetSlaves die?

I used to hang out there all the time (during the height of the Cheopys/Uncle Meat pissing matches)...

I've googled for a while, but only came up with Baldwin's half-finished post-mortem. Anybody have a link to anything about what finally killed it?

Grumpy Old-Timer
Friday, September 26, 2003

---"Anybody have a link to anything about what finally killed it?" ----

Self-poisoning?

Stephen Jones
Friday, September 26, 2003

"during the height of the Cheopys/Uncle Meat pissing matches"

'nuff said.

"Maytag Repairman"
Friday, September 26, 2003

Splat and O'Rooney killed it bit by bit, in what can only be described as ironic performance art.

First they made a list of the main ChUM feuders, and "suspended" their accounts. Then they kept accusing them of sneaking back on - accusing all sorts of people of really being them - and deleted a few more users. Then they deleted all their old posts, revising history so that NetSlaves had always been a shiny happy place. Then they suspended all the users who had complained about this process. Finally, faced with real and imaginary incidents of people sneaking back on, they just got happy with the suspensions and IP-bans. Uncle Meat escaped unscathed, and it came out that he was and had been a major financial backer of NS all along and had therefore been given immunity privileges. Finally the board consisted of UM, user who gripes about UM, user getting deleted... and then there were none. At last, the posting capability was frozen - and Baldwin continued to post, although the IP bans were still in effect even for this new read-only board. Now NS.com is a redirect to Amazon, and Baldwin writes for his own site only.

Throughout this whole process, Splat and O'Rooney refused to answer any correspondence from the affected users. They would only even explain the REASON for a ban if a user provided real name and telephone number, let alone actually discuss whether a particular user deserved to be banned or not. This may not have been so bad, except that Splat was threatening to sue any of these users who had sneaked back on after a ban or who had been suspected of doing so for $500 per post for 'unauthorized access', and was also threatening to call the bosses, parents, and significant other's of the banned users in order to get them fired or unloved. Someone who sure SEEMED to be Splat, although may not have been, was raging on the FC forums about how his 'business model' had been ruined by pranksters and trolls and how he was going to sue every last one he could find.

Meanwhile, Baldwin was apparently evenhanded and somewhat of a bystander and, though he promised to check in on things and genuinely meant well, never managed to get a word out of the other two.

It was performance art. Despite being broke-assed unemployed writers with no power whatsoever, Splat and O'Rooney managed to put on a very convincing act of being a big evil corporation - complete with legal threats (that they almost certainly could not afford to carry out) and rude indifferent customer service. They finally got revenge for the way that the world had kicked them around - by having their own mass layoff with the click of a button. Theater in the round, that's what it was.

Trollumination
Friday, September 26, 2003

Truly fascinating, Trollumination.

Israel Orange
Friday, September 26, 2003

Sounds like a textbook case of why it sucks when some little community site grows enough to get really popular. A few people start arguing on the site, it consumes the rest of the site, the admins go overboard, and yet another once-good sites bites the dust...

Andrew Hurst
Friday, September 26, 2003

Netslaves collapsed under the weight of it's own self importance.

bunch 'o tards
Friday, September 26, 2003

Just curious -- what ever happened to Cheopys? I remember him from his FuckedCompany days, though I lost track of him sometime around two years ago or so. (I never even visited NetSlaves.)

Cheopys really seemed to have some emotional problems, but his posts were often amusing (more-so than the average troll's).

Not Gondaba
Friday, September 26, 2003

Cheopys shaved his head and went to work for Microsoft, as I recall....

JP
Monday, September 29, 2003