Net.Bozo Field Guide Part 2: (retro) tech review

One way to identify those ten net bozos was by their tech. Looking back, you may have forgotten (or never known) some of those systems, so let's reminisce about the internet portals of 1995!

Hacking the Gibson -- "Rabbit, flu shot, someone talk to me!"

I mentioned some of the now-obsolete tech in the prior post, but let's dig deeper here:

• newbie: "AOL e-mail address, uses Performa system bought on Sears credit card." In 1995, AOL was still trying to pitch the idea of the internet in general, as seen in this ad, back when they were offering 10 free hours. Seven years later, AOL would be giving away 1,025 hours for 45 days, then up to 90 days free. And in 2004, Sears was bought by Kmart in an $11 billion deal, which might sound significant, until you see how much Microsoft spent in the mid-2000s. And that Performa? There were a number of models available in 1995, and the following year, the Performa 6360 was pitched as a low-cost multimedia Mac, shipped for just $1,499.
• knowbot: "Sun Workstation, T1 Internet connection. Claims to have taught Ed Kroll everything he knows about the Net." A Sun Ultra 1 workstation was definitely more significant than the newbie's Mac, but it was about 18 times as expensive as the Performa 6360, at $27,995. I didn't find a price quote for a T1 in 1995 (and the cost would vary from market to market), but this 2017 article states that connection starts at about $250 per month and can be as much as $1200 per month.
• t.m.n.h. (Teenage Mutant Ninja Hacker): "[What they claim:] Sun SPARCbook bought with
  stolen credit card number [What they ACTUALLY have:] Tandy 386 bought by parents for X-mas." That's a radical 640-by-480 resolution, for a mere $11,950 for the SPARCbook workstation-class notebook. The Tandy was about 1/6th that cost, and not terribly portable.
• floodgater: "Uses coin-operated computer at the Laundromat. State-of-the art robo-posting software." I can imagine that in much of the world, this sounds very dated, but you can still buy coin-operated computers. I imagine that t's far more common to find free WiFi in laundromats now.
• crotch potato (AKA the erotic neurotic): "SLIP-connected Mac II running Newswatcher for instant decoding of binary images." The Mac II was officially discontinued 5 years before the Handbook, so it'd be a second-hand box in 1995.
• techno shaman: "Potato-Battery powered PB 540C with tribal tattoo-covered pointing pad carried around in a pouch hand-macramed by Balinese tribespeople." That's the PowerBook 540c, and the potato-powered bit was probably a joke, but it's not unfeasible.
• .sig the destroyer: "Any pure ASCII terminal. Avoids Mac and Windows like the plague, cause styled text is .sig's worst enemy." I'll wimp out on this challenge, and leave the image of a pure ASCII terminal to your imagination.
• bitraker: "Toshiba laptop." $500.
• techno hippie: "Homebuilt 386 built from DigiKey parts. Runs off of solar power or cow-methane gas generator." DigiKey is still around, and digging around their site, it looks like they still sell computer parts. I think that homebuilt PCs are a bit easier to make since 1995, if nothing else for the extensive online communities of homebuilders and modders.
• net.spider: "PowerPC, PB 540C, Sony Magic Link, 28.8 modem. Working on building a toasternet in basement." PowerPC ("RISC is good"). Magic Link is an early PDA, "but it's not [just] that." 28.8 modem was a snapshot of a period between 14.4 and 56k. Toasternet is another bit of old jargon, referring to a network of inexpensive, low-powered computers, or "toasters."

There you are, up to speed on the tech of yester-year!

Net.Bozo Field Guide

Who's out there, poking away at devices, connected across and around the world via The Information Mine? Gareth Branwyn helpfully categorized 10 key categories of Net Bozos, with their attributes on handy front-and-back cards, so you could clip and review these, should you wish.

Three of card illustrations, over a hastily made vintage pattern,
sourced from a 1950's Franciscan Atomic Starburst Patterned plate

Are these bozos still found online? More or less:

• newbie: no longer needs AOL, and probably doesn't buy The official America Online Internet Guide, but they're still online, still falling for get rich quick scams, and this tag is still understood. "Still has a life offline. Can answer daily e-mail in one sitting." This kinda stings ;)
• knowbot: yeah, still prevalent, but definitely not by that name. "Internet expert" is probably a fitting tag/ put-down as anything. Instead of writing "read the fucking manual!" it's "do your own research!" or linking to LMGTFY.
• t.m.n.h. (Teenage Mutant Ninja Hacker): still around, and this tag would be understood, but the term "hacker" has been sullied by so many surly youth who download "hack packs" of pre-packaged tools that "hacker" is generally agreed to be someone who breaks into a system. Before this, the exploratory hackers of old tried to coin cracker for those who would maliciously break into systems.
• floodgater: this sounds more like sad, lonely people who thought the internet would be a connection to other people that they couldn't find offline. They still exist, still seeking someone to listen.
• crotch potato (AKA the erotic neurotic): less than a decade after the Handbook was published, the joke that the internet is for porn was set to music, with puppets. The need to have special software to decode images is so far behind us, but this isn't the only really dated bozo category. Yes, crotch potato is a fantastic tag and could be used much more, but it's so much easier to be access porn now than in 1995.
• techno shaman: I feel like Gareth was more tuned into or focused on certain corners of the internet, giving them greater representation than perhaps justifies a tag. Check out the old index to archive of alt.* newsgroups for an idea of what some people valued and stored. Still, this is another sign that the Happy Mutant Handbook was right up my alley.
• .sig the destroyer: Another reference that died shortly after the publication of this book. Signature blocks haven't completely gone away, and live on both in some forums, and emails. To be honest, I'm surprised that Kibo wasn't mentioned here.
• bitraker: like a muckraker, but on the internet, and they still exist. But instead of browsing through Usenet, The Well and AOL, they probably use Google Alerts to have new information about whatever beat they cover.
• techno hippie: "First colonists of cyberspace. Been around since the Homebrew days, when Whole Earth Review the bleeding-edge of cyberculture mags. Likes to listen the Dead while navigating c-space." This is another part of the history of the internet, with another focus on The WELL, and it references Hackers. But it also circles back to virtual conferences, which are a hot topic in 2020, for very different reasons that there were virtual conferences in 1995.
• net.spider: "takes pride in being everywhere on the Net at once." That's a lot harder now, but there are definitely sources for original content that gets spread elsewhere, and being the first to know is something some still take pride in now. It feels a bit like trying to be a Renaissance person now, when the are so many more topics to know, let alone master, than there 25 years ago. But the thing that irks me is the tag. One of the first internet indexers, or web crawlers, was renamed Spidey in 1995. In other words, human "net spiders" were already being replaced by bots by then. In 2019, 37.2% of all traffic on the internet last year wasn't human.

Updating this list of internet characters is on my to-do list, once I finish my review of the Happy Mutant Handbook. But up next, I'll look at the tech of these ten net bozos, and how you can block a bozo in 1995.

Shenanigans in Cyberspace

What's the difference between a (mean) prank and shenanigans? The former are often "destructive and malicious" while the latter are "lighthearted, good-natured naughtiness." Sounds good to me, Gareth. To cyberspace!

"If you have access to the Internet and USENET newsgroups, you can join a constant twittering prankster's think tank in the alt.shenanigans newsgroup."

But what if you don't, and you only have the Handbook? Branwyn shares some favorite "funny acts of poetic terrorism," from shopping for others (attributed to John Waters), to sending fax maintenance messages, the telemarketer's game (found here in a post dated from 1993, with added goals and points in a follow-up), random acts of randomness on subways or elevators including getting friends to start an impromptu sing-along (less organized than The Liberators international effort, but you get the idea), and lost pet posters.

If you're looking for alt.shenanigans now, it was apparently overrun by spammers, so someone tried to recreate the group on Reddit about 5 years ago, to no avail. And after a spam/ malicious content warning, Google Groups doesn't show any content, at least as far as I can see. But faqs.org has the alt.shenanignas FAQ from 1996. At some point, content was archived to an FTP site, as linked in this Index to archive of alt.* newsgroups, but even that's gone, now. This archive only has the FAQ. Digging some more, I found this list of practical jokes, archived from alt.shenanigans, the page itself archived on the Wayback Machine.

But looking at some of these now, and even the Telemarkter's Game, there are some practical jokes and gags that seem have more that a little Unhappy Mutant in them. My thinking is this: how would I feel to be on the other end of one of these jokes? No one goes into telemarketing to make other people miserable, so why be a jerk to someone making minimum wage? Or why move an outhouse and have someone literally fall into shit? More lost pigeon posters and glitter traps, less buttering toilet seats and supergluing plates down in a diner.

Happy Mutant Hall of Fame - Cicciolina: The Little Fleshy One

Welcome to the original Happy Mutant Hall of Fame, six short profiles on a few of the world's wonderfully unique individuals. (I say Original because I'll expand this list after getting through reviewing the book.)

The first mutant mini-profile confused me at first. On reflection, I somehow mentally classified the Handbook as something of a kooky fun book for the whole family, and it mostly is. But there is definitely some material you wouldn't discuss with mini-mutants, and the story of the porn star turned politician is probably one of them.

Gareth Branwyn wrote about Ilona Staller, the Hungarian-born Italian porn star who is also her stage name, Cicciolina (which translates as "little cuddly," "little fleshy one," and "little cabbage," according to Branwyn). She got into politics in the late 1970s, and in 1987, she was elected to the Italian parliament and continued to perform in hardcore porn. She offered to have sex with a number of men in need of peace and comfort, including Saddam Hussein (twice) and Osama bin Laden, saying "My breasts have only ever helped people while Bin Laden has killed thousands of innocent victims."

So how has she fared since 1995? Though she wasn't re-elected and hasn't held office since her one term, she continued to be active in politics into her 60s, and was remembered in English language pop media/news in 2013. Otherwise, she's mostly forgotten (or unknown) outside of Italy.

Work safe video: she was the inspiration for Pop Will Eat Itself's unofficial 1990 World Cup anthem, Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina, as seen below:

The Mr. Magoo Theory of Mutant Progress

When you think about it, Mr. Magoo's exploits are the perfect metaphor for mutant progress. Like this hapless cartoon geezer, we humans, in our nearsightedness, like to look down the path we've traveled and take credit for everything that's worked out, while conveniently ignoring (or blaming others for) all our screwups. in our arrogance, we can't see all the near disasters that chance has averted. Meanwhile, futurists try to develop forecasting methods to predict what's going to happen as we drive our fume-belching autos into the sunset -- forget about it! Life's more chaotic, complex, and strange than we could ever predict.

In Gareth Branwyn's short piece on the fortunate Mr. Magoo as the personification (or cartoonification?) of mutant progress, he doesn't get into the fact that the codger initially played second fiddle to a bear who had no lines, yet Magoo was popular enough to get a series of shorts and a few movies, kind of like humans who have stumbled into their current position, thinking they're the cat's pajamas instead of a series of happy accidents, in the face of all their (unwitting) efforts to undo their progress at every turn. But overall, still an apt stand-in for mutant progress (and if you have only seen this first short, don't worry - Mr. Magoo changes from an angry old music-hater to a jolly chap, more in keeping with the happy sort of mutants).

For your viewing pleasure, the first short featuring Mr. Magoo: The Ragtime Bear (1949)