Why I Hate The Spot

And Why It Must Be Stopped

Updated December 30, 1995 by Rebecca L. Eisenberg

Hello, and welcome to Rebecca's Rants, Volume V! Tired of having to hear ordinary opinions on events? Then you've come to the right place! With Rebecca's Rants, you can hear mine! The following points of view are mine and mine alone. If you care to respond, you may do so by writing to mars@bossanova.com, and maybe I will even post my response to you here! (or maybe not.)

This Week's Rant: Why I hate THE SPOT and Why It Must Be Stopped.

those of you who know me (or have even read my home page) know i am a sucker for pop culture. i watched both "beverly hills 90210" and "melrose place" from their first episodes on through the present -- every single episode -- i kid you not.

i know that a lot of you claim to have done the same, but i don't believe you. for me it is The Truth. i watched the very first episode of 90210 -- ask my roommate my first year in law school, jacqui jones -- and i watched the first episode of melrose place -- ask song oh and dan feldman, whom i worked with at morrison and forrester (ack!) the summer of 1992.

i have every, i mean every episode of "my so-called life" on videotape. i have followed all four seasons of "the real world" on mtv, and have watched all of "road rules" (i even applied to be on "real world" but was rejected. (it's all whom you know.))

i read sassy magazine when it was good, and mourned for it was it was bought out by those bad people .. but read it anyway.

yep, i have seen a lot of crap in my day.

but nothing, i mean nothing prepared me for the utter crappiness of the spot.

i have a history with the spot, actually. i read it a couple of months ago, for a couple days, waiting for it to get interesting. you know, when i first saw it, i did think it was real. i was a little confused, however, having lived on venice beach for a year, and having never heard of "the spot." i would have heard of it. i Get Around.

but then i realized that no real life human could be as completely inane, boring, and pathetically unoriginal as the ones who reside in the alleged spot.

i put it away for a while, feeling good about myself that i had been so generous to file the spot in my "fun things" sub-bookmark netscape file, along with the likes of phrack and 2600 magazine, geekgirl, word, cockroach world, la paranoia, and BigDick.ORG(an).

how wrong i was!

having read all of the hype in the 10 internet magazines i read about the really neat-o "site of the year," i had to Look At The Spot Again.

and now i'm so depressed i'm going to curl up with my new laura lemay html in 14-days book and go to sleep!

but wait! i have to write this rant first!

IT IS SO HORRIBLE! IT IS TERRIBLE! IT MUST BE STOPPED!

apparently, in addition to the spot's already-existing totally banal and obviously fake daily posts, the spotees are now starting to incorporate SHOCKWAVE, with their first shockwave use being "dress michele up in sexy lingerie, just like she does at work ... fun for you boys!"

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

the next shockwave use will be -- get this one, big surprise here -- to dress up carrie.

and not coincidentally, according to tara, the site is going to have to soon "start paying for itself!"

oh, and if you really want a mind-number, you can look at lon's totally uninspiring list of "what is on a guy's mind" ... including penthouse, sports, and budweiser.

when i saw this, i felt like i was going to puke. spotted puke. spotpuke.

i did what any civic-minded webgrrl nrrdchick, protector of pop-culture would do.

i sent an email to the Most Famous On-Line Person I Know, jonathan steuer, who grew up one mile from me in milwaukee, and was the best "chiam pumperknickel" my mother ever had the pleasure of teaching in her hebrew school class. jonathan is now a cel-web-rity, running the much-loved cyborganic gardens and cafe, which filled up six whole pages in Rolling Stone Magazine a month ago, and giving speeches in san francisco to the masses of the converted public who already believe that Internet Censorship Is Bad.

well, i right now am in favor of censoring the net. i want to ban the spot, because it is too crappy.

just like jonathan, i want to do The Right Thing(tm).

i am overwhelmed by grief.

granted, i have oft complained, in my pretentious yet jaded way, that the majority of people are wrong and stupid. nonetheless, the net was, at least at one point, a place where *some* intelligence could be found. i now have doubts.

what a pathetic testimony to the state of pop culture that the "cool site of the year" represents the most low, the most uninspiring, the most unoriginal, and the most overused hype that we already see in Real Life and that we already seek refuge from on line.

and what is even sadder, is the fact that most internet-sters are not going to complain about the spot because they too want to be "cool site of the day," or "cool site of the year," or whatever.

the shame, the embarassment, the ball-less-ness of it all!

well, i am not afraid. they were not going to make this the "cool site of the day" anyway. ha!

i want original content! i want thought! i want something i have not seen before, or heard before, or read before.

perhaps i should just resume watching hal hartley movies and reading marge piercy, and avoid the web for a while.

nahhh ........

rant over.
signing off.
rebecca.

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