April 1997 feature by Leslie Harpold |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Lost In Space Let me tell you, if I had to wait for a 38k graphic and a Java applet to
load every time I opened my home page, I'd kill myself too. This is not
about design, however, or the internet or computers for that matter. This
is classic cult stuff. When the Hare Krishnas do something wacky, no one
contacts FTD because they sell flowers in airports to generate revenue.
The web design picture gets even more bleak on the San Diego Polo Club Home
Page where a 61k graphic grabs your machine and gives you enough time to
grab a Pepsi and light a smoke before proceeding, providing you have the
patience to wait that long. I took that graphic to GifWizard and got it down to 22k with no
image quality compromise, and as a compressed .jpeg, got it to 11k before
it got all weird and smudgy looking.
Approximately 30 people a day in the United States commit suicide, but when
they all do it in the same room, it apparently is cause for great media
hype. So it goes for the "employees" at Highersource - staffed by
people who followed cult leader Martin Applewhite, a whole web design and
programming firm bid us adieu on March 27th.
Like everyone else, I was compelled, however, to visit their web site, to
see what they were all about. The name of the cult's design arm was
"Higher Source" - to me a clear indication that the source code of their
pages is where I would find the real story. To understand the
conspiracists, I decided, I had to think like them. I looked at the HTML
source code on their manifesto and organization information looking for
clues or comment tags that might point me in he direction of some sort of
secret info. I figure, hey, if you're going to have a cult on the
internet, why not build some sort of secret communiqué out of meta tags?
My search was disappointing however, the source is pretty standard stuff.
No whispery comments or messages to God, Aliens or Elvis. My personal
favorite is their image of the higher incarnation - straight out of
Close Encounters.
WWWitch Hunt
Yet this is being hailed in the headlines as having much to do with the
internet, and while there are some compelling reasons to make that
association, this is by no means a reason to blame new media. Even on
their web site they noted they placed newspaper ads to enhance their
membership drive. They also had a satellite broadcast, distributed fliers,
held seminars, and wrote a book.
If you haven't been paying attention, this is straight up old media.
This is the first mass suicide where the participants have a web
presence. Timothy Leary didn't live long enough to do his one man show on
the same topic, and these people, by the time it was time to go had the
savvy to know television would be the preferred medium to dispense
information, leaving video tapes for the paparazzi to glom onto - a web
site does not good television make, as the opiate of the masses is still
the fastest and most thorough way to disseminate information.
If the Internet had been what it is today, I assure you Jim Jones would
have had a web site. All the best cults, and even some of the crappy ones
do nowadays. Now you can deliver your message in a multiplatform
environment. Nothing different about this one, except that they have cool
names for things like "shedding their containers" and that their vision of
God was swiped from L. Ron Hubbard. The late leaders of the cult "Do" and
"Ti" met in the early 70s in an asylum where he was a patient and she was a
nurse. Sound enough like a James Taylor song for you? Well, you may
remember them from their old cult H.I.M. in the 70s, Human Individual
Metamorphosis, advocating a similar doctrine of UFOs and aliens and how
they were higher beings in earthly shells doing "research" here on earth.
Kids, none of this is new, and nothing is really unique. They had a groovy
pad and a definite fashion statement, and that's good, I always advocate
good shoes for important media and social events, but this is a little
much, even for me.
Geeks will be geeks though, and it only took a half hour before the web was
abuzz with speculation about the cult. Less than 24 hours later, a spoof site appeared.
Jokes and rumors abounded, but no one seems to be laughing at what I think
is the funniest thing. They all got new shoes for the event. In
preparation to leave their earthly trappings behind, they got new shoes,
and all were carrying five bucks and some quarters. To pay the
intergalactic toll perhaps? Nope. It probably was mad money. Let me
assure you that if I were joining some
intergalactic convoy I just ain't a gonna pay no toll.
I know that in the area formerly known as the Soviet Union, American
currency is one of the most desirable things a person can have, but I can't
see the good of five bucks and change for the phone in outer space. Maybe
they thought that the mother ship that would carry them "home" would stop
at some sort of currency exchange so they wouldn't have to travel
unprepared. I'd have used travelers checks, myself. Never leave my
container without 'em.
Reading the manifesto of Higher Source, the wacky bunch of computer
consultants and web designers who checked out of Hotel California so they
could return to their alien higher life form origins is no different than
any other cult behavior. They make a plea to the misunderstood
neo-schizophrenic who has been misunderstood, and advocate not getting laid
not as a social failure, but a path to enlightenment. Usually in cults,
you're allowed to sleep with the master, but it seems in this case - as far
as we know, even he kept the snake in the garden, and many of the male
members had voluntarily submitted to castration to keep their minds pure.
I'm waiting for the only other computer professional based cult I know of
to try to outdo them. Freddy Lenz and company could easily beat
thirty-nine members without even batting an eyelash, as their membership is
much larger. They even have a better
website.. Meanwhile, I'm just
going to wait to read the vodka/phenobabritol cocktail recipe in Wired.
Join Us?
I was thinking of starting the Cult of SMUG, encouraging people to achieve a
perfect state of smugosity. Hell, we're charismatic enough to pull it off,
we know where to get the best deals on great shoes. But the thing is,
although I understand image compression, I'm not willing to get a haircut
and and shrouds aren't slimming even in
ceremonial purple.
back to the junk drawer
|
|
·feature·
·net worth·
·bumping uglies·
·smoking jacket·
·ear candy·
·feed hollywood·
·target audience·
·three dollar bill·
·compulsion·
·posedown·
·the biswick files·
·mystery date·
·and such and such·
·blab·
·kissing booth·
·contents·
·freakshow·
·fan club·
·junk drawer·
copyright © 1996, 1997 fearless media