A Genuine Response to a Snotty, Cynical FAX SEX ----------------------------------------------- Created on 2019-11-27 This post is in response to a semi-recent post on baud.baby's FAX SEX phlog: gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20191030.txt Okay, okay, I know it was a mostly tongue-in-cheek post and we're just being silly, but I think it's a good time to look at a certain type of problem that exists everywhere, but is very prominent in technology: This idea that you have to be all or nothing. Tech news is the worst, and try reading hackernews, bleh, not every company has to be the next facebook, but why do we have this type of gate-keeping in hobby communities? Can't a person just enjoy gopherspace for a while, and have a small gopherhole that they update infrequently? This isn't an indictment of Cat's message, by the way. I think it's entirely accurate and fair, but rather of the hypothetical person Cat was talking about. Why do the feel the need to quit the www completely? Look, I think gopher is neat. But a replacement for the www? No way! The web is many things to many people, and can do all sorts of different things. Gopher, on the other hand... Well, Gopher is a medium for transmitting text, and not really good at much else. It's great for screaming into the void--like a lot of people do on the web, but you can't *completely* replace the www with it. So why do they try? Why not set up your gopherhole, and tend it like a garden in your back yard? If you know you're not going to use it often, don't plant flowers that need constant upkeep (A phlog), just go out there and water it once in a while, when you feel like it. Keep it short and simple. And keep it fun. Also, for cryin' in the soup, would it hurt you to put up a contact page, in case somebody wants to talk to you? Oh boy, here I go replying to a month old phlog post. SUBMIT.