By the People, For the People

Parsley, 03/09/04

While the Internet bubble of the 1990’s has become a distant memory, the Internet hype bubble still shows no signs of bursting. These days it seems like everywhere you go someone’s talking about blog this and Friendster that and XML some other thing. News coverage of the Howard Dean campaign, both before and after the candidate’s defeat, focused on the emerging power of the “blogosphere” in politics and the media. It starts to feel like if your opinions aren’t on the web they just don’t matter.

Tired of all that, but don’t know how to make your own web site, or just plain don’t want to? Yeah, yeah, I know, your site would be awesome. No one’s debating that. You just have better things to do; I understand. You’re no loser, it’s just these computers are confusing, right?

Well, tell you what I’ll do:

You are hereby permitted to tell people Camp No Friends is your web site.

I don’t care; you and I probably don’t know any of the same people so they’ll never figure it out. Everybody uses a pseudonym online anyway. Next time someone asks if they can link to your site just give them this address. You’ll get all the prestige that comes with a hot online presence with none of that damn nerd stuff.

Just copy and paste this code wherever you need it:

<a href="http://www.campnofriends.com">Check out my web site!</a>

Or if you don’t want to figure out what all that stuff is for, just copy and paste this instead:

I don't really understand all this HTML stuff so I just cut and pasted the link - can anybody tell me how to do it? My website is at http://www.campnofriends.com. ;)

What’s that? Need help getting a job? No problem! Slip this into the old resumé:

Webmaster and Content Provider, Camp No Friends.com
2003-Present
- Designed and maintained a popular online entertainment portal
- Kept site updated with fresh content in a variety of genres
- Coded in XHTML, PHP, and CSS for WinXP, OSX, and ICUP
- Totally subverted paradigms in a proactive way

Finally, while there’s no way to copy and paste in your day to day speech, feel free to use some of these lines at cocktail parties, job interviews, yoga classes, whatever.

  • “Yeah, I have a website at campnofriends.com.”
  • “You should check out my website, campnofriends.com.”
  • “I’m working on expanding my online presence at campnofriends.com.”
  • “I should put that on my website.”

Hope this helps.