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and i would have liked to have known you, but i was just a kid
by mg at 12:03 PM on January 18, 2005
Over the past 4 1/2 years, there have been nearly 50 people who’ve written for BadSam. Nearly every single one of them has eventually left and no longer writes for the site. Frankly, I never minded that anyone left.
The site has, and will continue on without any one of the people who’ve written here, including me. Why? Because BadSam has become its own little virtual community. The makeup of this community has changed significantly over time, but besides for the very beginning when I was the only author and was thrilled on those rare days to be getting more than 10 visitors, this site hasn’t been about any one single person, but the interplay of many people.
This site is a microcosm of the inter-nets, and of life in general. As such, it is expected that people will come and go.
I’ve never expected people to stay here forever, and never felt personally hurt when someone left. Not a single one of those people who’ve left bothered to tell me they were leaving, much less write me a long email to say what an awful person I was and explain that was the reason they were leaving. And lord knows, no one has been in such a tizzy as to go through the archives deleting all their old posts before leaving.
Until last week.
So, goodbye. And thanks for shitting on me and everyone who has ever, is currently, or might ever, be a part of the Bad Sam community. Have a nice life.
comments (55)
Hey wait a minute - it's not April 1st. That really sucks. I was just about to make some comment asking what happened to Linz. There must be more to this story.
by Chris at January 18, 2005 12:42 PM
Yeah we need one of those voices kicking in as on crappy American sitcoms: "Previously on BadSam..."
And then the appropriate dramatic imagery of people shouting at one another, sleeping together, crying, arguing, two suicides, one road accident, and a partridge in a pear tree.
There must be more to it.
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at January 18, 2005 12:46 PM
You could go back and read through the old comment threads to her posts to get a better idea... oh no, wait, those were deleted.
Chris: There surely is more to the story, but though I'll air some dirty laundry, I'll leave the really unmentionables unmentioned. Unless someone wants to explain their side of the story themselves...
by mg at January 18, 2005 12:51 PM
Yeow! The thing with removing my post of Linz's mix CD was a lot more serious than I thought. My guess is that she doesn't like people knowing what she writes here. That's why I like to use my screen name for everything.
It also helps if there are a lot of other MrBlanks out there. I just did a google on my screen name and found a lot of others using it — even on adultswim.com! I had to pick a different screen name >:(
by MrBlank at January 18, 2005 1:16 PM
Does this mean nobody will be sharing music from here on in? I always like to hear something new.
by dominathan at January 18, 2005 2:28 PM
Well, you've got my curiousity piqued. She deleted all her entries, including a classic I won't mention and Mr. Blank deleted her mix CD? Do tell. I can remember a time where MG was gone it was basically the Anna and Linz Show. What a shame. What could we have said that was so bad? If it was me, you know I'm only kidding. Or else drunk.
by Anna at January 18, 2005 6:09 PM
Wow. MG's Totalitarianism is fantastic.
I always felt Linz's post were craptacular.
by LOCKHEED at January 18, 2005 6:11 PM
Well, you seemed to have chased off my friend, DOUCHENATION about two years ago... I haven't seen him in ages, even though he lives just across the park on the upper east side...
by LOCKHEED at January 18, 2005 6:14 PM
I miss him but I'll miss Linz's posts more. Never went for the self-rightous stuff as much but the romantic and... other tales were great and well-written too. Now, not to be blunt, but why is she gone?
by Anna at January 18, 2005 6:22 PM
Lock: Read the post again Lock - she deleted all her old posts.
Anna: You thought Linz's posts were self-righteous? Huh! Don't worry though, it wasn't anything you said.
by mg at January 18, 2005 6:45 PM
Well Linz's posts have not completely disappeared - so there's either some static/dynamic disconnect (web mumbo jumbo) or the scorched earth theory is not quite accurate. Let's not loose our heads here. I'm hoping that what we have here is a temporary tempest in a teapot that will work itself out without people being sucked out of our lives like in that recent film with the dazzling redhead Julianne Moore - what was the name of it? I seem to have forgotten.
Though Linz hasn't posted much here recently, she's one of the gems in waiting that keeps me coming back. I thought her posts were fantastic and informative, and I really enjoyed her "over sensitive" nature. The world needs more people with nerve endings.
by chris at January 18, 2005 6:52 PM
Well, there are two ways of "deleting" entries in Moveable Type. On is to delete it, which removes the post (and all its comments) from the database. This is permanent. The other is to change the post status to "draft." This simply tells MT to not build this post when it builds the archives, and to delete the live copy (if it exists). If you save something as a draft, you can change status on/off at will. If you delete something, MT 'forgets' about it, and what MT doesnt know, MT can't rebuild (or not rebuild).
While they are still 'out there' the old posts really are lost. Putting them back into MT would require reformatting the HTML pages that are still on the server, all ~150 of them, and all ~3000 comments on them, into a template that MT would understand and be able to import. You want to do that for me?
It was Linz choice to leave. Maybe cooler heads wil prevail and she would rethink that.
But because of the way she deleted them, she couldn't just "come back." And I can't really say I'd want to bring someone back who'd so thoughtlessly delete 150 posts, 3000 comments, and 3 years of the life they've chosen to share with us. Simply leaving isn't the problem. Dozens of authors have left BadSam. It is deleting those 150 comment threads that didn't belong to anyone person anymore, and doing so without even asking about it first. Linz could have left the site and never had to give it another thought. But erasing all evidence of her presence here just seems so malicious and selfish.
by mg at January 18, 2005 7:50 PM
Not to suck up but now that you put it that way, I agree. (See the title of my post below, from Thin Lizzie.) That's kind of how I feel but it still makes me feel a little sad about this development. Now let's move on and audition for a new, regular female contributor. Any takers?
by Anna at January 18, 2005 8:00 PM
And I've now concluded my cursory ransacking of the BadSam archives. I see no trace of Linz's posts. I do see much traces of embarassing things I have posted over the years. I too could delete them, but what the hell. That must have been what I was thinking at the time. It's the beauty of blogs with archives.
by Anna at January 18, 2005 8:57 PM
Yo MG, don't let it get you down. Even though I make gay jokes in your direction all the time, doesn't mean that I don't think you're a swell dude.
by Eviltom at January 18, 2005 10:34 PM
And even though I make gay jokes in your direction all the time doesn't mean I would rape you in a dark alley. Does that make you feel better?
by snaggle at January 19, 2005 12:43 AM
I'll substitute for LINZ: Here's my first Linzesque Post:
Johnny B. Nice was really sexed up. He's cute. I have a crush on him. I saved the world again today. I dumped Johnny Q Friendly. He tried to kiss me. I hate guys. Guys are mean. I saved the world yesterday. Johhny O Kindly is handsome. I bought a flower today. I'm shocked at humanity. Johhny J. Radical is a freaky hotty.
The End.
by LOCKHEED at January 19, 2005 6:01 AM
Snags: Would, or wouldn't?
Lock: I didn't want to use this as an excuse to tear anyone down. I certainly could have done so, if I wanted. I was just looking for a way to vent, and explain what has been going down. No reason to make fun of anyone, even if it does strangely make me feel a little better. But, I guess that's just another of those things that makes me a bad person.
by mg at January 19, 2005 7:40 AM
Eek! Well, don't worry, I'm not going anywhere, even if you DO accidentally call me because you left your keyguard off and then don't answer my return call. You bastard.
What? Oh yeah, I think there will be a post soon.
by Adam at January 19, 2005 12:48 PM
Its your fault for having such an alphabetically forward name. Bastard.
by mg at January 19, 2005 12:55 PM
This would explain why I never get calls from MG... Name is too in the middle of list for him to scroll...
by Jerry Wilson at January 19, 2005 1:57 PM
>[Re: grabbing all the old posts.] You want to do that for me?
done.
Format options are simply another script away.
An alternative solution would have been to run a cron job that does mysqldump on a periodic basis (once a month? week?) just to make periodic snapshots of BadSam history and in case your ISP doesn't know what the hell they're doing and doesn't do restorable backups for you. Anyway, I know you're swamped and busy, but automated backups are easy (and not really the issue here anyway).
My reference to web mumbo jumbo was just that MT disconnect between what's in the database and the "built" pages that you describe. I'm really sorry to see Linz go. Although I'm not that surprised. Not because of her in particular, but rather because I've experienced the web phenomenology of popular people in a web community set just blowing up. i.e. a popular and endearing weblog is here one day, and gone the next. Death on the internet induces a kind of mourning, but it's almost like looking back on an uncomfortable breakup a year or two after the fact. You know the person is out there, you know they've disconnected from you and moved on, and it might make you feel bad but it's nothing you can't handle.
That was a pretty funny impression lockheed. There's a particular Aesops fable through which I would hope Linz could see the humor in it. There's nothing to feel bad about, we're all vulnerable to being mimicked.
by chris at January 19, 2005 4:28 PM
Well I doubt she knew about all that web mumbo jumbo. My guess is she had to go through and manually delete all 150+ posst. It takes a lot of waiting, expecially if you accidentally hit "update entire site" like I did once.
by Anna at January 19, 2005 6:22 PM
Chris: My host does make backups, but how could you backup with an old copy of the DB without losing the comments that have been made since?
If you can write a script to reformat all the deleted posts to a MT importable-friendly, I'd be glad to use it. Which brings up an interesting moral dilema - I wholeheartedly believe that all the posts on the site belong to the site, not to any individual.* But what duty do I have to someone who obviously spent so much time (even little thought) in going through and deleting them?
* Note - Which is not to say I'd ever publish them in a book and not compensate the original author, or anything like that.
by mg at January 19, 2005 6:48 PM
I liked the graphic MG.
by I would be Joseph if he still existed at January 19, 2005 6:50 PM
So........
Can we see the long e-mail?
by Long time lurker at January 20, 2005 12:19 AM
mg, if you give a contributor the power to delete his or her own posts (either deliberately or because that's just how MT works), i think the moral thing to do would be to respect that person's decision to use that power, for whatever reason.
by not chris at January 20, 2005 12:34 AM
For those who know the Well (online community, been around about 20 years) there's a phrase: "you own your own words". affectionately refered to as YOYOW. It makes a good policy:
http://www.well.com/conf/guidelines.html so in that respect I agree with NOT CHRIS. And you're right, non-destructive backups from a snapshot are not trivial. You basically have to know what you're looking for, and spend time hacking around to get things to fit back together. Flash from the past - badsam authors: ab adam anna antwon billegible blank bornfamous chuck chunshek conor d doyce effenheimer emma eric eviltom ezy goose guest jasmine jean jen jesus kd lajoie linz lizard lotd melly mg michele miss muaddib northstar osama quicksilver rayanne shar skits snaggle space uberchick unanon zia.
by chris at January 20, 2005 1:46 AM
NOPE. What about OUR COMMENTS on her posts. Half the time, they had nothing to do with her posts and were a world unto themselves...
You always take a risk when you publish to the masses... she ougtta live with it.
Freezing in Manhattan. Down on Wall St, the silver cart lady was crying when I got a donut from her(442am est).
by LOCKHEED at January 20, 2005 4:42 AM
There must be more to it than simply being angry and spiteful. Perhaps she's having a rough time of it in the real world with somebody using her innocent ramblings here in a bad way. Example, Lock... Say somebody took your comment on masturbation and, ahem, what you think about and what turns you on while you’re jacking away, and passed that around your work place for all to see, with the Bad Sam addy attached just in case they wanna glean more... heh. Maybe you’d think about deleting some of your comments.
Maybe it's something like that, and has nothing to do with her anger, or whatever, directed at MG? I suppose though, if that is the case, it is her fault for not thinking before posting. I read a couple of Linz posts about snogging some eighteen year old, a failed date, and a night out watching bands, and a hell of a lot of comments paying homage to MG… I don’t know sheet about her or ‘it’ so I should really just shut up… Eh? Heh.
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at January 20, 2005 5:23 AM
I'm sorry Lurker, I'm affraid I can't do that.
Lock brings up a good point Chris & Not/Chris. Linz delete somewhere around 3000 comments. She may own her own words, but she didn't own their words.
ECGN: I never said spiteful. I said thoughtless. I don't think ever thought about the effect of her actions, in terms of comments & community.
The artists formerly known as Joseph: Thanks.
by mg at January 20, 2005 7:51 AM
Oftentimes in my biz a lawyer will strike out on his own. Almost without fail their clients stay with the firm and he has to troll for new ones. Somehow that seemed relevant when it popped into my head.
by Anna at January 20, 2005 7:53 AM
Even though I am surprised I'm not sure Linz did anything wrong. They were her words to do as she wanted. As for the comments: if they were so important to you, why didn't you save them yourself? It isn’t like she stole them. You added them to her post.
LINZ (if you’re still hanging around here): So long. Good luck with the band. Thanks for sharing what you did and I hope to hear from you again.
by MrBlank at January 20, 2005 9:44 AM
Hey Guys,
Joseph tipped me off to this post. I want to first apologize to anyone who feels that I personally hurt them by deleting my posts (which results in deleting the comments). I was not trying to be destructive or hurtful. I was removing very personal pieces of my life from the public eye because the part of my life where that was okay and fun for me had ended.
Mr. Blank is partially right, that I didn't want my personal life as the first result of a Google search for my name. But I was planning on doing this soon anyway because of the personal nature of a lot of my posts (I felt like they were a diss to my very deep relationship with Johnny T. Wonderful), and other personal reasons that do indeed boil down to me being a very sensitive person. There were a few times that I posted very personal stuff and was personally hurt by the responses, and it hurt me to know that these painful experiences were frozen in time in this setting.
I am sorry, MG, that my self-protection is not an acceptable reason to you, and I'm sorry to anyone who feels upset that their comments on my posts were lost. That was not my intention, and I admit it never occurred to me that people might depend on someone else's posts as holding stations for their works of genius.
In closing, I'm truly sorry if anyone was affected by this, and I honestly appreciate the kind words about me many of you have said here. I appreciate those of you who understand that my decision was something I needed to do, and was not an affront to any of you.
by Linz at January 20, 2005 10:59 AM
I wish I had a reason;
my flaws are open season
For this, I gave up trying
One good turn deserves my dying...
... I was quite close with my hypothesis. Ah... I'm good. :)
by Ex Crimson Guard NCO at January 20, 2005 1:08 PM
Linz I think the last sentence of your first paragraph sums it up perfectly. It's hard to blame anyone for that. I've come to accept it as web phenomenology. I'll just say that I found virtually all of the thigns you shared informative in some way.
People ought to refrain from underestimating the power of information and google weaponry. People who can be easily identified on the internet, and share their thoughts and feelings, lose their jobs and damage relationships all too frequently. Which is precisely the reason some of us hide behind silly pseudonyms in some areas of the internet, yet exist in plain sight in others.
As for the YOYOW theme and deleting posts and comments - there's no getting around that it's tough to see a comment string deleted. Some people put a lot of effort and time struggling with how to put their ideas and reactions to words to answer an interesting comment string. The dialogue as a tool for learning and evolving ideas goes back to the ancient greeks (Plato's Dialogues could have had the longest running streak of any book on the NYT best sellers list...if only they had started a couple thousand years ago. Well I guess the Bible might have stopped it's run...anyway).
No doubt, it hurts when the comments go out with the post. In that case, maybe MT needs a new feature for group blogs. At The Well, where YOYOW, when a post is deleted - the comments following the post actually remain in place, whereas the content of the post itself is replaced with the words scribbled, so there's actually a place holder for the post, and everyone can see that so and so wrote something, and then decided to go back and scribble it (note: you can delete, as in scribble, something you wrote - but you can not edit it - as that wouldn't be fair to those commenting on what you said). However the Well is also a different format in that it consists of conferences which are comment streams on Topics, rather than what exists here where someone drops a treatise and then everyone comments on that. Nonetheless, I think the idea is worth pursuing. Something I incorporated into my blog is the ability to scramble all the words - so the post is there for me, but at the flip of a switch it becomes completely unintelligible to anyone else.
by chris at January 20, 2005 5:11 PM
Linz that makes perfect sense to me. And I think I might have alluded to that at some point in a remark about Sean perusing old posts about various exploits. You said he didn't visit but that's not say he never will. I remember one guy, Doyce maybe, who was having all sorts of trouble at work because of posts.
I know one thing: My wife hates it when I bring up old experiences. For there to be a permanent record of it at anyone's fingertips is indeed a little frightening. Now: Group hug and smile like in those drunken college dorm group photos young employees tack to their cubicle walls.
by anna at January 20, 2005 5:54 PM
I'm not writing this as an author, or as one too long removed from regular status, but as a nostalgic bastard and a friend to others.
Linz's leaving makes me sad. I'm both sad to not be able to read all our witty back and forths over the last couple of years, and sad that there will be nothing new on the site from her when i open it up on certain mornings and get really excited to read, just seeing her name at the top of the stack.
That said, I think it's any person's right and perogative to protect their physical, immediate lives from the negative repercussions of this unbelieivably strange, (sometimes make-believe) online life, one we hardly understand the complexities of.
MG, I can sympathize with your reaction to this loss of history, and of our pasts, as we all feel attached to that. but in the end, the very part that we miss was generously given to us by Linz (or, if you're Lockheed, certainly at least initiated), and it's her right to claim it back as her own, to protect the incredible possibilites of her own life, and for us to at least respect that decision.
And also knowing some of the back story surrounding all this, it's unfortunate that you couldn't respect that right, MG, even with your beliefs about public ownership. In the end, what we have is ourselves, our sanctity, and the love of others. I respect the people that fight for that the hardest.
I think most of us would do the same....
by lajoie at January 21, 2005 12:42 AM
One thing I think it makes sense to do when posting on an open site is this: Ask yourself if you'd be okay with your spouse, SO, child, parent or boss reading this. Because sooner or later, one of them will.
Which isn't to say I've always followed that rule. It's called a calculated risk.
by Anna at January 21, 2005 7:41 AM
There's this really annoying new 'jargon' going around in corporate america, where people say, 'Cool Beans'.
I hate it. I mean, it sorta sounds right, but I hate it.
Lockheed Q. Elegant.
by LOCKHEED at January 22, 2005 1:34 AM
I've heard that too, along with the equally irritating use of quasi-verbs like "to QA" and "just to FYI you."
by Anna at January 22, 2005 9:00 AM
Cool Beans! Ugh. I agree with Lockheed. I think Lockheed and I have the same thoughts. Weird.
Evil Q. Tom
by Eviltom at January 23, 2005 11:58 AM
EVILHEED!
by anna at January 23, 2005 1:25 PM
I haven't said much on this topic (other than to tell MG I loved him but that he doesn't need to fear anal rapage from me.)
I've been thinking a lot about this, though. Part of the matter deals with privacy, and of course, I believe everyone has a deep right to privacy. Part of it deals with a matter of digital transience and how easy it is in this online world to erase almost all traces you've ever been there. What's left over is exaclty how scientists can find black holes: not by their presence, but by their non-presence and how other objects relate to them. Part of it deals with a matter of artistry: I've been involved with Bad Samaritan for so long that I've kind of come to see MG and myself as the daddy and mommy of it (don't worry mg, you still wear the pants.) From the beginning I saw BS as more than just a blog. To me it was more than a "Today I ate asparagus and my pee smelled funny!" kind of place... not to demean daily-life type of blogs, but that's not how I (and I believe MG, for the most part) viewed this.
Instead, it was a place to think, to commune, to share experiences and thoughts. We tried to be pithy (usually failing miserably, but whatevs.) As an artist, I think I brought that mentality to the writing: you have to stand by what you say. If you say something, knowing full well that it's as easy as a few clicks to delete it and erase all evidence of its existence in the first place, then what is the point of saying it in the first place? Is it so easy to be transient online because it's just a rearrangements of bytes and pixels?
That being said, there's some history for this. There was an incident in the past history of BS where MG felt it his duty to delete a post he'd written because of the consequences of what he had written. At the time, I advocated him sticking to his guns and not deleting it, and I think he felt the same way at first. However, the hurt showed by the other parties was great enough that he did delete the post; it was a flippant piece anyway, not really an exemplary piece of literature. Yet even that took some thought and went against MG's ethical views of what Bad Samaritan represented, in a way.
I feel bad that Linz felt her writings could have hurt others. I feel worse that she was hurt by comments received after she put herself on the line. However, isn't that part of life? If all we ever write is "Today I ate a cheeseburger and it was good" what's the point of sharing it? I believe that if your work doesn't present a possibility for injury, it's barely worth doing at all.
There are several of my own posts on here that are *ahem* of a quite personal nature. There was a time when an individual I was involved with read some posts and took affront. However, it would be against my principles to remove anything I'd written.
by snaggle at January 24, 2005 4:17 PM
I wrote one that got savaged by all the usual suspects including JadedJu. But then Linz and MG and some other regulars were like, dude, this time you've really gone too far. I think it had something to do with wars in Africa vs. wars that involve the might US military or something. For the life of me I didn't know why it was such a big deal. But I think I got sick of all the criticism and deleted the damn thing. Or maybe not.
by Anna at January 24, 2005 6:43 PM
In my next life I hope to return as someone remembered for more than kicking Anna's ass about something he never understood. I'd like to either be remembered for something more significant, OR, be remembered for actually helping someone understand things from a different perspective.
Oh well.
by jadedju at January 26, 2005 1:56 AM
Your wish is granted. I did see things from a different perspective. And I do remember it: "This is so wrong, on so many levels, that I don't even know where to begin." My son and I say that all the time.
by Anna at January 26, 2005 8:44 AM
Well, that will make a nice little statement on my tombstone:
"Gave Anna's family something to laugh about."
Which is not necessarily better than what I originally planned:
"I told you I was sick."
by jadedju at January 26, 2005 1:02 PM
I'll always remember you for more than that Ju - that night in Paris, candlelight, too much wine, a couple Alf reruns. That was a night I'll never forget.
by mg at January 26, 2005 2:05 PM
Might as well make it 50. "I told you I was sick" rocks as a tombstone inscription. Go Ju.
by Anna at January 27, 2005 9:00 AM
MG, the Alf reruns were most certainly the highlight, but you mustn't underestimate your sexiness when dangling in your underoos from the Eiffel Tower.
by jadedju at January 28, 2005 6:35 PM
I'm not altogether sure I care to picture that.
by Anna at January 28, 2005 7:05 PM
I just did, and it was a.... strange mental image. MG and Spiderman underoos go together okay as a mental image.... dangling them from the Tower, not so much. :)
by snaggle at January 31, 2005 12:15 AM
I'm sorry to read that Linz is not writing anymore. Linz, I always liked your posts and your comments. Do take care.
by jean at February 8, 2005 4:52 AM
Wow, you leave for a couple of months and come back to find someone you thought would be there just isn't. I'm not judging Linz for her decision either for or against. In the end she is the one who has to live her life and I want to believe that removing herself from badsam was truly best for her. She surely will be missed.
by Lucy at November 27, 2005 6:09 PM