April 15th, 2001. That\u2019s when I put together Dirtyfreaks.com with my friend in Baltimore, who wrote under the name \u201cLeff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leff had a goal that was fairly cutting edge ten years ago \u2013 he wanted to create a content management system that was easy to use and would pave the way for idiot bloggers. There was stuff like that around in 1999 and 2000, but it was a far cry from the world we have today where a goldfish can set up a blog and get going with daily complaints about feeding time and assholes who tap on the glass.
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He lived above an attorney\u2019s office just outside of Fell\u2019s Point, with a back deck that took in the Baltimore skyline, and we\u2019d sit out there and drink ourselves into a quiet oblivion each weekend. He suffered from a crippling sort of depression born out of the malaise of modern America \u2013 a sick society even before the terrorists came and bloodied our noses \u2013 and was going through an extended period of clumsy soul searching. I, as always, was in the realm of pain management and general angst-riddled horror at the way of things.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d talk about designing a CMS and I\u2019d talk about all the crazy shit I was writing down in notebooks while languishing at my idiot wage slave job. He\u2019d hatch ideas that were years ahead of their time, and I\u2019d go on about book ideas and weird, Pagan Kennedy-esque participatory journalism projects.<\/p>\n
Then we had this \u201cyou got your chocolate in my peanut butter!\u201d moment and I suggested what should have been obvious from the get-go \u2013 let\u2019s put together a webpage where we just vomit all these crazy ideas out to the public. And maybe do something constructive along the way. Or not. Whatever.<\/p>\n
Dirtyfreaks.com was purchased in the summer of 2000, and work began on the design over the winter. While I waited for the technology to catch up with the writing, I decided to recruit other friends into the fold. I approached filmmaker Lonnie Martin and encouraged him to come let off steam on the front page. He took the name \u201cRotting Corpse,\u201d as homage to his taste for horror films. His girlfriend, \u201cJezebel,\u201d signed up. Leff\u2019s pseudo-girlfriend, \u201cX10,\u201d joined the team, and we were off. Ideas were thrown about (you\u2019ll get to read the original list of topics in a couple of days), and we started composing our introductory rants.<\/p>\n
Come April of 2001, the site went live\u2026<\/p>\n
Since then, it seems like millennia have passed. Dirtyfreaks.com became Greatsociety.org in 2002, to avoid being blocked at my day job where I did most of my writing, and Leff and X10 both had post-9\/11 breakdowns and vanished. Jezebel retired. She\u2019s having babies now or something. The front page is now just me, and Cassander<\/a>, who joined Greatsociety a little over five years ago.<\/p>\n This week, we\u2019ll be looking at the archives. Tuesday and Wednesday will feature the fifth anniversary article, \u201cBuilding a Great Society,\u201d by Rotting Corpse. Then we\u2019ll look at the first articles posted \u2013 the page\u2019s original mission statement \u2013 and some other goodies.<\/p>\n Next week, we\u2019ll focus on something that has come to dominate the page over the last few years \u2013 our love for \u201ccult culture,\u201d namely genre films and television. Rotting Corpse, Cassander and I will discuss what we believe to be the top 20 best sci-fi films of all time.<\/p>\n April 21st-25th will feature new work from Rotting Corpse, Cassander, Jezebel and forum-devil Monkey. They\u2019ll all be looking back over the history of the page.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll end the month with some general nonsense, and then get right back to complaining about Silver Spring, debt, idiotic jobs, and sunspots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" April 15th, 2001. That\u2019s when I put together Dirtyfreaks.com with my friend in Baltimore, who wrote under the name \u201cLeff.\u201d Leff had a goal that was fairly cutting edge ten years ago \u2013 he wanted to create a content management …<\/p>\n