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Seven
Days Underground
A SLIGHTLY
EMBELLISHED first-person account of the highs
and lows of launching an underground political website.
PAGE 2
DAY
2 (SUN) - CLOSING THE DOOR (A BIT)
Around 6am, EarlG woke up in a cold sweat. Apparently, one
can only read so many you-are-what's-wrong-with-this-country
emails before it starts to affect your sleep. He banged out
a short diatribe he called "Some Important Things You
Should Know About Democratic Underground," smoked a cigarette,
and went back to bed, exhausted.
We regrouped in the office around 1pm. Newshound thought
the so-called "6am rant" was virtually unusable
— too filled with anti-conservative vitriol — and
threatened to walk if EG didn't back down. Soon enough, EG
had Newshound in a headlock, the intern got a bloody nose,
and $1000 worth of computer equipment lay smashed on the floor.
All agreed it was time to switch to decaf. (Except the intern,
who refuses to drink coffee at all.)
Meanwhile, the conservatives had taken over our boards. It
was a thrill to see so many people fighting it out in our
virtual three-ring circus, but we started to worry whether
this was any way to run a Democratic discussion board. (Not
much discussion, not many Democrats.) A few of our loyal visitors
tipped us off to the fact that some of the well established
conservative message boards had targeted us for some serious
harrassment. As EarlG would later say, "they came to
our house, sprayed obscenities all over the walls, and left
porn in our mailbox." Something had to be done.
I (foolishly) argued that we should sit by and "see
if it passes on its own." EarlG knew better, "close
them all off, require everyone to register. That's the only
way to stop it." The righties screamed bloody murder
on the message boards, claiming that their "rights"
were being infringed. As if. Basically, all we were
asking them to do was leave a fake name and fake email address
before they burned our house down.
Spent the evening deleting offensive posts in the message
board. Left around 1am.
Total
page views by the end of today: 49,302
Number of copies of the U.S. Constitution faxed to our office:
exactly 1
DAY
3 (MON) - COMING AT US WITH GUNS BLAZING
The waves of conservatives were stemmed somewhat by our decision
to register people on Sunday, but not much. By Monday afternoon,
we were experiencing a full-on conservative takeover of the
boards. We wondered when some big Democratic websites would
start sending us visitors. (Answer: There are no big Democratic
websites.) We got a good few visitors from www.BartCop.com,
a Dem site, but they paled in comparison to the raging hordes
coming from the right. Our slash-and-burn campaign of block-and-delete
was holding them at bay, but it was taking a toll on morale.
The intern decided to bag his job at Taco Bell today in order
to "watch the fights" on the message boards. We
didn't take this as a good sign.
Total
page views by the end of today: 59,934
Number of messages on our board that included the words "Hitlery":
at least 8
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Minor Midcourse Correction
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