One of the many downsides of our increasingly disembodied, virtual existence is the ease with which everything disappears into Orwell's memory hole. Anything produced online, especially on a platform you don't own – like this blog, for instance – could go away tomorrow if someone in an office somewhere decides it should be so. Those of us who can still recall the existence of Google Plus know all too well what I am talking about. Now, it's true that nothing lasts forever in the sublunary world, but I can't help but feel this is especially so when it comes to Internet scribblings.
I thought about this yesterday, as I tried to locate something I remember reading online back in (I think) the 1990s. Yes, I know: in Internet terms, the '90s might as well have been 300 years ago, not merely 30. Furthermore, the thing I want to find had been posted to one of the many Usenet newsgroups dedicated to roleplaying games, like rec.games.frp, so the odds of my finding it were never great to begin with. Still, I held out hope that, with enough perseverance, I might succeed. Since I was unsuccessful on my own, I thought I'd turn to my readers, many of whom possess far greater skills than I when it comes to locating obscure information.
I recall reading a narrative from the perspective of a Call of Cthulhu investigator. Unlike his colleagues, this investigator didn't go out into the field. Instead, he stayed safely at his home in Arkham or wherever and communicated with his comrades via telephone. In his phone conversations, he made certain that his interlocutor never told him too much about what he had seen or done, lest he have to make a SAN roll – "Don't tell me what you read in the book. Don't even tell me the title of the book," "No, I don't want to know what the creature looked like," etc. The whole thing was a meta-commentary on the way to "win" at Call of Cthulhu. I remember finding it quite amusing when I first read it.
Now, it's probably gone and I have only my increasingly hazy memories of it. Does this ring any bells with anyone else? Might anyone be able to suggest how I might find it again? I don't hold out much hope of ever reading it again, but I figured that, if anyone could aid me, it might be my readers.
Thanks!
Sorry I’m commenting but not having the information you want. But I found this concept interesting because it reminded me of an old collection of Sherlock Holmes radio plays I have. Most of them feature Basil Rathbone in his portrayal of the consulting detective, but a few feature Sherlock’s brother Mycroft. Those episodes sound similar to what you describe, as Mycroft is possibly more intelligent and mentally capable than Sherlock, but he is extraordinarily sedentary and slothful, and refuses to leave the comforts of his gentlemen’s club. So others, including Sherlock, have to do all his legwork, while he critiques their findings and lazily insults them for not coming to the conclusions sooner.
ReplyDeleteIt's also a premise very similar to the Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout, where Wolfe's associate does (almost) all the legwork, while Wolfe sits at home eating rich food and tending his orchids. It could be that the story James is remembering was some kind of homage or riff on Wolfe.
DeleteNot that this is likely to help you with this particular quest at all, but: https://archive.org/ , aka "The Internet Archive Wayback Machine" is a non-profit volunteer run organization which has the goal of archiving all of those internet resources - websites or otherwise - that otherwise may have been lost to time.
ReplyDeleteAnd it seems like grognardia is included in the archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20241002184008/http://grognardia.blogspot.com/
So if you (or your readers) like what they are doing, please consider making a donation.
Think I found a copy here https://www.facebook.com/legacy/notes/663213803691468/
ReplyDeleteI don't have a Facebook account, so I can't read it, unfortunately.
DeleteCopied to here:
Deletehttps://pastebin.com/WDEUPhi6
That's the one! Thank you.
DeleteI was around back then, too. I tried to archive some of best of those posts, and this was one of them. I have it archived at godsmonsters.com/idealcoc
DeleteJerry,
DeleteThank you for your service! ;-)
That article is hilarious!
ReplyDeleteThe internet is the diametric opposite of an Orwellian memory hole. Anything that gets online will be there until the collapse of human civilization, and depending on how that happens it might still be accessible to survivors looking back from the future. Just because you can't find something doesn't mean it isn't there somewhere, and as any number of politicians, celebrities and less famous criminals have discovered to their lasting regret, with sufficient effort even the most deeply-hidden facts can be ferreted out eventually.
ReplyDeleteJust look at this case. What did it take, just over two hours for one of your readers to find what you were looking for? And you may be a popular blog but your reader base is puny by internet standards. Ask this kind of question on a busy social media site and you'll unleash an army of internet detectives who'll go digging like badgers until they find what you were after and then some, especially if it's something that looks challenging to them.
Everything you post online will be part of your legacy forever. Don't kid yourself otherwise.
Something I tell my children over and over... post sparingly and only things that are kind.
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Delete> Anything that gets online will be there until the collapse of human civilization
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This might seem like a contradiction, but this statement is both true and false simultaneously.
Some things (often deemed illegal or at the very least morally ambiguous), even though they might successfully be removed from various sources, will continuously just be re-uploaded for as long as someone has a locally stored copy, for all eternity.
On the other hand, have you ever experienced having made a bookmark of a particular webpage, only to get an 'page does not exist' error when you try to access it somewhere in the future ? That content might be well and truly gone forever. For example, if a company like Facebook or Twitter - excuse me, "X" (thanks Elon) - would financially go bankrupt next week, at that stuff would likely be gone forever, as no-one would have successfully attempted to make backup copies of all that content. All those Usenet posts I made in the early days of the Internet ? Gopher ? (does anyone recall that) ? Most likely gone forever.
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Delete> Just look at this case. What did it take, just over two hours for one of your readers to find what you were looking for?
> And you may be a popular blog but your reader base is puny by internet standards.
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All True. But you seem to ignore the fact that the readers of this blog also consist of a huge concentrate of a very specific topic. Most readers here are extremely likely to at least be aware of 'Call of Cthulhu', almost just as likely to even have played at least a CoC game or two, and therefore to also be aware of the content James was looking for (and where to go look for it). Contrast that with your average 'busy social media site', and they are just as likely to not even know what TTRPG's are to begin with, or ever have heard of the name 'Lovecraft'.
Usenet is not necessarily gone forever though it may not be as searchable now as it used to be. A as few years ago I did find my posts from 1988 or so.
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Delete> Usenet is not necessarily gone forever though it may not be as searchable now as it used to be.
> A as few years ago I did find my posts from 1988 or so.
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@Frank :
If that is true, I would be *VERY* interested in learning how you went about finding them. I have quite a few 'comp.*' posts I would like to recover. (Also: Ooops, did I just dox myself ?)
When I did it, Google still had an archive. Some archives still exist but what I found was not as searchable.
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Delete> When I did it, Google still had an archive.
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@Frank :
Yeah, I vaguely seem to recall a Google archive (perhaps called 'Google Groups' back then? But my memory fails me), but was unable to find the relevant posts even back then.
All these ... posts .. will be lost, in time .. like tears, in rain.
Too bad your posts won't live. But then, whose does?!
Delete"your reader base is puny"
DeleteThere was no need for this! :)
I suspect it easily reads a little differently than it was intended...😅
DeleteMy rule of thumb is that if I find an article on the internet I will likely want to refer to in the future, I download it to my hard drive. If I really, really think it worth keeping, I also print it out.
ReplyDeleteAnd if I really, really, REALLY want to remember it, I got a cheap tattoo gun off of Amazon.
DeleteThe disappearance of info on the internet is what inspired Stewart Brand to launch the Long Now Foundation. https://longnow.org/
ReplyDeleteBrand — of Whole Earth Catalog and early online community The WELL fame — was disturbed to discover that during the heady days of the dot.com boom, the average lifespan of a page on the web was 42 days. The erasure of early destinations like GEnie and GeoCities drove home his concerns, and he originally started the Long Now Project with the idea of encouraging long-term thinking among businesses, and creating a permanent and universally available archive of the internet.
While the Foundation has pretty much moved on from that last goal, that thought inspired some serious long-term thinking on its own, leading to the 10,000 Year Clock, the Rosetta Project, and the Manual for Civilization.
I've lost some of own blog posts from the days when I didn't make backup copies of them. I curse my past foolishness. (The Wayback Machine never fully archived my first blog.)
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