This is not a diary offering whining, complaining, bitching, anomalies, perplexities, or any other various paranoia regarding the transition to Daily Kos 4.0. I’m overall quite impressed with the expressed thought and intention for innovation and effective online organizing that Markos has put into the change-over. Having said all that, I’m just not sure how well my pathetically inept blog-reading self is going to do when it comes to figuring out the working of 4.0-land.
With all of the waxing poetic about the last days of DK3 going on today (guilty) it really just dawned on me that I’m probably too technologically inept to be on Daily Kos anyway. But it seems to have worked. I signed up a long time ago. I don’t even know what version we were operating under at the time. It surely had to be DK2, but how the hell would I know. It was some time in the run up to the 2004 Presidential election, and Dean was making moves to exit the Democratic Primary.
I was just out of college, and woefully inept with all forms of technology, as I spent my undergrad days battling technological acceptance of all varieties in some naïve Ludditesque personal campaign. I was the only 20 something I knew with no cellular telephone, and I recall tending to make some kind of irritated face any time someone asked me why, and just worrying for the future of humanity whilst refusing to even acknowledge the question. Only 4 years before that time, I had infamously stood up and declared on the first day of my freshman session that computers were a corporate scam to saddle us with yet more wasteful consumption, and were at best a passing fad (yep, I was fucking brilliant, like all college freshmen). I had also fairly successfully managed to graduate with pretty damned good grades despite having absolutely refused to use email during my entire tenure, much to the ire of several lovely and patient professors, and I would argue to the somewhat approving enjoyment of a few old Hippie-types.
So anyway, getting to the point has always been my strong suit, as you can tell, and right around the time I had graduated and spent a little time working in the environmental activism world, I got hooked up with this whacky campaign on a small-state Governor who seemed to defy the lame old Clintonite standard of Democratic politics, and I jumped in head first. I went to this awesome Meetup thingy that was organized through the internet (err) and got convinced by a lovely (if slightly overbearing) Dean organizer that I needed to sign up for all kinds of other internet stuff, especially Dean’s website.
So I figured what the hell, and went over to my parents’ house and signed up on an internet connection they’d only gotten for the first time in about 2002 (I wonder where I get it...). And I had to admit the little blog chatty room thingy on there seemed kind of cool, and you could argue with people and talk about how fucking lame John Kerry was, but at least he was fairly liberal so he wasn’t all bad, but why the hell did he have to be so boring and uninspiring unlike our hero Dean, who was like the fucking man! Dudes, seriously.
And everybody kept talking on there about this little thing called Daily Kos, but I wasn’t into it, and my Republican dad didn’t really appreciate me using up their internet connection for several hours when I had a place of my own and could just get my own internet. But I just kept going over there when he wasn’t around (church trustees meetings fucking rock, because they’d take about 3 hours in the evening to accomplish about nothing more than keeping old Dad occupied), and when the whole Dean Dream came crashing down around me, I decided I’d migrate on over to the after party at Daily Kos.
And y’all fuckers have ruined my life, but I love you anyway.
Next thing I knew I took a new activism job that required me to have a cell phone (fuckers) and use email all the time (major fuckers), which I always hated, but I still loved me some Daily Kos like I love a good shot of Jameson on a cold winters day (I lived on Lake Erie, which is a mean, cold monster in the winter ; as if one needs a reason to drink Jameson).
But there are still a bunch of times when my non-savvy rears its ugly head, and just makes me feel inept. Like do y’all remember this?:
Really funny right? It is funny. It’s fucking hilarious actually because it’s so true. Except I realized about 2 minutes into getting a chuckle at old Johnny-boy’s expense that I do that shit all the time. I’m the most computer literate person on either side of my family, and I’m still totally incompetent. I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to figure out how to publish this diary. [late game edit: it actually took me about 10 minutes to embed that picture where it'd work, case in point].
So anyway, one day not long ago I decided while wasting time at work (which happens to be the case about 95% of the time that I’m logged into the kitty) that I’d jump on over into the DK4 beta-land (while listening to The Beta Band to get in the mood), and it was that Johnny-boy feeling all over again.
My head was swimming in minutes, and there were all these new little buttons, and an avatar. A fucking avatar! Oh the huge manatee!
Oh well, I’m probably too technologically-inept for Daily Kos anyway.
So here’s to the innovation of Daily Kos 4.0. May it be all that it’s intended to be and more. May we emerge from this change-over and all of our other work a little bit more effective and organized, and ready to BEAT this horribly destructive, regressive, and really just outright sociopathic (when you come right down to it) corporate conservative takeover of these United States BACK INTO THE GROUND.
And so I lied about the anomalies, perplexities, or any other various paranoia claim. I wrote that intro before I realized what a hot fucking mess this was going to be, but at least I can go out in style baby.
Love you all (most of you)! I’ll see you on the other side! (If I can figure out how to log in and type and stuff).