Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Boulevard of Broken .dreams

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the pornforge dept.

kubla2000 writes "Salon has a fascinating article up examining the detritus of the dotcom craze of registering anything and everything as a domain name. This is, by turns, a tragic and hilarious piece... there's an irrisistable pathos to the fact that "FreeRoofTile.com" has expired as well as an urge to take a clue-bat to whoever "thought" to register it in the first place."

8 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Gordonisamoron.com by seanyboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not the best article in the world. If there was any substance hidden in the 1000 something domain names, I didn't find it. The only interesting thing was that with "...Such emotion may well have lead to IDislikeRob.com, GordonIsAMoron.com, IHateAdamOliver.com, and HeatherThompsonIsABigDork.com" he missed the cultural significance of www.gordonisamoron.com. (A major cultural event from the Eighties in Britain. If you're 25-32, you'll probably have chanted this at schoolmates at some time in your life.) I'm wondering how much else he missed, and how many of the funny domains were automatically registered by automated robots.

    --
    Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
    1. Re:Gordonisamoron.com by awrc · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm surprised you're saying it's an 80s thing - wasn't the original "Jilted John" single from like 1978? At which point a 25 year old would be approaching their first birthday, and wouldn't have been capable of chanting much at anybody. Gurgling, possibly. I'd reckon anyone who was between 5 and 15 in 1978 and called Gordon had a pretty miserable time of it though.

      They released the original album (_True Love Stories_) on CD a year or two back, just under eight quid from Amazon UK. Includes two cash-in singles recorded by "Gordon The Moron" but, sadly, not the "Gordon Is Not a Moron" single (despite what the track listing on Amazon UK says).

    2. Re:Gordonisamoron.com by awrc · · Score: 2, Informative

      I suppose that, other than correcting some dates, my post doesn't actually shed any light on the "Gordon Is A Moron" phenomenon.

      The year 1978. In the wake of the whole punk thing, 18-year old art student Graham Fellowes adopts the persona and haircut of Jilted John and pens the lightweight pop-punk novelty hit "Jilted John", a tale of "teen angst, rejection and confrontation", in which the hero-protagonist, John, loses his girlfriend Julie to the villain, Gordon, "just coz he's better looking than me, just coz he's cool and trendy." The song is best know for the memorable chorus in which our hero gives vent to his despair, chanting "Gordon Is A Moron. Gordon Is A Moron. Gordon Is A Moron. Gordon Is A Moron." It reached number 4 in the UK singles charts. There was an album too, which was all much in the same vein.

      So, there.

  2. Re:But what everyone who reads /. wants to know is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Registrant:
    Web World Services (HICK3-DOM)
    12221 carter street
    Overland park, KS 66213
    US

    Domain Name: HICK.ORG

    Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
    Miller, Matt (MM8608) miller@HICK.ORG
    Hick Organization
    12221 Carter St.
    Overland Park, KS 66213
    (913) 897 - 5980 (FAX) 816-842-9909

    Record expires on 30-Aug-2003.
    Record created on 29-Aug-1997.
    Database last updated on 3-Aug-2002 11:27:39 EDT.

    Domain servers in listed order:

    NS.HICK.ORG 209.242.124.241
    NS1.MWIS.NET 209.242.124.12
    MO.RAYTOWN.COM 209.184.161.83

  3. on the same topic... by AnonymousCowhand · · Score: 3, Informative

    this article found at LATimes.com, 29 Jul 2002:

    http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.j sp?slug=la%2Dfi%2Dnetnames29jul29

    --
    --- Ask me about my Sig -- it's a 9mm.
  4. Re:This stuff isn't funny.... by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Informative
    Whitehouse.com is legitimate - the registered owner ran a porn magazine called Whitehouse well before registering the domain name. What other name would have been as appropriate for the online version?

    It is hilarious though...

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  5. Re:In an alternate universe, not too unlike our ow by kisrael · · Score: 5, Informative

    Cute point.

    And for a long time, salon.com was the site of some kind of resource for hairdressers (one that seemed to be pretty content light and coming soonish) and salon had to use salonmagazine.com. (That url still works, actually...they had better maintain it or the pornlords would swoop down.)

    And "salon" isn't just a random name. It's an old fashioned term for a conversation group-- well, m-w.com says " a fashionable assemblage of notables (as literary figures, artists, or statesmen) held by custom at the home of a prominent person", but I remember the liberal rag Utne Reader was trying to start a kind of grassroots "salon revival", and I think this was a few years before the site, might well have been an inspiration for the name; there's overlap between the general feel of the two publications.

    I'll miss Salon if it goes the way of Suck.com.

    --
    SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
  6. Re:In an alternate universe, not too unlike our ow by Robotech_Master · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're closer than you think. Salon Magazine used to be stuck with the longer salonmagazine.com, and some hairstylist' collective site had salon.com. Then Salon Magazine worked out some kind of a deal to get the domain name, and they wandered off to salon.net or some such.

    --
    Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org