social.benbrown.com

Aug 19th 23 1:26 am

It's Friday and time for a story of the old Web, one man, and a cookie. A cookie which I still have almost 24 years later.

Once upon a time there was a guy named Carl Steadman. 


( Picture of Carl is a still from the documentary ‘Home Page’ by Doug Block, which you can watch here youtube.com/watch?v=WvUzRbDCLB )

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A white man with brown hair and round wire-rim glasses looks at the camera with a suppressed smile. A cluttered office is visible in the background.
metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

Carl was (and I presume remains) complicated, wry, and elusive. 


One of his professional claims to fame is that he was the Production Director for HotWired, the first commercial online magazine. HotWired was garish in visual style (thank goodness for that injection of mayhem) and hugely influential.

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Screenshot of a bright red page with blue links, black navigation (both in a typewriter font), and the name of the site in block yellow type with the O as a target and the W, R, and D in yellow circles with the letter in red. There are three images at quirky angles on the page: a gold glitter CNN log, a blued black-and-white image of a person in a porkpie hat with a pink sign saying Manic Love, and a confusing image of people with the white caption VideoFest Berlin. There's a 1995 copyright statement right on the page almost as big as the navigation statement on the bottom right and a big blue 'Powered by Silicon Graphics' in the center bottom below that.
metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

The Web would be very different without HotWired having existed, for good and ill. It gave a lot of us weirdos hope of making something totally new and leaving society’s garbage behind.

It was also a commercial site, giving us the first banner ad on the Internet, and was among the first sites to try behavioral targeting. It laid the seeds of our downfall, as self-deluded as we of the early Web were ourselves.

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metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

Turns out the hell of a good universe next door, was just a more controllable, monitorable, and monetizeable version of here. The Web certainly did change the world, it just didn’t transform it the way we thought it would. 



( Seems like Hotwired is basically lost as a site, but you can get some sense of it from the various references from the Wikipedia article. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotWired )

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metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

Whether Carl fully parsed the path we were on, I’m not sure, but he certainly mocked the starry-eyed visionaries of the Web as much as the fools who didn’t see the impact it was going to have on society.

He co-founded the late, great Suck.com, a pop-culture commentary site with the motto, "A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun". 


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Screenshot of an Internet Archive Wayback Machine preserved copy of a 1997 version of Suck. The page consists of the logo (the word Suck being sucked into a period after it), tagline, date 16 June 1997, and "Updated every WEEKDAY" centered at the top. Below this is the title for the current post ("Dwelling Machine, Sweet Dwelling Machine") and the article in centered type with blue links—carefully chosen words forming something of a punchline in combo with the link—in a narrow column down the center. To either side of the main text are cartoonish images which direct the reader to other parts of the site. Most of the page is empty white.
metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

Among his writings, there he was in 1995 dunking on Marc Andreessen and advocating for Tax the Rich. Here’s a taste, but this is not the cookie I’m talking about. web.archive.org/web/1997061608.

( A smattering of Carl columns are linked from web.archive.org/web/1997061601 and you can read some other bits of Suck from here, thanks to the Internet Archive’s preservation web.archive.org/web/2018121500 There was also a gathering of the founders on the site’s 20th anniversary at XOXO engadget.com/2015-09-16-suck-d )

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metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

He of course had his own site with extremely pithy posts.

(Does the timeline get Twitter without the history of bloggers of this brevity? I think not.)

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Screenshot of simple, left-aligned, black text reading: 97.11.21 please, don't think of me as a "netmogul." consider me a "conceptual artist."
Screenshot of simple, left-aligned, black text reading: 97.12.03 what does the copyright symbol mean, if every work is protected by copyright, whether or not it uses the copyright symbol? it's superfluous, an artifact. herein lies the opportunity: infuse the symbol with a new meaning, one appropriate for the times, something hip, modern and up-to- date. and so, I'm taking it. from now on, when you see a c in a circle, think carl.
metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

He carried himself with such winking assurance of his charm that others were ready to jump in and soon we had Ready! Steadman Go!, the “semi-official page of carl worship” (web.archive.org/web/2001021020, from The Dramaqueens (Ben and Mena Trott, creators of Movable Type))

and The Divining of Carl Steadman (web.archive.org/web/2000081603, from Riotgrrl (Nikki Douglas))

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Carl Steadman, viewed from the side, wearing only boxer, shorts and short socks, elbows on knees, looking at the camera with half-lidded eyes. He is a fairly skinny, not muscled, white boy. It’s simultaneously awkward and sexy.
metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

Sometime in or before February 1998 Carl decided to declare himself a microstar. He claimed internet celebrity before much of the country even knew what the hell the Internet was.

And then, on November 11, 1999, he announced the availability of the Carl Cookie.


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Screenshot of simple, left-aligned, black text reading: 99.11.11 Episode 8: C is for Carl Cookie "So what are you really selling?" "What do you mean? These are cookies." "C'mon. You're obviously not just selling baked goods, however wholesome and delicious. Where's the upside in that? There's got to be some other product you're promoting." "Besides me, you mean? This isn't some sort of extended teaser campaign. Cookies can be a very lucrative business. Look at the Girl Scouts." "The Girl Scouts don't sell cookies with your big head plastered all over them." I pick up another bubble mailer and drop a cookie inside. "Maybe it's time they did." The "Your Pal, Carl" cookie. Cookiejet technology transforms your favorite microstar into the newest taste sensation. 3.33" x 2.67". Because we all need a pal. Buy one for $2.00 cheap from Carlmart (Unfortunately, my "strategic partner,” Bigstep - Visa and Mastercard cheerfully accepted! - only lets you write so much catalog copy. Il bring it up with Beebe. But rest assured: although the text description may be abbreviated, | guarantee you'll receive the full Carl cookie experience with each order.)
metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

I ordered two. And ate one of them.

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Screenshot of blog post. I'm eating Carl. The question when consuming a MicroStar is “Where to begin?” I started with his perfect hair. And then I bit the [dot] com right off him. I plan to eat him quite slowly ending with the grin which shall remain some time after the rest of him is gone. Carl says: “eat me".
metagrrrl
metagrrrl@mastodon.social

But I saved the other. Here it is.



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11/11.

A shortbread cookie in a plastic bag. The cookie has been photoprinted with a headshot style picture of a man smiling broadly, the corners of his eyes crinkled, his chin resting on his hand. It says "Your Pal, Carl" over the dark of his jacket. Vertically on the top left of the cookie is printed carlsteadman.com
The reverse side of the cookie in its bag. There is a gold sticker with red lettering. At the top is the logo of Freedom Bakery, "since 1975" featuring a cartoon baker in hat and apron carrying a cake. Below it says in cursive letters "Cookie Greetings". In regular font below that is the bakery URL, phone number, and "Ship Anywhere !"
benbrown
benbrown@social.benbrown.com

@metagrrrl@mastodon.social In the late 90s, Carl sent me a lock of his hair in a Keroppi the frog envelope.

I still have it.