MSNBC on Internet Sleepover

MSNBC Internet Sleepover

Above: my laptop featured in MSNBC article on the Great Internet Sleepover; blowup view shows what was onscreen at the time.

MSNBC's cybercorrespondent Helen A. S. Popkin covers the Great Internet Sleepover here. She emphasizes the social aspect and reminisces about her early days trading gross-out pictures found on the Net, confessing her lack of qualification to discuss the actual purpose behind the event:

“Art” figured in somehow, but as I do not possess a masters degree in that subject, I’m at a loss to explain how. My gentleman friend does, la-dee-da, so I’m only going by what he says. Admittedly, I’m a hater who generally rolls her eyes whenever “Art” is added to something everybody does while goofing off at work. But in my defense, many of the hardcore surfers who took part in the party’s panel discussion weren’t so clear on how “Art” figured in on the phenomenon of communal surfing either.

It's a fun article and chronicles many of the zanier aspects of the evening but since MSNBC provides no links to the "surfing clubs" Popkin mentions,* readers couldn't handily learn a key fact about them: that the term "surf club" is ironic. Rather than just trading links the sites in question also alter content and present original artwork in a melange that is not always easy to distinguish. Those parameters were one of things discussed in the panel, which she apparently slept through. "Gee we're just a bunch of 20-somethings surfing" is a pose or persona that sailed over the head of this mainstream media critic.

*Nasty Nets, Double Happiness, Supercentral, and Loshadka