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The Internet Books Media It's funny. Laugh. Book Reviews

Internet Babylon 147

Posted by timothy from the hanging-gardens dept.
Daniel Jolley writes "I spend basically every waking hour online, and I have seen all kinds of crazy things on the Web over the years, yet I was amazed by some of the incredible things author Greg Holden describes in Internet Babylon: Secrets, Scandals, and Shocks on the Information Superhighway . This guy has gone where many fear to tread, digging up the goods on some of the Internet's most questionable, fascinating, oftentimes disturbing oddities. He has put all of this knowledge to a higher purpose, using it to describe the all-pervasive social change the Internet has wrought." Read on for the rest of Jolley's review.
Internet Babylon: Secrets, Scandals, and Shocks on the Information Superhighway
author Greg Holden
pages 472
publisher APress
rating 9
reviewer Daniel Jolley
ISBN 1590592999
summary A guided tour of the wild, surprising, and oftentimes dark underbelly of the World Wide Web

Along with all the incredible things I somehow missed over the last few years (e.g., the Amazing Mahir), Holden brought to mind a number of wonderful yet somehow forgotten memories (e.g., All Your Base Are Belong To Us). Then there's all the great stuff that, like so much on the Internet, no longer exists but which provided tons of laughs at the time (e.g., Evil Bert). And I never tire of the great web creations that keep on giving, such as the phenomenal Star Wars Kid parodies.

Unlike most of us, Holden didn't just wander willy-nilly all over the Internet -- well, maybe he did, but he put together a well-organized book that breaks his subject down into six parts spread across twenty chapters. First up is "The Rich and (In)famous." Here you can read all about the online doings of celebrities, serial killers, has-beens and wannabes. Holden will lead you to the Partridge Family Temple, introduce you to the unique musical stylings of Star Trek actors, and even point you to refreshers on Manson Family Values.

Next up is "The Afterlife." On the Internet, nothing truly dies. You can explore the mysterious deaths of Elvis and other celebrities, become a knowledgeable amateur sleuth hot on the trail of Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac killer, and other inhuman monsters, help look for ghosts via webcam in haunted buildings, and even watch a body decompose inside a coffin. (Actually, that last idea fell through, but it's sure to happen eventually.) Of course, you might want to get religion before you take your own one step beyond, and the Internet puts a wide variety of "religions" at your fingertips. With the good comes the bad, and the Internet does, unfortunately, have a dark underbelly of criminality and evil; in the section "Bad Boys and Naughty Girls," Holden gives you the scoop on famous hackers and their exploits, viruses and their creators, and the cretins who curse us all with unwanted spam. He basically takes you on a guided tour of the dark side of the World Wide Web.

As we all know, the Internet has revolutionized politics, and Holden devotes three fascinating chapters to political intrigue, scandals, and government secrets online. In the past, politicians could keep their perverted behavior secret from the public, but the Internet has changed all that -- just ask Bill Clinton. In this online age, rumors and scandals can be spread across the entire world in a matter of minutes, and Holden shows us how the Internet has at times shaped the content of traditional journalism (as well as supplying us with some of the funniest jokes and parodies known to man).

Anyone who browses the Internet soon learns that there are people out there who will do anything to get attention, and those with some sort of self-styled mission will stop at nothing to get their points across. This is the realm of flame wars, denial of service attacks, as well as really, really silly web sites you can't believe anyone would ever think of creating. The unlikeliest of Internet heroes are honored in this section: the Amazing Mahir of "I Kiss You!!!!!" fame, the Star Wars Kid (one of my personal favorites), and even one of the little guys - the man who invented the Smiley symbol. It all wraps up with a look at "Big (And Not So Big) Business." Remember the Pets.com Sock Puppet, who enjoyed much more success than Pets.com ever did? That's just one dot-com disaster story; here, you will learn about some of the worst Internet business plans ever put together.

Believe me, I have only scratched the surface of the material covered in this book. Internet Babylon is chock full of fascinating, oftentimes hilarious stories (and pictures) of the continually surprising sites and sounds the Internet has brought to life. You'll learn a little bit about the creation and evolution of the Internet, but mostly you'll revel in all the crazy online manifestations Holden holds under the microscope.

Let me close with a word of warning. I'm a big horror fan, and I've seen some pretty disgusting things in my life; I like to think I'm tough enough to stand anything. Thus, I ignored Holden's warnings about some of the more disturbing web content that can be found out there and rushed right off to one aptly-described shocking site. Let's just say I'll never be able to watch weight lifting again. I know you will want to take a gander at many of the sites Holden refers to throughout this book, so I just want to advise you to proceed carefully: as this fascinating book proves, you can find absolutely anything out there online, and some of it ain't pretty.

You can purchase Internet Babylon: Secrets, Scandals, and Shocks on the Information Superhighway from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Internet Babylon

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  • Ohhhh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:47PM (#10142417)
    digging up the goods on some of the Internet's most questionable, fascinating, oftentimes disturbing oddities

    Finally a story where goatse link might be appropriate.

    • Re:Ohhhh (Score:5, Funny)

      by chimpo13 ( 471212 ) <slashdot@nokilli.com> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:56PM (#10142503) Homepage Journal
      That's the first thing I thought of. Tubgirl came in a close 2nd. She came up in conversation earlier this week. A panicked boss scared she might run across it sometime. So far she's been lucky.

      If I was more of an a-hole, I'd make it her wallpaper because she's out sick today. I think she'd sneak up and punch me.
      • usually people tend to get sick AFTER seeing the picture...
      • Although I've had the misfortune of seeing goatse in all his disgusting glory (as well as many humorous parodies), I've not seen Tubgirl AFAIK...Be afraid be very afraid.
        • Goatse is much worse. I think ... I'm not sure if I've seen the "official" tubgirl or a bad fake, and there's no way in hell I'm going to go looking ...

          • Re:Ohhhh (Score:3, Funny)

            by arakon ( 97351 )
            Okay, I just saw it. Wasn't what I was expecting.
            I was thinking at worse some hugely obese naked chick. It's not. It's far more disturbing than that.

            And now I'm wondering who the hell this person is and how the F--K can they do that?

            It's worse than goatse.

            I'm going to cry myself to sleep now. Make the horrible image go away...

            DAMN MY CURIOSITY!!!!!!!

      • Re:Ohhhh (Score:3, Funny)

        by LearnToSpell ( 694184 )
        Tubgirl's the pic I generally use when people link straight to my images without any credit or pagelink. Dunno if they get the hint or not, but I'm building up quite a collection of funny screengrabs.
      • Damnit I should listen to the warnings. Thanks to tubgirl I won't be able to eat anything curried for a while (damn yellow sauce...)
    • Or maybe a lemonparty link.

  • ya know, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Run4yourlives ( 716310 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:48PM (#10142424)
    At least one teaser link would have been nice

  • You could... (Score:4, Funny)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 ) <stevehenderson.gmail@com> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:49PM (#10142437)
    You could write an entire book about the disturbing nature of goatse or tubgirl...yuck

  • About your warning... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:49PM (#10142438)
    This is slashdot, we know all about the weight lifter, gaping whatnots and projecting whozits.
    • Yeah, but I never heard about this "Amazing Mahir" Even google comes up [google.com] with nothing.

      The reviewer sure seemed to thing he/it was sumpm special.

  • Economics of scale (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mreed911 ( 794582 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:51PM (#10142452)
    It's not that the internet makes anything elevate in relative importance, it's that it reaches a larger audience so the numbers of folks interested in any given "thing" is higher.

    Before, you might reach 5% of the people in your 10,000 person town - or 500 people.

    Now, if 5% of people on the internet are interested in what you have done, you might reach 5 million people, but it's still just 5% of the population.

    Look at the Nielsen ratings - the highest rated shows actually garner a LOWER percentage of viewership than past shows, but because they reach more people they have more viewers...

    Same conecpt applies here.
    • Hmmm [cegedel.lu].

      Ha! [interact.lu]

    • Now, if 5% of people on the internet are interested in what you have done, you might reach 5 million people, but it's still just 5% of the population.

      What population are you referring to, world? 5% of the world population would be around 320 million people.

      • I'd assume he was only talking about people who use the internet. Not that he would have correct numbers even assuming that, but it'd be closer.

        From what I can find about 800 million people use the internet now. 5% of that would be 40 million.

        yay math.
      • I was referring to an abstract larger group of people. Not everyone in the world has internet access, and surely only a subset of those would see any particular thing at any given time, and only a subset of those would have any interest.

        If this weren't the case there would be no need for snopes.com, etc. because everyone would know "at once" that something was, or wasn't valid. Rather, people see things in waves, stages, ect. as they're passed around - and right now, that takes YEARS, because the "immedi

  • All your base are belong to google-cache (Score:3, Interesting)

    by deputydink ( 173771 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:52PM (#10142459)
    Wow. That cartoon will never die. I was particularily happy to see a nod to the "Mr T ate my balls" phenomenon.


  • Ironic... (Score:4, Funny)

    by gwernol ( 167574 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:52PM (#10142470)
    From the review: "Then there's all the great stuff that, like so much on the Internet, no longer exists..." to which list we can, sadly, add apress.com.
  • Let's just say I'll never be able to watch weight lifting again.

    I think I know what he is talking about. I thought it was an urban legend, but Snoops says otherwise.

    • Its a picture on http://www.rotten.com

      Dunno if it was caused by weightlifting, but its a horrible image. You should be able to find it easy enough.

    • Re:Ewww (Score:1)

      by AoT ( 107216 )
      I have a friend whose mother is a nurse and she has assured me that that kind of thing happens more than anyone would like it to. Not that once isn't too much.

  • The first 3 (Score:3, Funny)

    by extra the woos ( 601736 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:53PM (#10142475)
    Will be destroyed in terrorist attacks and the 4th will disappear mysteriously.

  • Paths less travelled (Score:5, Informative)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:55PM (#10142494) Homepage
    One way to get to stuff you wouldn't otherwise see on the 'net is to use one of the web site randomizers out there. For example, RandomWebsite [randomwebsite.com] will pick one of its archived links and let 'er rip. It's a bit annoying because it works off a .pl script that does the work; pulling up the main page and clicking on the randomizer link will always open a new window. What I've done is to create a FireFox bookmark that links directly to the script so that I can just click on it. Be aware the owner changes the URL every 30 days or so, so you'll have to update your bookmark once in a while.

    There are others, of course. But I like RWS because it doesn't contain truly obnoxious crap, scat tentacle anime pr0n or anything like that. Just your collection of normal to uber-weird sites. It has a heavy dosage of garage band sites, but even that's good for the occasional good music discovery. Some domains have expired and parked since they were added to the RWS database, so you will see some of those "SEARCH TEH INTERNET FOR FREE!!!" click-n-annoy pages, but they're the exception. In general (at least in my case) you'll find some interesting stuff, like wacky (and some bad) blogs and things like that. I've been hitting it occasionally for a few months and haven't seen a repeat yet.

    Anyway, good for a boring afternoon.

    • Re:Paths less travelled (Score:5, Interesting)

      by savagedome ( 742194 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:58PM (#10142526)
      Stumbled upon [stumbleupon.com] is also interesting. You can even add topics to narrow down the randomness.
    • Dude, just get the All-in-One [wanadoo.fr] gestures plugin and drag your mouse up while holding down the right mouse button and it'll load a random page in a new tab. I just tried it and it works fine.
    • I'll go you one better: the Stumble Upon toolbar [stumbleupon.com]. It's a non-spywarey toolbar that you click and randomly puts you on a site from a list of topics selected... for example, my topics are Jazz, Alcoholic Drinks, Bizarre/Oddities, and Photography. But I could easily add anything from Postmodernism to Nuclear Science to Sufism to Cumshot/Facial. Once you've selected your topics, you hit a "Stumble!" button on your toolbar and you go to a site in the topics you've picked. You can then rate it thumbs up or thumbs
    • I miss the old days where I enjoyed using the "I Feel Lucky" button on Google. They should rename it to say "I Feel Lucky That I Landed On A Link Farm Page".

      Ugh.

  • Another Holden Might Say 'Phony' (Score:3, Funny)

    by Arren ( 776080 ) <arren@noumenonline.com> on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:56PM (#10142504) Homepage
    "...Holden brought to mind a number of wonderful yet somehow forgotten memories (e.g., All Your Base Are Belong To Us)"

    "Forgotten?"

    "Wonderful??"

    That's some dry wit.

  • "The Fringe Internet" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by huchida ( 764848 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:57PM (#10142508)
    The problem with a book about the "darkest corners of the internet" is that many of the sites decribed will be gone forever by the time it's published.

    I like books about strange, forgotten and fringe movies and music. But an anecdotes about how truly weird a band or film is only can go so far-- I'm going to want to see or hear it for myself.

  • Or... (Score:4, Informative)

    by MolarMass ( 808031 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @03:59PM (#10142538)
    You can find a variety of Crazies, Wackos, and Tin Foil Hats on the Information Superhighway here [portalofevil.com].

    • Re:Or... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Daagar ( 764445 )
      You can find a variety of Crazies, Wackos, and Tin Foil Hats on the Information Superhighway here.

      What about all the crazies, wackos, and tin foil hats you can find here [slashdot.org]?

  • I just ordered my copy, but I am 100% sure that he managed to miss this guy [myspace.com] (registration required, but free as in beer). Where something like this comes from.. I dare not venture.

  • 14 minutes, 59 seconds (Score:5, Funny)

    by airrage ( 514164 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @04:04PM (#10142576) Homepage Journal
    For a fleeting moment he had meaning. As the great Google spotlight flooded his small part of the world, he felt alive. He stood there at the Nexus, information flowing around him, through him, he was some Great Information God. His crappy site/photo/video gave meaning to others. And at the apex, when his Google page-rank was increasing like the US deficit he actually felt its heat, its beauty ...

    ... and then just as quickly as it came, the light dimmed, the spotlight moved on. The all seeing Eye of Sauron moves away searching, searching, searching. It is all left dim, dark, and hollow ...

  • Google (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Skiron ( 735617 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @04:11PM (#10142622)
    Is yer friend. Who needs a book to find it all?

    But the Star Wars kid movie hacks was quiet something - amazing actually.
  • Portal of Evil [portalofevil.com]. I highly recommend checking out random [portalofevil.com] linked sites, too.
  • You can find some pretty bizarre stuff if you google on, say, "Hello Kitty Vibrator" or "oo" or "Dolphinsex". I like to google around for the most unrelated concepts I can think of, and more often than not I get hits. Some of the stuff I've turned up is really out there (As you can see.) But that's what makes the Internet great!
  • "disturbing oddities"? I got nine letters and a dot for ya: rotten.com [rotten.com]. It's the link I send to people who piss me off. At first you don't quite realize just how bad it is, and by the time you catch on, you can't seem to look away.
  • that i just scrolled through this thread looking for new links i haven't been to yet?
    • Well, one of the sites mentioned in there was mine, www.downwithwhitey.com [downwithwhitey.com]. The guy managed to track me down through /. actually, and did a small email interview, asked if I minded being named as being behind a site that has generated enough hate mail to scare anyone. Well, needless to say, I asked that he keep my name out of his book. Got a free copy for my troubles though!

      And what started as a domain registered simply so I could test my new domain registration application turned into something appar
  • what about hamster dance?

  • Worthless Book (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jack9 ( 11421 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @05:07PM (#10143157)
    If an internet oddities book doesnt cover the basics like Little Stalker Boy [holloway.co.nz], it's full of garbage I've seen 100 times and not worth purchasing, much less thumbing through. For the article author, some guy who claims he lives on the web, he sure seems "wowed" by some pretty tired crap.
  • The inventor of the ascii smiley is not "one of the little guys". He is Scott Fahlman, one of the most famous AI researchers and Lisp hackers.
  • One of my favorite corners of the internet has always been http://www.totse.com/ [totse.com] Plethora of random subjects to peruse, with or without my tinfoil hat.

  • Perverted? (Score:4, Funny)

    by OldManAndTheC++ ( 723450 ) on Thursday September 02, 2004 @05:54PM (#10143741)
    In the past, politicians could keep their perverted behavior secret from the public, but the Internet has changed all that -- just ask Bill Clinton

    Fellatio is perverted?

    Man, this guy needs to get out more...

  • Amuses, all the time; occasionally disgusts, but shocks? I can't remember the last time I saw something that shocked me. Maybe it's just because I've been a student of human nature for too long; no interest is too perverse or scatological for at least one person out there. And thanks to FrontPage, that one person can make a website about his interest, broadcast it to the world, and perhaps find a like-minded soul, or two, or 500.

    Yeah, it's the study of human nature that renders me mostly immune to shock. Ei

  • There is a second person in the world who actually prefers 'Information Superhighway' to 'Internet'.

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