Random Rants
There used to be a site called Net Slave that talked about those of us who worked in the tech world, and in 2001 they wanted to shut it down. I wrote to this to ask them not to. Eventually in 2002 it did. It made me sad. But I am going through my old hard drives to find all the photos and found this….
4/15/01
The Shit I have Been Through and Why this Site Can’t Shut Down: A Real-Life Netslave’s Response.
Listen, I love the web, I loved it from the moment I saw it in a museum exhibition when I was 15 in the year 1989. I loved it again in 1994, when I got my first email, and spent hours of my life in the computer lab. I loved it through my 107714.151@xxxx.com account to when I graduated from university and I joined a start up.
I use it to communicate with my friends and my family who live far away, I use it to read articles I can’t get anywhere else, and I use it to have access to new music. I use it to live my life. And now that I am 27, I use it for something more.
I use it to make a living.
Everything I own, everything I buy, and I mean everything: my travels, my food, my rent and presents for loved ones, is paid for by the salary I made by being a web-worker.
It’s not been an all-pleasant journey. I watched one of my “special” things become a commercialized nightmare of egomaniacs, get-rich-quick junkies. I have been lied about, yelled at, unable to see my grandfather before he died, not allowed to go to a friend in need, escorted out of my office, forbidden to take all my personal belongings, had my self-respect, my confidence left in shreds on office floors by people so driven to the goal of IPO or failing to keep it together when the company is on the brink of collapse that they forgot I was a human being.
I left my second start up in the boom. No one understood when I said I no longer wanted to work 80-hours weeks anymore. Nor when I said I was willing to leave my stock options in swap of a life. My best friend – who I met at our first dotcom – got angry at me when I tried to tell her we shouldn’t have to give up so much, that our bosses and co-workers weren’t our friends -they were exploiting us in the name of loyalty. To her it wasn’t a small slight. It lasted a year until the company closed its doors recently. Unlike me, she was there from the start to the end, I left mid-way.
People said I was stupid, temperamental, lazy and in many ways I thought I was too.
I went backpacking for months and when I came home, although I was better, I was afraid to get another job. I was fearful that maybe I wasn’t made for working; I expected too much, wasn’t committed enough to make a living in the working world. I got one all the same but still I thought maybe, I was wrong about the conditions, about my ex-bosses, I was wrong about how I felt.
Then I came across this site. It was then I realized I wasn’t the only one. And, yes, I was right all along.
I don’t want to make it seem like this site changed my life. It didn’t. You guys aren’t “cool” and you don’t “rock.” What this site does is: it stands for something. It stands for, the call that, what these companies are doing is not “right” and it should not be accepted. Those negative practices should not be entrenched into the culture of Internet workspace.
The Internet is full of a load of bullshit already; it’s chock-o-full of crap. We need something of substance. With all the rubbish people are writing about our industry, we need, and will continue to need a voice that says “enough.”
This site, by its mere existence, does that.
The Netslave team should be pleased that the press looks to them for quotes and leadership because it means that they are an “authority” on this subject. By default it implies “us”, the web-workers, are being heard. And if it means taking on sponsors and banner ads, if it means looking for new writers, or giving the finger to “you suck” emails, do what has to be done to keep this going.
This is/was the aspect of the net that makes me love it so much. It gives a voice to the voiceless. Anyone with an opinion and access to a modem has an equal chance to be heard. If you have something eloquent to say, a point to make, it can be done with limited budget and literacy.
With the big boys coming in, constantly bombarding us with “E” whatever -commerce, business, banking, it’s easy to forget the power of the medium for saying something. It hasn’t changed, just by ratio there seems to be less people doing it. Shutting down this site will just make it seem more true, when it isn’t at all.
I still love the web. I will continue to work on it in whatever capacity it will become. So should you, because you still love the web, and you love this site and what it stands for.
Here is your article. I may not be in a job right now, but I am still a web-worker and will continue to be in the future and am one of many who refuse to be a “netslave.”
From the Start to the End.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 