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The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.
-- Umberto Eco
Thursday, July 17, 1997
Do you track your web logs? I don't use a page counter on my site (my html snobbery). but I do look at the web server logs every day, and track them in a spreadsheet. The page that gets the most hits is the Cacophony page. Not surprising, since that is the URL I have devoted the most effort to publicizing.
But I wonder about the five people every day who are reading the Lincoln Shadow Puppet play we wrote. Who are they?
* * * * * * * *
Today I spent some time in a chat room run by a Microsoft MVP. (This is a program where private citizens, not paid by MS, volunteer for peer-to-peer support in newsgroups, chat rooms and where ever else they can think of.) I first was there via a web page, then realized we were in a chat room on the comicsrv.microsoft.com server! so I fired up Comic Chat.
This was a program I used pretty often last fall. The #over40 chat room was a fun place to be, since the name kept most of the boring teenagers away. We didn't kick younger folks; the name was enough of a filter.
But I drifted away, fell out of the habit.
After chatting with people about IE4 in the #IE4 room, I tried out the #Over50 room. There were no familiar nicks there, but a friendly crowd.
When you meet a new group in real life, your old stories are new again. You can trot out old chestnuts and smart remarks, and everyone thinks they are terrible funny (which they were when not threadbare).
I had the same phenomenon tonight. When all of the ten or twelve people there kept saying "hi" to each other, to the exclusion of all other conversation, I said to myself (in a thought balloon in in Comic Chat) "This must be the 'All Greetings' chat room." Immediately they desisted from saying "Hi," and began a round of "LOL" (laugh out loud). I forget the other smart alecky remarks I made, but my remarks were appreciated. I brought out my old comment about the #over40 room name, applying it to the #over50 room. I rhetorically asked if the room name referred to our ages, our heights or our IQs. This also brought gales of laughter.
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