Geekspotting - Episode I: Loserdom Begins

Hi, my name's Out Of Tune (everyone together now: Hi Out Of Tune!), and I'm a internet message board addict. It's been five days since my last toke on the Wilco fan-geek site. I have a problem. But I'm trying to stop.

It all seemed innocent enough at the beginning. Just having a few laughs trading some live shows, talking about the tour, and other random music musings. Nothing to heavy, and I always said to myself that I could stop at anytime. It was only supposed to be a temporary form of entertainment. I signed on to ViaChicago after I moved to Boston, a town where I don't know anybody except for my wife. I figured until I got settled I could waste some time talking to fellow Wilco fans and collecting live bootlegs. And it was OK for a while. I got my first little taste from Texas, with a note saying there's more where that came from and I know where I can get it. It was three shows I think. Jeff Tweedy solo in Chicago from January 2003, legendary shows that I had attended. Oh the euphoria of those first hits on the bootleg pipe! I was hooked. More and more shows came my way. Post a request on the board (something like, "looking for 7/4/01 in Grant Park, Jay's last show with the band") and you'd get a "PM on the way" message. (PM standing for "private message", your own little mailbox on the board, for you uninitiated folks). You would arrange for a trade, and your "dealer" would soon have something waiting for you in your mailbox a few days later. Pure bliss. But soon, that's not enough. The high is good but I start craving a bigger fix. I wanted something harder than my gateway drug live shows. Soon, I'm joining conversations on the board.

Now I'm entering territory I never thought I would. I had a roommate a few years earlier that I used to make fun of for this. Hers was a Mystery Science Theater 3000 board. She would watch the show while posting conversations with fellow MST3K junkies. I thought to myself, "I'll never get into things like that," and thought how pathetic it was for an otherwise well-adjusted person to be wasting their time communicating with people on the internet that she didn't know. It seemed to be such a waste of a lovely person's talent and personality. And people on the internet give themselves weird names. It's like the stupid CB handles in the 70s, except even dumber than "Bandit" or "Country Weasel." And on music boards it can be ridiculous. About the only thing I hate more than hip-hop names is white twenty-somethings from the suburbs who went to Ivy League schools with hip-hop names. Calling yourself Def Ice Notorious Slim Daddy DJ Jazzman Freshy Cool when your name is really Gilbert just seems stupid. No way did I want to enter a world where these people hung out. If I had only listened to my own admonitions.

I suppose every addict has an excuse for how it started. I guess mine was loneliness. Boston is a tough town to meet people and at the beginning I wasn't working much except for trips down to New York to direct a play twice a week. In between, I was home alone a lot during the day. It started slow, as all addictions do. If you've never been on a message board, here is a little description of how it works: Someone starts a topic of conversation called a "thread" and writes a little something about the topic in a "post." Others on the board can then reply to the post and so on and so on. It becomes something like a conversation at a party but without interruptions. I eventually began to think of the threads as "lines" of the drug that I would soon not be able to kick. The next step up from the gateway was doing lines about the band. It was your general pedestrian conversations. "Put in order, from favorite to least favorite, all of the Wilco albums." "Favorite show you ever saw?" "What will the next album be like?" "What do you think of the new lineup?" "Why did Jay really get kicked out of the band?"

Soon I needed more and more lines and I strayed into the other music topics. And the high got even more intense. Conversations about he Decemberists, long dissertations about why The The is such a great band, posting the lyrics to one of your favorite songs (but not identifying it, that is too unhip. They should be able to figure that out on their own), even a thread where you could post a picture of the album cover that you were listening to. It was called the "now playing" thread, or "NP" for those on the in. And there was always some info on an upcoming tour of somebody I wanted to see. It was ecstasy. Hours disappeared. After this I figured I had already gone this far, so why not take the full plunge? I already went from smoking to snorting, so what the hell, why not just start mainlining? It was time to jump head first into the general topics threads.

Oh my god! As soon as the needle went into the vein I was taken away to another world. Movies, books, hobbies, baseball, politics (oh boy, especially politics). Anything and everything you'd want to talk about and there it was. No need to leave the apartment for social interaction or go out and have a real life or actual relationships. All I needed was here, except maybe beer (but somebody would usually post a "Now Drinking" topic much like the NP thread and would post pictures of the can or bottle of the beverage they were currently enjoying.) There were even a few Republicans hanging around for me to get into arguments with.

Life seemed good.

I was completely unaware of the descent into madness that awaited me.


To be continued...