Fuck You And Die: An Oral History of Something Awful I sometimes suspect that we're seeing something in the Internet as significant as the birth of cities. It's something that profound and with that sort of infinite possibilities. It's really something new; it's a new kind of civilization. — William Gibson, 1995 who the fuck is scraeming "LOG OFF" at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off — @dril , 2012 * I. Early Days 1999 was a bad time to be in the website business. The dot-com bust was hurtling toward the internet with the speed and certitude of the Chicxulub asteroid. Five trillion dollars were about to evaporate, caught in a constellation of collapsing venture capital-backed stars like Pets.com—Amazon if Amazon only sold cat food—and Broadcast.com, which was just radio on the internet. It was, therefore, a good time to be a cynic. "The...