Interview
H. Jekyll interviews Eli the Bearded
Anyone who has either read or posted a story to the alt.sex.stories.moderated newsgroup owes a debt of gratitude to Eli the Bearded. At a time that alt.sex.stories was beginning to fill up with spam and Web-based story sites were in their infancy, Eli took a moribund a.s.s.m. newsgroup and single-handedly ran it for its first two years of real existence.
He bears great responsibility for spam-free reading, for large archives, for the good stuff.
Here we interview Eli about running a.s.s.m., about politics and threats to sex stories, about some of his favorite authors, and about his own writing.
H. Jekyll: How did a.s.s.m. and ASSTR develop from the old a.s.s., and what was your role in the development?
Eli the Bearded: My introduction to Usenet was in the early 1990s. If there was an alt.sex.stories then, I never found it. I did read some of the other alt.sex.* groups, and also rec.arts.erotica. That last one had a somewhat onerous review job for the moderator. It was a burden at that time and only got worse. By the time the online decency act (more later) the moderatorship of r.a.e had changed hands at least twice, and it was struggling to keep up. I wanted to collect sex stories to make them freely available on the web as a civil disobedience act and had started my own r.a.e archive (the moderators supposedly had/have one, too, but I never saw it). I posted some stories on r.a.e. I don't think I ever posted to a.s.s, as the spam was pretty bad. I followed a.s.s.d a bit. Otherwise I wasn't much involved with the progress of Usenet erotica up to that point. Then I read somewhere, perhaps alt.config, that there was another moderated sex stories group, a.s.s.m, which was dormant due to a missing moderator. This struck me as a perfect opportunity to (a) collect more stories, and (b) open up a new forum spam free by moderator control but not burdened by a moderator review for sex stories. All I needed to do was get the moderation address changed to me.
At that time the consensus was "alt.* groups cannot change moderators after creation." Even for "Big 8" groups (those governed by news.groups) while there is a plan in place for such a change, doing it without the help of the current moderator is not easy. That r.a.e was on hard times came to my advantage in soliciting sympathy for a working alt.* altnative and by lobbying alt.config, a.s.s.d, and a few news.groups people I was able to convince people that a.s.s.m was needed and that I was capable of moderating it. As I recall I demoed my capabilities by soliciting submissions by email, which I approved for posting to a.s.s.m and injected. Direct posts to the group would go to the defunct moderator. Next I send out dozens of "newgroup" messages to formally announce my taking over moderation and sent private messages to the people who control the master moderator forwarding list, currently isc.org, but I don't think it was that formal then. Soon enough it worked. And for my little civil disobedience project, everything was archived freely on a website. ASSTR started a year or so after I did, and aimed to be a more complete archive, covering not just r.a.e and a.s.s.m. I gave Rey del Sexo a copy of what I had and for a while there were parallel archives.
HJ: At that time (mid to late 1990s), how great was the concern that posted stories would lead to prosecutions?
EtB: The Communications Decency Act never passed on it's own. To get it past his peers, Senator Exon attached it as an amendment to the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1996, where it is section V, but it was still commonly called the "Communications Decency Act" or CDA. Nobody really knew what was going to happen, but a number of people did small acts like put an extra header in posts, or a line in their sig, commenting on the stupidity of elected officials in passing that dreck, typically in indecent terms. An example, not original to me, but used by me is the X-header: "X-US-Congress: Moronic Fucks."
The particular subsection that caused the uproar has this, for example:
`(a) Whoever--`(1) in interstate or foreign communications--`(d) Whoever--`(A) by means of a telecommunications device knowingly--`(i) makes, creates, or solicits, and
`(ii) initiates the transmission of, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication which is obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person; ...`(1) in interstate or foreign communications knowingly--`(A) uses an interactive computer service to send to a specific person or persons under 18 years of age, or
`(B) uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs, regardless of whether the user of such service placed the call or initiated the communication; or ...
shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
I think everyone felt it was against the First Amendment, but no one knew for sure that the Supreme Court would agree. Clearly being "indecent" to "annoy" someone wasn't going to fly, but the rest? When the Supreme Court did strike down, it was only part of the CDA that was found wanting. Parts of it art still active, such as the part that mandates the so-called "v-chip" in televisions.
HJ: Why would no one join you as moderator, or was that your decision?
EtB: I don't recall anyone offering to join, and I certainly didn't go looking for help. At first I filtered by hand, but then I began to notice distinguishing features of stories that spam didn't share, and started to robomoderate.
HJ: Unlike many of us, while you have used a "nym," you have also been pretty open as to your RL identity. Was this part of your civil disobedience strategy?
EtB: No. My nom de net came about when I was looking for a nickname for myself that would be globally unique. I had been posting to Usenet under my real name for a while, but I wasn't the only Benjamin Griffin, or even the only Benjamin Elijah Griffin. I was very much interested in the idea that a person is not uniquely named. That is, someone can have a unique name (one shared with no one else), but almost no one has just one unique name. So I wanted to come up with alternative names for myself and "Eli the Bearded" became my most used variation, and one that is still globally unique.
HJ: What were the main challenges of running the site?
EtB: Initially I ran it out of a Unix shell account. I had worked out a deal with the hosting company where I gave them a big hard drive and got all the disk space I needed. Soon however the load of my archive grew too much for them to let me stay there at that price, and I upgraded to a colocated server. I got a fairly beefy computer by the standards of the day, but between the CPU costs of the robomoderation and the load of the webserver it was always fairly loaded. Weekly reindexing for the search would bring things to a crawl. Disk space was never a problem, and the RAM was adequate. These are the things people often seemed to think might be in short supply.
The worst problem was bandwidth. The costs for it just kept rising. I remember paying more than $1000 a month for a while. I tried to do advertising, but I didn't want R rated banners, and not much else would go for a site like that. Adult Friend Finder offered some G rated banners, and I think I got maybe $50 total from my stint with them. Eventually I found an anonymous donor who would pay the bandwidth costs, in full. That lasted a year or a little longer, until the next rate hike. That was pretty much the end. I didn't part ways with my hosting company under the best of circumstances, and I didn't ever get my colo'ed box back or the contents of the drives. ASSTR had a CD copy of my backup from a while before the end, and perhaps updates by crawling. I worked with Rey to get him ready to take over the moderation and did the newgroups and moderator alias list change. As I recall it took two or more months for things to get back to normal, and then ASSTR became the sole big archive, and my "qz.to" was no more.
HJ: How active are you on the Web today, and what are you doing?
EtB: There is only so much time in the day for things. I am still fond of Usenet, but I don't read much, and I post even less. My time administering the website gave me useful experience to jump into a series of web related jobs, one of which I still hold. I contribute occasionally to the Perl archive at CPAN, and have a Wikipedia account, but mostly I have been doing things that don't leave a net footprint. Digital photography has been one of my new hobbies. A sample of my photos are up at tribe.net, but I haven't done much there since my son Cyrus was born last year.
HJ: There are still story collections at ASSTR that you put together. Do you still read many on-line stories, or have you tired of them?
EtB: To say I put them together is a bit misleading. I solicited and received already assembled collections and put them up. I can see how one would get that impression, since they are all grouped under "Eli the Bearded," but I think that was just because they didn't have a Usenet group to put them under. I still read stories from r.a.e and a.s.s.m from time to time. Maybe half of it is stories from authors whom I recognize, and half from authors unknown to me. Very often when I try though, I find several that I want to read but only have time for one or two.
HJ: Who are some of your favorite authors? Favorite stories? What do you look for in a good story?
EtB: Mat Twassel. Vinnie Tesla. Jack C Lipton. Hammon Wry. Shon Richards. Vulgar Argot. Alexis Siefert. Kenny Gamura. Bronwen SM. Ann Douglass. Anne747 (aka Anon747 and Anne Jet). Celia Batau. Crimson Dragon. Daphne Xu. Dr Spin. Dulcinea. Katie McN. Probably others I'm not thinking of.
[A favorite story is] "Ripe" by Bronwen SM. After that a lot of it just blends together in my mind. Oh I'll remember a particular story if something makes me think of it, but none just come up thinking of "excellent".
I'll skip a story if the English is too bad. I can understand typos, I make enough of them myself, but too many run ons, or grammar problems, or even bad formatting can kill a story for me. Due to time constraints I perhaps read a disproportionate amount of flash these days.
HJ: Are you greatly concerned about governmental crackdowns on Internet erotica today?
EtB: I certainly am concerned. From what I know of the Red Rose case -- essentially a pure story site taken down for the content of the stories -- I can see no reasonable reasoning for the government side. The decision on the CDA had Supreme Court describe the internet as "a medium that, unlike radio, receives full First Amendment protection." Probably the government wishes to take the tack that the speech is, in a legal sense, "indecent and obscene", and I doubt that any well written story is going to be without "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" (SLAPS). And a whole collection of stories would be even harder to find without SLAPS. Besides that front there have also be worrying attempts to ban anonymity, and the whole Bush administration position on porn stinks.
HJ: How do you foresee the longer-term trend of sex on the Internet?
EtB: This would require a lot of time to answer properly. I think we are at a cultural turning point now where sex and sexuality have become not "free" in the 1970s sense, but free in the sense of not being shunted to the back room. People are taking things like camera phones, digital cameras, and web cams and using them to create titillating images for themselves and their lovers, and sometimes just for anyone. Internet photo sharing, whether email, photo sites, blogs, or anything else makes it easier and everyone who sees this homemade porn will be a little bit more inclined to try it themselves. Just as kids who grew up with computers took them for granted in so many applications, and kids who have grown up with the internet are so at ease with the web, so too kids who grow up in this age of free sex will be more at ease with sexuality. It is going to be a different world when my two little kids are adults, and I'm still trying to come to terms with how comfortable I'm going to be with it.
HJ: Ole Joe's Guide has an interesting description of your stories: "His stories fall into two broad categories, those which he writes for his own mental well being and those he writes for the challenge of it. Challenge pieces aim to defy categorization and may upset some/many readers." Do you have any comments on that?
EtB: Very true. Something like "Doorknob 34b Gets Lucky" comes out of "What is the most unlikely perspective I can write a story from?" I think that one came after my "Psycho Clam" series (of four), written from the point of view of a clam. The mental well being ones were more like "Enigma in the Mirror" and "May". Some, very dream inspired, are harder to classify, like the infamous "Train Ride Marked by a Crying Baby." [All stories linked from: http://www.panix.com/~eli/erotica/]
HJ: Which are your favorites? And why?
EtB: "Train Ride" has a very surreal aspect to it and remains a favorite. "All Dolled Up" and "Hooked on the Ceiling" are fun fantasies. The alliterative verse of "Heldar". Other challenge stories I really like are "yes, Mistress" and "Lipogram of S-E-X" both because of the challenges.
HJ: What aspects of writing did you pay most attention to? Antheros suggests you were more concerned about situations than characters.
EtB: Yes, that's true. Few of the characters show much of their personalities. When they do, it is often coming from an unusual or warped place. I often tried to leave as much as possible generic. I don't any stories mention sizes of body parts, except when it was relevant to the story (e.g. ,"I've got huge tits"). Similarly I didn't make "stand out" characters often. The stuff I've written is all fairly short, and I really feel like I need to concentrate on the basics of whatever the story is to make it work. Some authors are very good at developing characters in a few sentences, but that's not my strong point. I'd take a lot of space doing that.
Copyright 2006 by H. Jekyll. All right reserved. Only "Journal of Desire" and Eli the Bearded have permission to repost without asking permission first. So ask. Is that asking too much? To contact me: [email protected].