Though now they are giants, once they were just like us.

July 15, 2009 9:24 AM

What were the mods like (on Metafilter) before they were mods? Please point me to notable posts by Jessamyn, Cortex, et al from when they were just some schmo on MeFi like you or me.

This query inspired by Matt's blog post reflecting on 10 years of Metafilter.

posted by ocherdraco to MetaFilter-related at 9:24 AM (53 comments total)

Wait, cortex is a mod?!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:31 AM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

There are no such posts. They were made unschmos when they joined The Cabal and all evidence removed from the archives.
posted by DU at 9:43 AM on July 15

They're pretty much still just like us. I mean cortex is a fuckin' giant... jessamyn, not so much.
posted by gman at 9:47 AM on July 15

et all was permabanned for sockpuppetry unbecoming a schmo.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:48 AM on July 15 [2 favorites has favorites]

Matt's blog post reflecting on 10 years of Metafilter

Is this where I put a request in for a tee shirt saying I'm Matt Haughey's 29872nd Friend?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:49 AM on July 15

Looking at cortex's MetaFilter posting history I have to say that the one I remember most fondly from before he was a mod is his Garfield reconstructed. That particular post, along with a couple of other things, helped somewhat redeem Garfield to me and now I read it in the newspaper again. Also, I note that today cortex will make his 5000th comment to the Blue... unless he'll be SILENCED ALL HIS LIFE.
posted by Kattullus at 9:54 AM on July 15

And baby when you call me, you can call me et al
posted by boo_radley at 9:59 AM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

Jessamyn's most notable pre-mod suggestion was MetaTalk. Yup, this here is her idea. This post, back in 2003, introduced me to sheela na gigs, I'm pretty sure (unless it was some article about the origins of Australian slang... either way I remember looking at that site and being all ooh aw).
posted by Kattullus at 10:00 AM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

Cortex has always been a mod among men.
posted by adamdschneider at 10:03 AM on July 15

While he's never been very active as a user on MetaFilter pb did once receive, along with Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, PC Magazine's People of the Year award.
posted by Kattullus at 10:08 AM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

And vacapinta posted about the inimitable Harry Stephen Keeler, and at that time I was slightly obsessed with him (I got better).
posted by Kattullus at 10:12 AM on July 15

I was mostly referencing their work in MetaTalk before they became mods. From some time in 2000 through 2004, Jessamyn would periodically pop in here to steer people the right way and she did it way better than I did. Ditto to cortex through 2005 and 2006 before he came on board -- you can often see him pop in and re-explain stuff better that I was trying to explain to a user with such regularity I pretty much had to hire him to help out.
posted by mathowie at 10:21 AM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

Wait, cortex is a mod?!

Dude's totally a rocker. Have you seen his hair?
posted by dersins at 10:26 AM on July 15 [3 favorites has favorites]

Probably the pinnacle of JTex's combined Meta brilliance was Please Stop The Asshattery.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:30 AM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

I understand what your post was referencing, Matt. It just made me have a "Hey, mods are real people, too!" kind of moment (you know, kind of like when you're in grade school and you realize for the first time that your teacher doesn't sleep at school), and I wondered what cool stuff they did on Metafilter before they became all modly.
posted by ocherdraco at 10:31 AM on July 15

the one I remember most fondly from before he was a mod is his Garfield reconstructed. That particular post, along with a couple of other things, helped somewhat redeem Garfield to me and now I read it in the newspaper again

I was shocked and kind of thrilled when I first read that site to find out it was written by a guy named Chris Stangl. When I was in high school and the internet was fairly new, I used to frequent alt.music.tmbg on usenet -- a newsgroup for discussing They Might Be Giants. People would post unbelievably plate-of-beans off-the-wall interpretations of their songs ("interps"), and that Stangl guy was the master of it. His interpretations were utterly implausible; every other song was about John Flanburgh coming out as a transvestite or something like that. It was all playful and tongue-in-cheek, but it pushed me to realize just how much you could say about the most mundane texts, and how infinitely deep you could make them. He was a kind of internet hero of mine and he ended up really influencing the way I read things and listened to music. I love beans now!

And then apparently he moved on to Garfield. (I assume it's the same guy; maybe I'm wrong.) He's still great at close analysis and producing commentary that makes the target much, much more interesting. I'm disappointed he hasn't updated his Garfield blog in ages.

I posted in the Garfield thread but didn't mention this because I didn't want to admit that I used to visit TMBG usenet boards. I'm cool now, I swear.
posted by painquale at 10:33 AM on July 15 [2 favorites has favorites]

Jessamyn would occasionally be a baby. Now, not so much.
posted by OmieWise at 10:41 AM on July 15

I was one yesterday!
posted by jessamyn at 10:48 AM on July 15 [2 favorites has favorites]

Reading really old posts and comments is bizarre: Note to MF users: posting a link is down for the rest of the day until I rework some of the scripts. Too many "hey look at me" posts for one day, thankyouverymuch.

Apparently Jessaym used to write
comments like this for some reason.
But she is charming so that is ok.
And she stopped eventually.
posted by chunking express at 10:49 AM on July 15

modly is a great word.
posted by milestogo at 10:50 AM on July 15

I used to use a lot more poor-man's em-dashes before I learned to do it the entity-y way.
posted by cortex at 10:51 AM on July 15

For future reference: I am currently a shy, quiet, friendly guy who is very laid-back. I am also kind a pleasant.

Once in a position of power, it is my intention to be an unflinchingly tyrannical powerhungry overlord wholly devoid of all scruples and empathy.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 11:05 AM on July 15 [3 favorites has favorites]

While he's never been very active as a user on MetaFilter pb did once receive, along with Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan, PC Magazine's People of the Year award.

Whatevs. I won Time Magazine's person of the year and all the I moderate is my breathing and I don't even do that very well.
posted by allen.spaulding at 11:12 AM on July 15

Was that in '38 or '39?
posted by gman at 11:19 AM on July 15

cortex was awesome before being a mod, my personal favorite memory of the time being 88 lines about 44 mefites, even though I'm not in it whatsoever.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:20 AM on July 15

Whoa...jessamyn suggested threaded comments in her first metatalk post.

She also organized an early Seattle Meetup that I totally missed. (I put images in that comment? crazy! I wonder where they are now. I was thinking I could find one at The Mirror Project, but it doesn't seem to be loading at all.)

Ah, I remember the "web design for food" guy, altho I was not a MeFite then. (Huh, that thread features a then-unemployed Nick Finck. Is that the year he (and others) started WebVisions?)
posted by epersonae at 11:26 AM on July 15

Apparently Jessaym used to write
comments like this for some reason.
But she is charming so that is ok.
And she stopped eventually.

actually she wrote comments like
this, which actually strikes me as less
weird because it's more consistent, and seems
a tiny bit like poetry.

and yes, she's totally charming.
and always was. rock on.




posted by notjessamyn at 2:25 PM today, in a galaxy far far away [+] [!]
posted by languagehat at 11:26 AM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

Also, now I have the asshattery song stuck in my head. Thanks! :)
posted by epersonae at 11:26 AM on July 15

“Hi there—you're Ms. West, right? You're the librarian here? Fantastic. Listen, I'm looking for a particular book that I'd like to check out. It's called ‘Origin of the Young Mod’ by Mathowidasa…”
posted by koeselitz at 11:27 AM on July 15

That song is the first time I realized I had attracted any attention on this site at all.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:27 AM on July 15

srsly, not sarcastic at all. it's a happy little tune.
posted by epersonae at 11:28 AM on July 15

They all used to be cool, until they sold out to the man. Now they're slightly less cool, but better paid.
posted by blue_beetle at 11:40 AM on July 15

Cortex was also the minstrel behind the classic Matthewchen is spamming and Mathowie's Community Blog (lyrics by It's Raining Florence Henderson.)
posted by Johnny Assay at 12:47 PM on July 15

Wasn't Matthewchen is Spamming basically the impetus behind Mefi Music?
posted by Afroblanco at 1:19 PM on July 15

Anyway, I was never on here before Jessamyn was a mod, but I always just thought of cortex as "the smart guy who makes funny songs."
posted by Afroblanco at 1:27 PM on July 15

Ha! In the original matthewchen thread, cortex commented "How did you hear about MeFi, anyway? And wouldn't it be interesting if that was a required field on the signup process?" I wish it were part of the signup process, because one of the weirdest things about my use of mefi is that I truly do not remember how I first came across it, or how long I was a lurker, or any of that jazz. All I know is that for about the first year I mostly hung out on AskMe, and then sort of moved over into different parts of the site. I really wish I knew how I ended up here in the first place. It all feels very down the rabbit hole.
posted by ocherdraco at 1:28 PM on July 15

Only in this case, I guess you took The Blue pill.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:31 PM on July 15

Wasn't Matthewchen is Spamming basically the impetus behind Mefi Music?

Music came along a few months after that; here's the announcement, at the end of June, 2006.

A few weeks after the matthewchen thing, I went trawling through the then-quite-new Projects section and put together a post for the blue about music by mefites; that led to some in-thread conversation which led to this metatalk post by nylon suggesting a compilation album. That in turn lead to the Metafilter Compilation Album, which ended up being released around the end of 2006, by which time Music had already been launched.

Matt mentioned once having hoped to get Music up before the meficomp got going, as a possible framework for submissions, but I did most of the initial call-for-submissions and organization before that ever got off the ground. Which is probably for the best, because Music has so thoroughly supplanted the notional function of a comp album that it launching sooner might have just made even that first (and, if you ask me, sole) volume a questionable venture too.

The June, 2006 launch of Music was actually a resurrection, though—Matt first floated a Music idea back in April, 2003, launching the original version a few days later. If you're curious what version 1.0 looked like, the Wayback Machine has you covered.

There was a spate of music-related threads over the next few weeks:
- progress and feature requests
- gear & process talk
- ditto (these last two would be a perfect fit for the current Music Talk section)

Then came the fall:
- it's out of date
- man, it's reaaaally out of date
- paging Indiana Jones, seriously (this one gets weird)
- it's dead, baby

And then came Projects, and then came Music, and we're back to the top again.
posted by cortex at 2:17 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

Whoa...jessamyn suggested threaded comments in her first metatalk post.

Wow, from that same thread, mathowie was also for threaded comments before he was against them.

"jessamyn - will work on threading. there were some performance issues in the past, but I'll look into it. This post is a perfect example of why I wish I had threading, I wish this answer were directly below yours."
posted by nooneyouknow at 2:44 PM on July 15

Let's just not talk about those early pro-threading discussions. I get the shakes when I think about it.
posted by cortex at 2:54 PM on July 15

for the record, cortex is still some schmo (and I may be schmo-ish also).
posted by jessamyn at 3:00 PM on July 15

I'm fond of the great pillars that Cortex placed at the jaws of the Ocean Sea before he drove Geryon's sacred kine to Eurystheus.

Jessamyn was more subtle in her workings, but some traces yet remain of her time in this world. Go to Holpatin in British Honduras at the break of day, and walk with the sun until you come to a great low place in the earth. This void is all that remains to show where she broke the pride of the twelve Deaths and cast down the Court of Xibalba.
posted by Your Disapproving Father at 3:19 PM on July 15 [4 favorites has favorites]

vacapinta was silently posting and commenting under the radar on Metafilter for many years. When he assumed the office of Minister of Evening Moderation and guarding of The Other Continents, he did so in relative secrecy, preferring only to let his power be seen and known only through the frightened whispers of rumor until he was finally outed after a late-night deletion. Even now, he keeps a low profile, watching and biding his time, knowing that history will be on his side.

Knowing, in fact, that after he takes advantage of the disarray in the wake of the 10th-anniversary celebrations, having all three of the other mods assassinated in three separate coordinated hits, and after he uses his long-standing but unanticipated alliances with the army and navy to brutally but efficiently consolidate complete control over Metafilter and all of its subsites, he will be known down through the annals as ‘the butcher of the blue, gray and green.’
posted by koeselitz at 4:14 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

Dude, give vacapinta a little more credit. He can totally get me and Matt with a twofer.

"Ah ha," you say, "but surely it'd be a threefer, then, as pb will also be in attendance!"

"Ah ha," I rejoin, "vacapinta would sooner destroy a stained-glass window than an artist like pb's self. Recruitment, naturally. Besides, who do you think will be making the hit?"
posted by cortex at 4:20 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

If vacapinta's 5000+ comments are considered low-profile...
posted by Phire at 5:38 PM on July 15

I felt lucky to meet all 5 mods at MeFi 8 in Portland. That was shortly before vacapinta assumed the Mod mantle. He was a wonderful guy to talk with and the others are all very nice as well. Friendly, real, nice people.
posted by Lynsey at 5:45 PM on July 15

I think it's when we're all drunk at the 10th parties that the disemvoweling starts, ushering in the era of Meta 2.0.
posted by maxwelton at 7:38 PM on July 15

En dashes are for folks who want to separate things – but not too much.
posted by cowbellemoo at 9:50 PM on July 15

I remember that jessamyn (unsurprisingly, given her librarian background) rocked the hell out as an advice dispenser on AskMe right away, before she was a mod. Everyone else noticed too, as I recall...people would say all the time, "listen to jessamyn; as always, she gave you the best advice."
posted by ifjuly at 9:52 PM on July 15 [1 favorite has favorites]

Wait for the VH1 special like everyone else.

I can't wait until next week.
posted by terrapin at 3:52 AM on July 16

Chris Stangl

painquale: You'll be happy to know Chris Stangl writes a massively interesting blog over-thinking unserious movies.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:49 AM on July 16 [2 favorites has favorites]

THANK YOU. Man o nam, you just made my year!
posted by painquale at 2:54 PM on July 16

It used to be Jessamyn would distract me and Cortex would sneak up behind and give me a wedgie.
posted by LarryC at 5:33 PM on July 17