Welcome To The Hotel Writtenbyme
Jun 20 '02
The Bottom Line Parable for the demise of Writtenbyme.
(Note: I originally wrote this back in March right around the time Writtenbyme closed.)
Once there was a brand new world. A new world that was wild and crazy, yet full of possibilities and wonderful. A world in which it was believed that anything could be accomplished.
To this new frontier came settlers. And they began building homes and stores and places to learn. There were places for people to be poetic and one particular one where people gave their opinions on products as a means of helping consumers.
To this new frontier one day: came a group of businessmen. They looked around and said, “This place is missing something. It needs a place where people can be creative and have fun and meet other people who like to be creative.”
One of the other businessmen answered and said, “Ya fool! There already is a place here. It’s out by the river and it’s called ThemeStream”.
Another one answered and said, “Yes! But it can’t hurt to have more. So let’s build one ourselves!”
And so they set to work. They began building and soon they had a nice gabled community for people to write at and be creative. They originally planned to call it “Great Idea”. But since there was another business in town called “Bright Idea” that had developed a habit of screwing the people working for it, they realized it was too similar and settled on “Writtenbyme” as its name.
And so it went that one day, the man who owned Writtenbyme, named Warren, stood up and announced: “Attention people. I am pleased to announce the opening of this great community. If you like to write, come here and sign up and we will help sell your work and maybe get you published. And you can meet like-minded people as well.”.
So lo and behold the people came. And the Writtenbyme community was soon thriving. People came and put up stuff and others read and left comments on it.
And the people running it, headed by Warren, saw that it was a success. And they decided that they should offer some financial compensation for the contributions of the members.
So they began to offer it. The way they did was rather funny as it involved something that was called “Hueys” at first, before it was changed to “Deweys”. How the Deweys worked, the management never really explained. Supposedly the members were to receive a certain amount of Deweys and then exchange them for Gift Certificates to some of the hot stores in town.
So this is how things went for a while. And everybody was happy. Until one day, some unpleasant facts began to surface. Some people who had earned enough Deweys to receive gift certificates had not received their certificates. In fact, several months had passed and they hadn’t heard a word about them.
It wasn’t just there either. The consumer opinion place was dealing with restructuring and rebuilding (and the new building it ultimately got turned out to be a safety hazard, as it was full of bugs and many of the new categories were of no help to the consumer.).
And at ThemeStream, the people in charge saw how slowly the money was trickling in. So they realized something had to be done and gave the people there a week’s notice. But they ultimately decided not to pay them and kept much of their work for themselves.
Many of those same people showed up at Writtenbyme, as did some people from the consumer opinion place. And these people assimilated into the community as well. But then things started getting out of hand.
Some people started getting more and more annoyed at the fact that they weren’t receiving what was rightfully theirs. And then, the Writtenbyme management decided to close out the poetry area almost overnight. When many of the people arrived the next day, they were shocked to find a padlock on the door to it, accompanied by a sign that said, “No more contributions accepted!”
Many members got outright angry and a few began to protest. But their protests fell on deaf ears. The management felt that poetry did not attract enough advertisers for revenues and thus it couldn’t be allowed. When some people took the protests to their profiles, they were exiled from the community by the management’s security police and told never to return.
Some people went to Warren and his band of management and said “Look Warren. We’ve been here contributing for a while and we see that you have been kinda draconian lately. The whole thing with the Deweys and now the closing of the Poetry area, it all seems so cold and corporate. Don’t we count?”
And Warren told them to hush and said, “Look people. I know you’re unhappy. But you’re just going to have to live with it for the time being. Paulie and Furio, my two backers, have been tightening the noose on my neck lately and if I’m not careful, I’ll be hanging. So I have to ask you people to just shut up for the time being and accept what is going on and please put more work up for sale, even if we cannot actually help you sell it.”
The people walked away. And many of them got disgruntled and began to split. But there was almost nowhere left to go. After a while, the poetry section was back and people were posting there again.
Then things began to change. The month of September arrived and the world was rocked by a major human-caused catastrophe, which led to a war. Not long after that tragedy, came a notice on the bulletin board: “Deweys Program Suspended”.
“Well that sucks!” snarled more than one member and many of them began to pack their bags and split. And many of them took their articles with them. Warren saw this happening and he put in a minimum word requirement for articles to keep people from circumventing his “no-delete” policy.
And so some people stayed and some left. Until one day in the month of February, when a new sign went up on the community bulletin board. Writtenbyme would be closing its doors within a week.
And many of the people were sad. Most of them began looking for other places to meet and be creative and began saying goodbyes. A few of the goodbyes were full of anger and vitriol.
And so the week came and went. And the day came. Many people showed up, expecting to find the building deserted. But people were still there, still posting stuff and many people wondered, “What is going on”.
And so the building remained, long after its supposed “closing date”. Warren and the gang were never heard from again. But people still posted (there and at places like Authorsden). Perhaps it was apparent that many of them had missed the classic rock lyrics quoted on the entrance to WBM.
“You can check out anytime you like
But you can never leave”.
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Member: Jeff Wilder
Location: Sunrise Florida USA
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