June 29, 2001
4:13 PM Subscribe

Pamie packs it in.
posted by danwalker (24 comments total)

Unlike most of the other people who have stopped 'publishing' their weblogs, Pamie has given us some good reasons. She says that her weblog has been primarily about her thoughts while she tried to 'figure out what she wants to do with her life.' Now that she has done that, somewhat, she's laying it to rest.

I find it hard to believe, though, that she is financially unable to pay to keep her site going. I mean, it's extremely light in the bytes department, and unless she's raking in a few thousand visitors a day, I can't see her busting any bandwidth records. But then again, perhaps she is!
posted by wackybrit at 4:29 PM on June 29, 2001

She's gotta stop the bulletin board. Running the damn forum is a pure madness (in what comes to bandwith issues).

BTW, what was Pamie.com about? (I just discovered the site). Anything special about it?
posted by kchristidis at 4:37 PM on June 29, 2001

I've never heard of it.

In any case, the second generation of blogs is coming. Whether the first generation will care, I don't know, but the second generation won't really need them anyway.
posted by aaron at 4:44 PM on June 29, 2001

NOOOOOOO!

Oh, damn. Damn, damn, damn.

K, Pamie was a personal journal and just about one of the funniest damn reads on the Internet. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

I completely sympathize with her, though, when it comes to wanting to focus on RW writing instead of a website.

But, still, it SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS.

I'm going to break things now. Damnit.

P.S. Aaron, it was a journal, not a blog. :)
posted by solistrato at 4:45 PM on June 29, 2001

Pamie had one of the most active forums I'd seen on any site - personal "journal" or otherwise. She's leaving behind a large and devoted community.

And her writing was always pretty funny, too.
posted by danwalker at 4:52 PM on June 29, 2001

oh my god, i want to cry.

i met really rad people through her forum, and i looked forward to reading her entries every day. they always made me laugh.

fuck.
posted by sugarfish at 4:59 PM on June 29, 2001

I saw Pamie's site years ago before I had even heard of the word 'blog'. It was the first 'journal' I ever ran into. I tried to get into her site but just never could.

I do know though that others worshipped it. For them I'm sure it's a very sad day.
posted by justgary at 5:09 PM on June 29, 2001

You know, with creative projects, you end when there's nothing left to say.

Better that there are 13 perfect episodes of "Fawlty Towers" than umpteen series.

And the personal web implicitly demands a production schedule that hardly anyone can maintain full-time. (Except for Lileks, who I suspect has a retinue of trained elves scanning in motel postcards while he bangs out the columns.)

Pamie.com was about Pamie. It was her home page. It was a page that was home. That is what the web is about. From Lance's MEMO review of the 2000 Webbys, which I will print and frame and treasure:

a woman came up to me, peterme(tm) and Evan Williams and asked, "that man [Halcyon] says he runs a site just about him? But he's just making that up, right? I mean, what is he selling? What service is he providing? What does he *do*?"
posted by holgate at 5:43 PM on June 29, 2001

Confession - I've been posting on Pamie's forums as "Cluelessmale" for quite a long time. I'm not even sure how long.

This is kind of a sad day for the internet. I know she can't afford the bandwith that her forums sucked. But I've met a large number of my friends through her forums - And I'm sad to see her go.

Her writing was fresh, funny and original, and in this '2nd generation of blogging', that's often missing.
posted by SpecialK at 5:51 PM on June 29, 2001

Pamie was brilliant - this is a very sad day for personal websites. Squishy was one of the funniest sites I have ever read, and the level of writing really raised the bar for other journals and for the weblogs/bioblogs that followed.

Back in the day, when it was still on geocities, and called "Pamie's Panties", my whole office became ardent Pamie fans after a clueless adminstrator banned us from viewing her site at our workplace , calling it "dirty, shameful porn". Even after actually looking at the site, he couldn't be convinced that any website with the word "panties" on it didn't have a lot of porn on it.

Her site was huge. That forum alone had to be a full time job to administer. I don't blame her for ending it, and I know that she will go on to do great stuff, but I am selfish enough that I wish she would stay and keep entertaining me.
posted by kristin at 6:20 PM on June 29, 2001

(dude, special k. i used your-site to host my website because of your recommendation. thus is the reach of pamie's forum.)
posted by sugarfish at 6:35 PM on June 29, 2001

so wait. there's a 2nd gen now?

who are they, and who are the GOOD ones?

( i came in late to the game, so i'm curious about it.)
posted by jcterminal at 6:40 PM on June 29, 2001

yeah, who are the names in this second generation?

i never was a big fan of pamie (though i really did try to get into the community and journal for a week or two), i had a couple of friends who were, and seeing the posts in this thread, i kind of feel bad that i never appreciated it as much...
posted by lotsofno at 6:45 PM on June 29, 2001

I'm looking to find someone to host the Squishy forums. I need someone who preferably has their own box and/or unlimited bandwith, or knows of a host that offers unlimited bandwith for a small amount each month. I think we could probably move Squishy over there wholesale, with Pamie's approval. I have no idea how much bandwith it sucks at the moment, but it's probably considerable... more than I have the resources to pay out of pocket.

Know of anyone?
posted by SpecialK at 8:47 PM on June 29, 2001

so wait. there's a 2nd gen now?

Not yet; I said they're coming. Keep yer pants on.

One of the names - or good ones, as it were - will of course be me, as I've finally decided to get serious and start one of my own. I'm already writing content for it, though the actual design part of it is stuck in a ditch. I made the mistake of buying the Dreamweaver 4 Bible, with the 30-day-trial version of the software, while forgetting that I'd downloaded a 30-day-trial of it when it first came out and ran it one single time. Then I decided it was too complex to deal with until I had a spare $40-50 lying around to buy a guidebook for it. But the damage was done, and I all attempts at figuring out what sort of copy protection it's using has proved fruitless. Until I can find out what piece of dongle garbage that installer hid on my hard drive, I'm spinning my wheels. If anyone knows the trick, a hint would be appreciated. (Mac version, natch.)
posted by aaron at 8:52 PM on June 29, 2001

I met her briefly once in Austin at a chickflick.com party. Confident. Gorgeous. Funny. Warm. Intelligent. She's already successful inside, whether the rest of the world knows it or not.

Happy Trails, Pamie. Thanks for the laughs. Now it's time to go and make real money with that mouth of yours. Sell a couple screenplays and novels and knock em dead. We know you can do it. Now all ya have to do is convince them.

[there is no second generation. There's diarists and there's bloggists. Some of us did both. If bloggists were the second generation of diarists, what's coming next hasn't started yet, so quit trying to write history before it has happened. Thank you.]
posted by ZachsMind at 8:59 PM on June 29, 2001

If bloggists were the second generation of diarists, what's coming next hasn't started yet, so quit trying to write history before it has happened. Thank you.

No, Zach, thank you!
posted by daveadams at 10:44 PM on June 29, 2001

No, Dave! THANK YOU!
posted by ZachsMind at 11:14 PM on June 29, 2001

What about LiveJournalists?
posted by lannie628 at 11:56 PM on June 29, 2001

Well! I thank them too! *laugh*
posted by ZachsMind at 3:06 AM on June 30, 2001

In a word, Pamie was Cool. Is Cool. Always entertaining, always smart, always with something to say and always ready to say it in an interesting, well-written, thoughtful way. She is, in the truest sense, a writer. I look forward to more writing from her nimble fingers. And such like.
posted by honkzilla at 9:49 AM on June 30, 2001

Ha. The second generation of bloggers came when there were bloggers whose blogs closed that I'd never heard of. Or at least around the time we all didn't know each others' names anymore ...

Kids today!

Truth to tell I'd have to count myself, as pat on back one of the firstest Blogger blogs, as the beginning of the 2nd generation. The first generation is that dedicated coterie of people who hand-crafted every last loving tag. In those days ... it was weird. You couldn't admit to it in front of people. Had to be brave.
posted by dhartung at 7:54 PM on June 30, 2001

dhartung: The first generation is that dedicated coterie of people who hand-crafted every last loving tag.

some of us still do, dan. :)

In those days ... it was weird. You couldn't admit to it in front of people. Had to be brave.

don't let them fool you. back then you could speak about it as openly as you liked: no one knew what the hell you were talking about. you could even spell it all out for them, and they'd just look at you with a puzzled expression on their face and say "huh?"

actually, come to think about it, things haven't changed all that much, have they? - rcb
posted by rebeccablood at 8:05 PM on June 30, 2001

Maybe as a going-away present, someone can buy Pamie a second "m" for the middle of her name, so people won't be so inclined to pronounce it as it's spelled: "pay-me." On the other hand, given her career choice, maybe it won't hurt for her name to be an invoice. Writers have enough trouble getting paid for their work; perhaps she should take any edge she can get. ;)

More seriously, though I had never heard of this woman before today, I do hope she survives the soul-sucking vacuum that is Hollywood with her creativity intact. I have difficulty understanding why anyone would want to involve themselves with that cesspool in the first place, let alone someone who apparently has intelligence and heart, but if she dares venture into the heart of darkness, I wish for her the strength of character and of will to maintain her integrity and optimism in the face of deception, fraud, and betrayal, and the good luck not to encounter more complete bastards than her constitution can endure.
posted by kindall at 11:00 AM on July 1, 2001

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