************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** Mahirmania Imagine television or movies without celebrities. It's easy if you try. It's the Internet. For a medium with hundreds of millions of viewers, it has produced no one that could be called a household name on the order of Tom Cruise or Jennifer Peck. That seems strange until you realize the size of the viewership is only one side of the equation. Hundreds of millions of people are only given a handful of current movies or television shows to view at any one time. On the net there are more web pages than users. It takes a pretty strong force to galvanize viewership. Merely being the guy who invented the World Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee) isn't enough to make you famous. Bill Gates is the only I-wanna- touch-the-hem-of-his-robe type celebrity to emerge from computer culture. His celebrity has less to do with Windows and more to do with the fact that the richest man on the planet can't seem to hire a good hairstylist. That sort of stuff just plain bothers people. The quickest route to being a net celebrity is being a pariah. Saying "Green Card Lawyers" to anyone who was on the net back in the mid-'90s is a bit like coming up behind a Vietnam vet and saying "BANG". In 1994, a couple of lawyers posted spam to thousands of newsgroups offering people help with America's yearly green card lottery. Applying for the lottery is no more difficult than filling out a postcard. It's a sleazy way of making money. When people expressed ire that off topic ads were posted to newsgroups like rec.pets.cats, the Green Card lawyers went ballistic, shouting down their critics and insulting anyone who simply wanted to visit rec.pets.cats and read about fluffy kitties, not ads for immigration services or porn or credit- repair rip offs. Computer geeks don't much like being talked back to by seedy ignorant types and the battle was joined. Cancel bots removed the Green Card lawyers' spam faster than you could say "PERL script". The Green Card lawyers' fifteen minutes ended when they tried to capitalize on their notoriety by publishing a lousy book. It ended up in the remainder bin faster than you can say "Starr Report" and the couple slithered off into net.history. It's been a long time since any human being has achieved such a level of notoriety. The strange phenomenon that makes us fixate on an individual letting it all hang out in a stunningly ignorant way has, however, recently created a new net celebrity: Mahir the I Kiss You Man. Back in early November, people started passing around an URL to what seemed to be the home page of a fellow in Turkey (members.xoom.com/_XOOM/primall/mahir/). Mahir's home page broke all the cardinal rules of safe web surfing. He provided his home phone number and pictures of himself in a Speedo bathing suit. In highly broken English, he professed to like ping pong, sex, and nude photography. The page urged women around the world to call him. If they had any interest in visiting Turkey, they could stay with him. He offered nothing more than his most gentle heart and what has become a net catch phrase "I kiss you!!!!!" Within a couple days, Mahir's page went from a few thousand hits to two million hits. Faster than you can say "urban legend about one hundred monkeys and a collective unconsciousness", Mahir started getting endless, bewildering phone calls about a web page and people saying "I kiss you too!" It turns out Mahir's page on the Xoom site was not his actual web page. Someone copied his site, put it on Xoom and made changes, including additions like "I like sex" and claims he's into nude photography. Someone wanted to embarrass the poor guy. Mahir was embarrassed but also discovered while people on the net will take the time to stop and laugh at a person in a derisive way, they can also be sensitive to a person's plight. Online fan sites have sprung up. Attractive women all over the world and in Nordic countries have been emailing Mahir their pictures, holding up signs that say "we kiss you too!!!!!" Like a hero who saves a baby from a burning car, Mahir shrugs off his status as the most famous man on the web. Despite offers to turn his I Kiss You Site into a money making venture with banner ads for online casinos and credit-repair rip offs, Mahir seems content this bizarre incident has put his homeland on the network map for a brief time.