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*                                                            * 
*                         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:                          * 
*                                         * 
*                                                            * 
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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.

    Source: geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs/text

               ( geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs)                   ( geocities.com/lapetitelesson)