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Exclusive Interview with Derek Dahlsad, Creator of Derek's Big Website of Walmart Purchase Receipts
Q: Why is it important to have people 'discuss' your receipts?
From a creative standpoint, getting people to react is important, because it keeps their attention. If you're sitting at your computer, by yourself, in your own home, you don't get to experience mass-reaction that you get in a movie theatre, or sitting with coworkers at coffee discussing the news. I don't know exactly how it works, but identifying yourself as part of a crowd intensifies a person's reaction. Archiving user's comments lets people see what everyone else has thought & experienced, and lets them contribute their own impression, and creates a better experience for people who come to the site.
Q: Has a community formed? with 'regulars' and 'lurkers'? (Obviously, yes... but do you have any interesting antecdotes?)
Right now, there's a club of around 5-10 regulars, who tend to dominate the conversation on the newer receipts. It's hard to track lurkers, but from time to time they pop up. We recently had a 'scare': someone played a prank and posed as me, saying the site was being shut down for legal reasons. The thought of me being prosecuted for the Site brought some lurkers out, emailing me their sympathies. The Regulars were the most outspoken - Dalliance even called me at home (I've talked to her before) to make sure I was doing okay through my legal dillema. The Regulars have gotten to be closely-knit: there's been a new baby, a motorcycle accident, a house fire, all of which we know about through the contacts made because of my WalMart Receipt Site.
Q: Do you have any one (or two) favorite receipts? / memorable discussion forums?
I have to admit that MATT KREIG'S #1 FAN has contributed my favorite comments. Very early in the days of the Receipt site, when everyone else was just posting "this site is stupid" and "you buy too many diapers", he came out of left-field with a cultish attraction to the manager of the Dilworth Wal-Mart store, Matt Kreig. That kind of absurdity is what keeps the receipt site going.
Q: What are some of your favorite sites? Why?
Daily, I tend to check out comicbookresources.com/ columns/oddball/ and http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/ apod/, but the ones I enjoy the most are robotfrank.com, theonion.com, & angryflower.com . As for why, I'm not sure. These last three are extremely funny, whereas the first two are updated daily so there's always something new and interesting to be seen.
Q: What's good about "useless" web sites?
They're entertainment, pure and simple. Nothing is expected from the viewer, except to experience the website.
Do you consider yourself to be a 'Cyber-Celebrity'? Either way, what do you consider the role of the cyber-celeb to be? Do you have any Cyber-Role Models?
Sorta; Online fame is something I've been trying to figure out. I'm famous in that there are a lot of people who know about my website, but on the scale of things it's a very small fraction of all the people online. TV Personalities have a far greater exposure than I can ever hope to get.
Although, I had a nice experience a week or so ago. Through my employer, I went to the Xmas party of a local advertising agency who we do business with. My boss thinks the Receipt Site is great, so she always brags about me. Usually I get confused looks, but at this party the attendees were also web designers, graphic artists, content providers, etc., who already knew about the Receipt Site but didn't know who I was in real-life. It really helped my ego to be recognized as "Derek from the WalMart Receipt Site" instead of "Derek, our Marketing Coordinator, who also has this wierd receipt website too".
Cyberspace is so varied, that there isn't an easy way to establish one role for cyber-celebrities, in the same way that the role of Tom Brokaw as a TV personality is different from David Letterman or Tom Green. It depends on the context; there are cybercelebrities who are known for truth & facts, some who are known for entertainment, and some that are unclassifiable.
My Cyber Role-models:
Carl Steadman, founder of Suck, who has also created some other interesting things freedonia.com/.
Tom Jennings, creator of Fidonet, artist http://wps.com/about-WPS/index.html
Alan Wexelblat, MIT, technology scholar & writer http:// wex.www.media.mit.edu/ people/wex/Q: Do you consider yourself to be an Internet pioneer? Starting a trend? What were some of the first "useless" sites you remember, that may have influenced you?
I don't know about being a pioneer, but hopefully I'm part of a pack of people counteracting the commercialization & sterilization of the internet. There needs to be balance; for every moneymaking site, web portal, or serious website, there should be something off-the-wall that has no financial or social purpose. I remember this site, from many years ago: www.wps.com/ about-WPS /personal/toilet / index.html I had forgotten about it, until recently when I found the link referenced here, but something tells me it was one of the earliest purposeless websites I know of.
Going back, pre-WWW, I frequented the FINGERable Coke machine at MIT which reported it's contents. There also was a very early webcam site: the fishtank-webcam, which showed nothing but the fish, and wa supdated every couple minutes. These are so old, I can barely remember where they're at online. Mahir and Hampsterdance are the first truly famous ones I recognize. As for influence, I tried hard to make sure that there WASN'T anything else out there like the Receipt Site before I created it - I didn't want to appear like a 'ripoff' site, and wanted to start from scratch.
Q: What have you learned by doing this project: in general... about the way the Internet works... about the people who visit... about the meaning of life..., etc.
I don't know if I've learned anything directly from it; it has contributed to my understanding with privacy in the digital age. The receipt site also has contributed greatly to my programming abilities, in writing webpages & CGI scripts. The meaning of life: the best thing I've realized from the receipt site is that uselessness shouldn't be discounted as irrelevant. It rounds things out, keeping life interesting when it seems everything else is run by rules & logic.
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