OMGJeremy

A Fascinating Look At What Happens To Internet Fads

Mike Blount. You may remember him from waaaaay back in 2000. Apparently he became an overnight Internet sensation for making a recording of himself talking to his “future girlfriend” (You can check it out right here). It’s pretty obvious the guy was still a kid at the time, not really knowing what the shit he was setting himself up for. And of course, once it was put online, the Internet did its duty of totally stalking him, and generally making his life a living hell for it:

In 2000, I received my first email from someone who had seen the web page. It was very negative, and quite surprising. I just shrugged it off, and thought that it was just the one person that saw the page. The next day, my hotmail inbox was flooded; I bet I received at least 50 messages. Some were positive, and some were negative. At the time I was only 13 years old. The positive emails were encouraging and the negative emails had a depressing effect. It seemed for every one positive email, there were three negative ones. Soon the phone calls started. Middle of the night, people would call, and ask if I had a girlfriend. I had not told my parents about the web page, and I really didn’t want them to know. Well, eventually I had to tell them. They couldn’t believe I had done it, well, neither could I. So, I tried to get into my tripod account and delete the web page. However, I had forgotten the password, so, there was nothing I could do. Later, I found out that my simple web page had been mirrored all over the internet.

Keep in mind this guy was like thirteen at the time. That age where the majority of us can’t go a day without embarrassing the hell out of ourselves. It’s just that Mike here decided to make the mistake of putting it on the Internet. A price he’s paying for to this day, apparently:

On the Baitshop forums, I discovered that there has been an active forum about me since at least April of 2003. One of the latest posts was titled Michael Blount Information. The post linked back to Gimmickry.com . The page was entitled Michael Blount Findings. It listed my parents names, home address, home phone number, school address, latest accomplishments, as well as my mother’s occupation and her hobbies. I found that my email address had been posted with my name on one of the pages at the Adventures in Supercomputing site, sponsored by LANL. I quickly changed the address to a different one, in hopes that the sanctity of my current email address might be preserved.

While I’m all for shitting all over retarded people doing stupid shit on the Internet, at least most of them deserve it. Sure, Mike’s idea wasn’t so hot, but he was a kid. No one deserves a lifetime of shit for something stupid you did when you were Thirteen.  We’d all be fucked over if that were the case. I mean, God forbid anyone ever find those old radio shows I recorded when I was a kid.

You can check out the rest of the story here. It’s an interesting read if you ever wondered what some of these people go through. Well, the ones that never wanted the attention in the first place. Somehow I doubt Turtleman would give a shit if he were endlessly laughed at.