The recent explosive growth of the Internet has brought with it the growth of an entirely Internet-based culture. As popular culture migrates to the World Wide Web, Internet sites have sprung up that not only mirror popular culture, but critique it as well.
Thanks to the low cost of electronic publishing, there are now plenty of electronic magazines and newspapers that publish exclusively on the web.
Featuring a stylish presentation, Word, located at http://www.word.com, is an avant-garde e-zine. Unlike some of the publications that have sprouted on the Web recently, Word is intended for a general audience -- the random surfer who may not be a Web expert.
Its essays cover topics as varied as the American Social Security system and "The Eskimo's 100 Words for Snow." The layout of the Word web site is well-designed and executed, taking advantage of certain advanced features that will only be visible to users of Netscape's popular Web browser.
But at times, like other publications, it seems to take its Net presence too far. In an attempt to be "cool" like other magazines on the Web before it, Word's departments have cryptic one-word titles, as if to force the reader to notice just how cutting-edge of a publication it is.
Where HotWired has its "Signal," "Flux," and "Fetish" sections, Word has departments named "Habit," "Pay," "Machine," and "Place."
While the casual observer might be skeptical of the literary value of an Internet-only magazine, many of Word's pieces manage to entertain, in particular those essays that are autobiographical. In one article that both entertains and shows the potential of the Web to communicate, author Harmon Leon relates the misadventures of his brief employment in the Telephone psychic industry.
The author answers an advertisement in a San Francisco-based newspaper for employment as a Professional Psychic Adviser. After a brief pre-screening interview of ten minutes' duration in which he is asked to prove himself by giving a "reading" to the company's personnel representative, Leon is hired.
Of course, he has no more psychic ability than do you or I -- but nonetheless, he quickly adopts a "psychic's" mystical persona and launches into his new career with gusto.
The author succeeds in amusing the reader even as he beguiles his customers. After giving his third reading, armed with "Magic Psychic Juice" -- vodka -- he says, "the clearer my predictions become and the clearer I see that I'm basically being paid to lie. This is more ingenious than making random prank phone calls, because not only are the victims calling you, they're paying $3.95 to do so!"
Eventually, of course, since as narrator he's the "everyman" to which the reader can relate, Leon sees the error of his ways -- or as he puts it, realizes that he has "misused his psychic gift."
Along the way, though, he's kept our interest and perhaps even made the casual Web surfer realize that content on the Internet can be just as entertaining and nearly as compelling as content in print.
Notable for its cynical outlook, Suck, located at http://www.suck.com, is the web's ultimate e-zine for insiders. Its telling subtitle sums up the essence of Suck: "a fish, a barrel, a smoking gun."
Suck is a daily column published by staffers of Wired magazine and San Francisco multimedia types who (at times tactlessly) highlight the good, but more often lambaste the bad and the just-plain-absurd content available on the Internet.
Despite a generally ascerbic style, the self-proclaimed "Sucksters" raise good points in their ranting. Whether taking shots at know-nothing corporations who establish ill-conceived Web sites that pander to the consumer, or ridiculing Washington politicians who believe that United States law can regulate the content available on the Web, since it began last autumn, Suck has succeeded covering in the Web with no holds barred, leaving no sacred cow unmocked.
Suck may not appeal to every Web surfer, and the casual Internet user need not hasten to its server. But to the die-hard who can overlook Suck's irreverent tone and understand some of its more arcane references, it just may become as essential a daily fix as checking out the news on the CNN page or grabbing the latest scores from ESPNet.
