Remember in 2000 the media over hyped the announcement from Dot Com Guy on how he was going to live in a house for a year, not leave and order everything he needed online?
This was big news for media to hype after the Dot Com Bowl aka Super Bowl 2000 with every dot com website ad spender. I personally fell victim to the hype with monster.com and that choice changed the course of my life, but that's a blog for another time.
So, what happened to Dot Com Guy and How can we learn from his situation?
First question first, what happened?
After doing a bunch of searching online, this was the best and most concise answer on wikipedia.
In the end of the project, DotComGuy legally changed his name back to Mitch Maddox and auctioned off the domain name DotComGuy.com.[citation needed] As of 2007, the domain name was no longer in use by Kaplan.
Every year on December 30 DotComGuy joins in a day-long irc chat session.[citation needed]
Maddox now works in Dallas, Texas for Riverstone Residential Group as the Director of Systems Integration.[citation needed]
The domain, dotcomguy.com, is now in use by one of the investors for a new IT services business
How can we learn from this?
- The Media publicizes things like a child with ADHD, it's all flash in the pan and forgotten when the next press release hits their desk. The media is also very poor on the follow up on these such stories.
How many times have they followed up with Mitch to see how he was doing or who has forgotten all about him?
- Most of the websites he used, like groceryworks.com, are now defunct which also points to the ADHD nature of digital trends. Something better always comes along because it is easy for a competitor to copy you or sometimes you hit a threshold of people who actually want to try things out. Myspace used to be big too and a competitor facebook came out, the teens who started facebook are now moved over to something less mainstream where their parents are not. It is easy to change in the digital realm and trends change quickly to stay on top of.
- Can we think that a small reason for Mitch's failure was because human interaction is needed for humans to thrive? Sure it was a fun experiment and it failed. A key element missing in this experiment was people and the real world.
I cannot help but mention that shortly after this failure was the wave in reality TV popularity. Is there a correlation between the more digital we become, the more we need real life experiences too, whether be from outdoor entertainment or TV entertainment. Is balancing the real with the digital necessity for humans to thrive? Balance and moderation is key to so many things in life.
Just wanted to give you guys something to think about as we stay online more, don't forget the real world and trying to make that work!
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