More on Haley Paige (NSFW)

For those who remember my recent piece reflecting on the death of Haley Paige (aka Maryam Haley), her father has added several additional details. She worked in the porn industry, so be careful about both links (which have a topless photo).

Sidenote: Isn’t it odd how a  2006 discussion topic on a NSFW website has unintentionally become an international  hub for talk about all things Maryam. Crazy how things work that way. Perhaps sometime in the distant future the reflections on my own legacy will be on some similarly random forum as well. Perhaps on a forum about cars or exercise videos or linux or Dino Buzzati, somebody who knew me vaguely will exclaim “Hey, do you know that that wierd guy from Houston died?”) and then suddenly everybody who knew me will come there by googling my name?   Ok, that thought is a little too morbid.

Maybe the question is where do I “hang out online?”  aside from my own blogs. Honestly, I don’t hang out that much; I make a lot of comments on Teleread, mobileread, 2blowhards, readingexperience, Techblog, Easter Lemming Liberal. Really, I make a lot of comments in general everywhere, but do I hang out? Some people really hang out on forums, asking and answering questions. For a while I was “really hanging out” on mobileread, fedora forum, the Nokia pda forum, gentoo linux forum, Actually, I think porn stars probably do more “hanging out” on online discussion boards than I do. I remember coming across an adult forum a few months ago and amazed at how often adult performers were making remarks or witty comments about their life, the industry, etc. It occurred to me that some of the performers probably write more online than I do!

A few years ago, I wrote:

There are four kinds of people:

1. those who have no interest in writing web pages, either because they don’t enjoy writing or don’t like the idea of putting things out in the public forum.
2. those (like me) whose aim is to produce as many web pages as possible for reasons of self-expression
3. those who would make web pages only to store family pictures, favorite links and perhaps a list of bookmarks.
4. Those who don’t necessarily have writing aspirations, but make web pages to support their hobby or for professional reasons.

As I see it (when I wrote this in 2002), 60% of the population belong to category one. 22% of the population belong to category three, 17% of the population belong to category four and 1% belong to category two. Out of all the friends I know, 80% have never written a web page, maybe 10 belong to category 3 (make personal web pages), 6 or 7 belong to category four (web pages for professional reasons), and maybe only one person I know belongs to category 2 (that is, myself).

In the year 2008, my ballpark estimate of the percentages is 50%/3%/35%/12%.