Fear and Gloating

By Michelle Goldberg, Metro Silicon Valley. Posted July 10, 2000.

Despite the increasingly absurd pronouncements of capitalism's Candides at glossies like Wired, Fast Company, Business 2.0 and Red Herring, the numbers of new-economy apostates are swelling. They're the disgruntled masses of dotcom disbelievers salivating over each slide of the NASDAQ, grinning with gleeful Shadenfreude every time layoffs are reported at a high-tech startup. Though obscured by the 23-year-olds piloting Lexus SUVs, a brisk trade in multimillion-dollar real estate and the still-thick haze of irrational exuberance, the new naysayers are forming a rapidly growing presence online, where a group of websites are channeling their anxiety and bile into venomous but oddly vibrant communities. They're the dotcom deathwatchers, and their swelling numbers suggest that a backlash is brewing against the Internet economy. As the dotcom layoffs mount -- a recent New York Times article counts more than 2,000 -- so do the ranks of the disillusioned.

There are three major websites devoted to jeering the demise of sick and dying dotcoms and providing a forum for venting against slave-driving startups, ludicrous business models and betrayed promises of stock-option riches. The oldest is NetSlaves.com, a website and mailing list founded at the end of 1998 that has seen its membership increase by 25 percent in the last month. Then there's the self-explanatory dotcomfailures.com (its slogan is "kick 'em while they're down"), which tracks online layoffs and shutdowns. Founded four weeks ago by 25-year-old Ryan Nitz, the site includes a convenient "Lackey Calculator," which allows users to compute how much money they've lost if they work more than 40 hours a week or they took a salary cut to work at a startup -- and how much their options need to be worth in order to break even. Nitz says he gets between 15,000 and 20,000 hits a day, and his newsletter goes out to 1,200 people.

Finally there's FuckedCompany.com, the most ingenious site of all. With a logo designed to look like that of Fast Company, the bible of Tom Peters acolytes, Fucked Company allows users to choose five companies they expect to suffer setbacks, winning points for various degrees of failure. There are also news items and lively bulletin boards. Since 24-year-old Philip Kaplan started it a month ago as a joke intended to amuse a half-dozen friends, Fucked Company has had a growth rate most websites would die for -- according to its founder, there are currently 80,000 people playing and there have been a million page views. The response has been so phenomenal, Kaplan says, that 30 or 40 companies have offered to donate prizes in order to get exposure on the site. Starting on July 1,those who pick the worst companies can win gift certificates and possibly even vacations -- something that will come in especially handy for all those layoff victims. Those who post juicy news to the site will get their own reward -- stock from, well, fucked companies.

A wide range of motivation draws players to Fucked Company. Almost all are connected to the tech industry, but while some want to see the whole dotcom pyramid scheme tumble, others simply enjoy watching the most ridiculous startups flame out. Kaplan, 24, is clearly in the latter camp -- in fact, he says that he hopes all the attention Fucked Company has been getting will be good PR for PK Interactive, the web shop that he runs.

"I'm not rooting for the whole thing to implode," says Kaplan. "I just think the really silly ideas have to go." Indeed, some of the Fucked Company favorites read like bad jokes. "Flake.com was a portal for breakfast cereal. I don't think you heard me. FLAKE.COM WAS A PORTAL FOR BREAKFAST CEREAL," reads one of Kaplan's news items. "I like breakfast cereal like the next guy, but sites like these make me so angry -- not to mention VCs who support crap like this. 'I'm discouraged, and I'm essentially broke,' says the founder." How can one not gloat?

At the same time, the site has become a kind of support group for those who worked at the Flake.coms of the world. "The most feedback I get from the site is from people who were laid off from the companies I list," Kaplan says. "I've gotten as many as 100 emails that say, 'I was laid off and I don't know what to do, but I came to your site and saw that it happened to 20 other companies on the same day.' It makes them feel like they're not alone. Somebody recently emailed me and said they know I'm not making any money from the site, but I should be because of all the money that this person has saved in therapy."

Then, of course, there are those who were never invited to the party to begin with, many because they didn't fit into the youth culture of startups. Over and over on Fucked Company's bulletin boards, workers in their 30s and 40s express rage at the arrogant kids who assumed that older people couldn't grasp the infant industry. The dotcom industry's ageism is one reason why 38-year-old Linda Laubenheimer is finding such satisfaction in the current rash of startup failures. "Thirty-eight is young, except in the valley," she says. "In the valley I'm over the hill, and I really resent it. I won't be considering myself middle-aged until I'm 45, and being treated like I'm a dinosaur is offensive."

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