the Tommy|Zor era

I can’t believe I’m writing this. It’s been 5 years since I’ve written my first article for only a few people to read, hoping of the fame and fortune that follows such incredible talent. Ha. Well that was a partial waste of time, huh? Luckily it’s partial, right?

I remember getting access to my first word processor-capable computer in the fall of 1994 when my sister bought a computer for school. All of a sudden, I abandoned my handwritten journals and typewriter (seriously, I my father fucking spent a fortune on the eraser ribbon, which I still think is such a great invention) for something called Microsoft Works and a box of used 3.5″ floppies. The obsession became a lifestyle and it was my favorite thing in the free world, besides porn, Pepsi, Tony Roma’s ribs, and grabbing boobies of girls that don’t know me. I wrote story after story, mostly writing lesbian erotic teen fiction (which sounds a lot less illegal when you’re 13) until my ideas expanded to other things, like adult erotic fiction and writing about robots that have sex with other robots, of any age. Eventually, after a decade of of writing for yourself, you want someone to finally read it. You can’t just write what you want; you have to write something someone might enjoy reading. I ditched the personal novels and started writing comedy. I was always funny, so I wanted to see if the rest of the world agreed.

In March of 2004, I decided that I wanted to make my writing public in some way. Using the free provided webspace provided to me by my ISP, I started writing bullshit that precisely 7 people found entertaining. 7 turned to 17, and then those 17 turned to, like, 23 or so. Eventually, I saved up enough change to buy myself a dot com, and I was finally serious about my hobby. As word spread (and my printed URL flyers I littered around at bars…ha), traffic increased and the hatred of Tommy v2 began. I was offending people with my ideas and writing, and I was getting a ton of hatemail telling me how much I should die, as if there was a quantity you could measure. This became an obsession, and writing for the purpose of stirring shit up proved too addictive to resist. The articles started getting longer, more elaborate, and better-written. Some could even argue that they were funnier, but comedy is so hit and miss that that’s purely a subjective guess.

The mythos of the Tommy v2 character that I created resonated so strongly with me, because when I began writing the site, I actually was Tommy v2. I was mackin’ bitches, platinum credit card waving, materialistic, egocentric, sex-drive-overdrive, trash-talkin’, angry, rude, awful human being. It sent me to hell early, but it made for a great read. The kind of cocky confidence you can’t fake in personal writing shone through like diamonds made out of mirrors and light sabers. It became my entire way of life, and I loved every minute of it. The first time I got a hurtful hatemail that actually affected me emotionally, it was such a tough moment for me. As a few more came in, it started to energize me and inspired me to be worse and worse, and it seemed hypnotic. I felt invincible and I got to the point where I couldn’t remember which one was the Internet character and which one was seeing 3 girls at once and bragging about it. Art imitated life while life was art itself. As it turns out, I lost a job because a manager of mine read something that really offended him (maybe it was a semi-racist joke and I still don’t fucking know what colour he was). I didn’t find out until later, but seriously, how awesome is that? I could rationalize that and say that one sentence I wrote cost me thirty-eight thousand dollars, but that’s just semantics. Or rubric. Or another word I don’t know the meaning of. In the end, who gives a shit? Now I make a lot more than that, and it’s all thanks to that fucking asshole with no sense of humour.

As the years dragged on and I kept writing, I began to grow and mature and slowly my anger to the world was fading. I was being blessed with life-changing opportunities and people, and suddenly I had very little to bitch about. I carried on writing as Tommy v2, channeling what egocentric and angry thoughts I had left, and it was still working very well. Thanks to friends and being at the right place at the right time, The iPod/MySpace article and Verizon Exit Interview article hit mega-fucking huge (both written with the confidence and style of someone already e-famous, but before the fact, I might add) and the rest is history.

Some of the classic v2 articles I honestly feel are masterpieces of comedy, regardless of media format. If you read through the most popular ones, you’d be amazed at the cleverness and sheer potency of the language. I sometimes go to read them and I get so surprised that I wrote such wonderful things, like I just woke up with amnesia and am experiencing my own life for the second, first time. At my peak, I was a fucking prodigy of the written comedy word. It’s scary how fucking clever and funny I was, it really is. However, just like Pamela Anderson masturbating to pictures of her 22-year-old self, at this point it’s just an exercise in nostalgia. However, like her, I’m still insanely fuckable and I’ll never leave you limp. I’m talking about my writing, unless you’re hot and female, in which case I’m talking about bending you over against a bare wall and giving you a bonus reach-around diddle while I deliver the lumber to the back door.

At the 5 year mark now, let me assure you that I’m not the same person I was and I can never be that person again. Just like you can’t experience something for the first time again, I can’t rotate your synapses like I used to. (I don’t even know what that means, actually) What hasn’t changed, though, is my devotion to whatever’s left out there for me. With today’s shitty Internet world filled with blog sites, comedy sites, everythingyoucanimagine plus music sites, there is no way to stand out short of fucking Britney Spears with a cucumber in church and making an animated .gif of it. Even then, it’s now a ‘meme’ and it’ll pass in a few months, after India’s done with it. You can’t fight it, and it’s only getting worse. My hardcore fans still see the difference between me and, say, a random strike-through joke on a gadget blog. I thank all of you for that, because it proves there’s still a few people out there that dig the v2 upgrade experience that I bring you so legitimately.

It’s strange and sort of sad to see yourself grow up and become nothing more than a faint memory of your peak, but it’s reality for me. So many years, so many lost friends, jobs, girls, opportunities, moments, money, hopes, dreams, ideals… and I’m still here doing what I love, no matter the outcome. We all dream of fame and fortune and screaming fans, but I know that the ones who do know and enjoy me are the screaming fans (no matter how small a dose), and the fortune is going to work every day and earning a paycheque and writing in my spare time. In a way, I’m living my dream in a metaphysical way. I don’t sit in some dark basement and wish to make it big with some book deal while being unemployed – I do it upstairs, bitches.

Growing up is the most amazing experience that is ever given to us. These moments last forever, like the first time I tried to peel off the black off a PlayStation disc (seriously!) to pulling my first-ever all-nighter with Final Fantasy VII and a case of Pepsi, to my first handjob at the mall. Every moment forever marked by the nostalgia of innocence and wonder, unmistakable and forever permanent. They say that life is short – that is incorrect. Life is the longest thing you can possibly experience. I’m glad mine’s been so rewarding this far, and many of you make me feel that way, and I thank you all for that. I can look back at all my writing through out the years and actually remember every thought and feeling associated with the moment that I wrote the article. Sometimes, like pictures of me breaking an Ikea bed by fucking someone fairly hard is pretty easy to remember, but sometimes a single random sentence reminds me of what food I was eating when I wrote it and what song was playing in Winamp. It’s crystallized in each paragraph, each line break and each italicized word. It’s like cryptology in practice, code only I can decipher when I look at it. You can read it all day and never see it, it’s like a one-eyed person trying to work a Magic Eye stereogram but still enjoying the colours.

And now, here I am sharing a new website with my best friend. Our childhood dream of us both being writers (who thinks that? Shit, this was even in the time of “I wanna be an astronaut!”) is realized in this convenient, easy-to-use fashion. It’s been great to be inspired time and time again, if only to be competitive and be a team player. If misery loves company, then we’re doing something else entirely. It’s been a boon for me, the entire experience, because I always feel like I can do better and one-upsmanship is a powerful tool for quality. It’s nice to not go solo when you’re trying to take over the world, you know? I thank Zor for sharing the intense revenue from this site, because every kid wants an extra roll of nickels a month to buy those dollar-store ramen noodles. (Actually, that’s not even true. That’s a roll of nickels divided by two, and he tends to rip the paper a little further from his side…)

So, here’s to another 5 years of me in one form or another! Thanks to all of you for being part of the experience, and don’t forget that sometimes you can’t possibly support running a version higher than 2.0. You don’t meet the minimum requirements, but there’s nothing wrong with that. This version’s pretty much perfect.

-Tommy v2