Twenty
In 2005, YouTube, reddit, and Facebook were all still wet and screaming infants. Google, working under the motto “Don’t Be Evil,” had just dethroned Yahoo! as the planet’s most popular Internet search engine (AskJeeves was not available for comment). Nickelback was at the height of its fame. Internet Explorer was the most used web browser, by far. TamagotchiTM Connection was the must-have toy of the season. And in September of that year, a 27-year-old science and history nerd named Alan published Damn Interesting’s first article–Lake Peigneur: The Swirling Vortex of Doom. This month is our site’s twentieth birthday.
I have been conflicted about how to observe the occasion. Initially we planned to just leave that note at the top of There Once Was a Man Called Curley–our writers are reluctant to bore everyone with uncompelling self-indulgence. At the same time, a decimally delicious date such as twenty seems plenty important, and the lack of a formal acknowledgement feels like a freshly missing tooth–a disconcerting vacancy that one’s tongue cannot stop probing. So this brief post stands in as something inadequate yet extant, much like Nickelback.
