Boing Boing

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1990 Boing Boing logo, from a t-shirt

Boing Boing (originally bOING bOING) is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming an award winning group blog.

1 History
2 Unicorn Chaser
3 Notes and references
4 External links

[edit] History

Boing Boing started as a zine in 1988 by Mark Frauenfelder and Carla Sinclair. Issues were subtitled "The World's Greatest Neurozine". Associate editors included Gareth Branwyn, Jon Lebkowsky, and Paco Nathan. Along with Mondo 2000, Boing Boing was an influence in the development of the cyberpunk subculture. Common themes include technology, futurism, science fiction, gadgets, intellectual property, Disney and political issues.

Boing Boing became a website in 1995 and later relaunched as a weblog on January 21, 2000, described as a "directory of wonderful things." Over time, Mark Frauenfelder was joined by three co-editors: Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin. All four Boing Boing contributors are or have been contributing writers for Wired magazine.

In September 2003, Boing Boing removed their Quicktopics user comment feature without warning or explanation. Bloggers commenting on the change at the time speculated that it stemmed from "identity impersonators and idiot flamers" pretending to be co-editors.^[1] Xeni Jardin was also a guest on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer to discuss the Washington Post's decision to remove their comments section, and spoke from her experience at Boing Boing.^[2]

In 2004, the project incorporated as Happy Mutants LLC, and John Battelle became the blog's brand manager. Boing Boing has twice won the Bloggies for 'Weblog of the Year', in 2004 and 2005.

The site added advertising over the course of late 2004, placed above and to the left and right of material, and, in 2005, in the site's RSS feed as well. Editor Cory Doctorow noted that "John [Battelle] said it's going to be harder to make a little money to pay your bandwidth bills than it will be to make a lot of money and have a real source of income from this."^[3]

Boing Boing used to feature a "guest blogger" sidebar, but stopped the series in summer 2004. Guests included John Shirley, Karen Marcelo of Survival Research Laboratories, Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom, Rudy Rucker, Gareth Branwyn, Wiley Wiggins, Jason Scott of textfiles.com and journalists Danny O'Brien and Quinn Norton.

In September of 2006 Boing Boing introduced a weekly podcast, Boing Boing Boing, intended to cover the week's posts and upcoming projects. The show's cast consists of the Boing Boing editors accompanied by a weekly guest. In the same month, Boing Boing introduced a second podcast called Get Illuminated, which features interviews with writers, artists, and other creatives.

[edit] Unicorn Chaser

A "unicorn chaser" is a concept dreamt up by Boing Boing editors as an antidote to blog postings linking to sites containing gross or shocking images. The antidote contains a picture of a unicorn and was launched first in August 2003 as a reply to a picture of a rash that editor Mark Frauenfelder posted in an attempt to get readers to diagnose it for him. The text posted with the image came with the title "And now, we pause for a Unicorn Moment." Recently it was also used as an antidote for pictures of a brain tumor, a man who pumped up the skin of his face with saline solution and many different ways to clean your earwax.