Yahoo breaking down might be a Good Thing.

[tj_rowe]

In the Licence Agreement, you are informed that Yahoo takes no responsibility for monetary or custom loss as a result of the availability or lack thereof of the Service. Fairly standard fare, as Licence Agreements go, and at 10 or however old I was when I took 'TamerTerra' and 'jwoky' as the name and address that would represent me on the internet for however many years I didn't think much of it. I wouldn't be using money, nor did I have any custom.

But now it seems, though I still don't use money online, that a custom of a sort has emerged. I am refering, of course, to fanfiction. Meta is another form of this custom, and both are 'paid for' by comments. Comments themselves can be described as custom in most cases, and so the fanfic/review and meta/comment systems are more like exchange of gift-custom than any sort of system in the Real World. But the model still holds.

(As an aside, now I think I see where fanficcers who hold their chapters for 'ransom' are comming from. They are used to the RW market system, where nothing is free and if you don't pay then you can't have more.)

Now, if we're comparing fanfic or meta to custom, and reviews or comments to money, then there is a good chance that I will have lost, if not the actuality of, then the access to some 'money'. Because of course, while forum-natives may be well accustomed to re-checking pages for replies (and many of us probably started on forums of BBs), those of us who have become lazy from waiting for emails rather than re-checking have likely lost the skills that make large forums workable - that is: we have no idea where we have commented, and did not make bookmarks because we assumed that we wouldn't need them.

Which really means that we rely too much on our email clients for delivering custom.

Now, as you can see by Yahoo's mail servers imploding, this is not a good thing. Fortunetly, I have managed to aquire a large number of (by which I mean 'sockpuppets in all major providers) email accounts, and Googlemail is like an jolly amalgamation of Outlook Express, MSN Instant Messenger and Yahoo's mail interface. Even if doesn't download.

Um... end of meta.

This icon is gackable, too. *was intending to make it the raibicycle default*