StoryPeeps: A Den of Bad Ideas and Lies

I had a conversation with a friend a few days ago about how the Internet has changed since we were kids. My friend talked about how it used to be a technology that was mostly inaccessible to average folks. Just like computers in the 80's and early 90's, the Internet was a tool that required a tech-savvy foundation just to operate, let alone contribute to it. Sure, in the early days of the Web there were programs like Geocities and Angelfire that let any pre-teen or grandmother put together a site based on a template, but it took some actual programming knowledge to do anything worthwhile. Today, the Internet is fair game for just about anyone. I'd like to believe the Internet, like television, will one day be so commonplace that no one really tries to make its next big thing or start another new, meaningless fad there. We're living in the age dominated by great ideas implemented by professionals (Youtube), stupid ideas dominated by garbage (Twitter) and everything in between. There's a rush to reinvent social networking, content creation and content management before any of those things even have time to settle into a standard. It's that kind of thinking that gives birth to silly, unnecessary, self-aggrandizing sites like StoryPeeps.

StoryPeeps is just a 2010 version of a trend that popped up early in the decade. Circa 2003 there were a lot of places online where people could anonymously post very personal stories, most notably The Lost Loves Project, itself just a glorified robot for the emo set. The rise of blogging (the best Internet technology ever because blogs are awesome, don't you just love my blog? srsly, comment and rate, woo!) made such sites effectively obsolete while micro-blogging a la Twitter closed the coffin with 140-character nails. The only thing these anonymous story sites could provide that blogs mostly still don't is a false sense of community. StoryPeeps justifies its existence by giving its users a place where they can pretend that other people on the Internet are sympathetic to their experiences.

Of course, the real reason StoryPeeps is around (other than to be a nesting ground for site lead Illuminated Master's bad short fiction) is to indulge the same voyeurism that fuels at least half of what's on the Internet. The basic premise of StoryPeeps is that users can anonymous upload their deepest, darkest secrets and most incredible personal accomplishments to the site. Naturally, there's also a social networking component to the site as well, because we put social networking in everything today just like people used to put a radio into everything back in the 80's. Members of StoryPeeps can send IM's to other members, ya know, so they can congratulate one another on their incredible lies.

Oh, you didn't think there were actually true stories on that site, did you? While the stated mission of StoryPeeps is to "Grow a new integrated society that is aware of the common challenges and wisdom revealed from living an interesting life" the truth is that it's just a large collection of tall tales concocted by, well, exactly the types of people you'd expect to anonymously post detailed "personal" stories on the Internet. A large portion of the secrets on StoryPeeps are impossible accounts of male sexual prowess. Take the story "My Real Job In College", a hastily typed and grammatically laughable bit of fiction about a modern-day Don Juan who has around 100 women in his carnal past, including the wife of a corporate CEO who hires him expressly to fulfill the woman's insatiable lust. Nice write up, asgaron2010. When you're done being the only person to ever rate your story, there's a horny 19-year-old on the craigslist Casual Encounters page I'd like you to meet.

Not all the stories on the site are about sexual conquests. Some are hard-to-believe tales of abuse and degradation like "Beat Up By #1 DAD", one young man's probably fictional account of torture by his monster of a father... except that he describes his father as Amish despite his family's propensity for corndogs, guns and high-tech flashlights. Really, all of the "secrets" on StoryPeeps follow this pattern. Something potentially believable quickly unravels in the details. So much for a community based on real experiences.

Amount of Time Likely to be Wasted: It depends on how patient you are. There's at least a half hour worth of laughs, provided you can tolerate bald stupidity for that long.

Likelihood to Result in Arrest in Real Life: Moderate. If one of these stories ends up being true, like the clear Dom/sub fantasy "I'm Not A Nice Person", somebody's going away for a long time.

MCDR: Check out the documentary "Protagonist". It features actual true stories of secrets and revelations.

Internet Depth by Preposition: Of. There's no room for crap like StoryPeeps outside the Internet and it aims exclusively for Net-based notoriety.