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<b>Planet Daria</b>, run by [[Rowena Stubbs]], was among the first <i>Daria</i> websites and possibly the first comprehensive fan
==Background==
[[Image:PDtitle.gif|right|Reproduction of the
In his famous speech made on May 9, 1961, Newton N. Minow of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) called the media of television a “vast wasteland”. This media scarcely only a dozen or so years old as of this date of this speech, but it was already stale. The human creativity in this landscape had already evaporated away from the hot, arid winds of endless game shows and westerns. From that time forward, the occasional moistening dew from an Alfred Hitchcock or a Rod Sterling would swiftly be baked out of the ether by the searing excesses of cop shows, sitcoms, docu-dramas and a seemingly endless stream of commercials.
<p>
Cable television arrived in the late ‘70’s, and the hopes that many more channels would provide more diverse and interesting entertainment were dashed as cable merely expanded the borders of the wasteland. MTV arrived with the advent of cable, with the fresh new format of music videos, but by the end of the 1980’s these were as dry, stale and commercialized as the 128 channels of crap around them. Beginning in the ‘90’s, the format of MTV slowly changed from music videos to vapid reality programming and empty “pop” news programs. In the ever expanding landscape of the wasteland, MTV was becoming as inimical to intelligent life as Death Valley.</p>
<p>
Yet, occasionally in the wasteland, small rivers of creativity would spontaneously form and flow. MTV created an animation division, and the early part of the ‘90’s,
<p>
During this time, an adjacent landscape appeared, and this new media already in danger of becoming a wasteland in its own right. This was the commercial Internet, and with it came in 1993 the World Wide Web. In less than five years, this new media was already on its way to becoming a desert of commercial websites, endless ads, spam and porn. But from all this, a digital stream emerged, and crossed over into the plain of its much older and more analog neighbor.</p>
<p>
It was at the confluence of MTV animation and the new digital media that something truly remarkable happened. Websites began to spawn and multiply, starting first with a corporate site from MTV, but then also from the many fans of the new series. Many fans began building their binary web nests on newly available “free” hosting services. Dozens, no,
<p>
But out of this fertile mud arose giants. These sites grew with original content and as they received more and more “hits” from other fans, these fans massed together to provide even more content and grew the core site even more. Hence, the first “megasites” evolved, and soon these gentle giants became the undisputed masters of their digital domain.
Between the time the
<p>
All three sites died in a sudden mass extinction in second half of 1998. [[Sick, Sad World]], hosted by [[Wraith]] and [[alt.lawndale.com]], hosted by [[Katherine Goodman]] have remained intact, un-updated, and yet preserved, as if in amber, in their 1998 state. But Planet Daria has completely vanished, leaving behind only tiny fragments of long dead links.
Other giants rose as these behemoths came crashing down. [[Lawndale Commons]], hosted by [[Michelle Klein-Hass]] and [[Outpost Daria]], hosted by [[Martin J. Pollard]] absorbed the fan base of these sites, and Outpost Daria recovered most of the art, stories and transcripts of the original Planet Daria and alt.
<p>
This alone is all that remains of Planet Daria as of the date of this writing.</p>
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It was during this period the author discovered another use for his computer other than the trapping and subsequent disposal of email spam for porn sites and various enlargement devices. Between the screeching and hissing of his modem which occurred each time the phone company saw fit to drop his connection, he discovered first the smaller sites that featured regurgitated MTV content, and then links that took him finally to the fabled Planet Daria.</p>
<p>
There he discovered the message board. First, the author used the screen name of Frank Black, but when “Quinn the Brain” aired in March of 1998, he changed is screen name to Milo Minderbinder, after realizing Daria was reading “Catch 22” on her bed in that episode. Hence he joined other fans of the show;
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But the site kept moving, and the bookmarks on each
<p>
As for the lack of artifacts from these earlier sites, it should be remembered that in these pioneering days, due to the lack of space overall, leaving a site meant all files were deleted. Or, where the service didn’t bother removing the old files, an inevitable disk crash on the site would.</p>
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==The Site==
<p>
In March of 1998, the home page of the site featured the logo shown on the top of the page, and a very simple but eloquent HTML layout. The links to recent changes, fan fiction, fan art and the message board where very clear and straightforward. The color scheme played on the green color worn by Daria in the series. The site itself was a model of simplicity, something the author complemented the web mistress on many times (this simplicity is very much like the HTML layout of Outpost Daria) and Rowena’s (and later, Martin’s) resistance to making change for the sake of change, while resisting the urge to pollute the environment with “java junk” and animated icons (which didn’t animate so well on a Windows 95 machine with
<p>
All and all, the author remembers the site fondly during this period of time. It was digital Garden of Eden, well tended and maintained. But like Planet Daria, there are no artifacts of the original Garden of Eden left today. And for some of the same reasons.</p>
==Ted==
<p>
On March 29, 1998 [[The New Kid]] premiered on MTV. Featuring Daria’s first “date”, instead of the dream hookup with Trent the fans were all waiting for, it showed instead a clumsy, awkward Daria thrust into a social situation that she didn’t handle well at all. Instead of Daria, triumphant, the fans met, well, themselves. Ted was too much like most prom dates for comfort, or, to male fans, too much like their reflection in the mirror (The author falls into the latter category). There was stunned silence, and then during the ensuing [[
<p> And they did.</p>
==Boner==
<p>All Eden’s have their snakes, and Planet Daria had one it could call its very own. The screen name was Boner, and this serpent found its way to the message board and started flaming away at many of its inhabitants. Most tried to ignore Boner, but others let him get under their skin. (Boner claimed he was a female lesbian of Manchurian ancestry, but his IP address put in a suburb of Bakersfield, CA, and his behavior put him as male, at age 30, still living in his
<p>
Boner had an affinity for Chris Smith, who gave him the attention he craved, and Rowena had to now take time out her already hectic schedule to moderate, and delete entire threads from the message board. Sometimes, due to the flimsy nature of anything labeled “free”, the entire board would be lost, causing much tearing of virtual hair and gnashing of virtual teeth when the board came back up. Updates of the site started falling off, giving Boner a reason to foully attack Rowena, causing more board deletions and more site delays. It was obvious by June of that year something was going to change.</p>
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==The Boyfriend==
<p>
Sometime during this period the denizens of the site learned that Rowena had taken a boyfriend, and soon on the message board, [[Diezel Monkey]] made his appearance. It was announced that Planet Daria was moving finally to a paid web hosting service. After shutting down for several days, Planet Daria reemerged anew, on the-wall.net. With greater bandwidth and storage than a free service could provide, Planet Daria began to expand, and started getting the attention of an audience outside of the immediate Daria fan base.</p>
==The Message Board==
<p>
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Diezel Monkey would return briefly to Daria fandom, and moved his new message board to Lawndale Commons. There, the author signed in, questioned some of the rules, and was immediately censored and removed from the board. The author then moved to the Helpful Corn message board, long abandoned by one of the smaller sites, and completely un-moderated and uncensored (the password had been lost). Hilarity would soon ensue, but that is another tale of another site.</p>
<p>
The author does not know what became of Rowena Stubbs. She is long out of school, and no effort was made by the author to locate her on the web. If she
<p>
The author himself eventually began to write fan fiction and create fan art, and posted these on [[Outpost Daria]], [[Glitter Berries]] and the [[Contrarian's Corner]]. He was a frequent poster on the [[Paperpusher's
<p>
The author has briefly exited that life long enough to fill in this stub.</p>
<p>The author still blames Ted. For everything.</p>
==Contents==
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==External Links==
* [http://
[[Category:Websites]]
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