Totse

Temple of the Screaming Electron
URL	http://www.totse.com/
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Internet forum
Registration	Required to post but not to view postings
Owner	Jeff Hunter
Created by	Jeff Hunter
Launched	1989 (dial up BBS) 1997 (UBB) 2007 (vBulletin)
Revenue	Graphical advertisements (AdBrite) est. $100,000/yearly
Current status	Active, community registration enabled but mail server down due to CPU fan failure[1].

TOTSE (IPA: ['tɒt-si]^[1], commonly mispronounced as "towt-see," IPA: [totsi'] and "totes," IPA: ['tots]) is a San Francisco Bay Area website and former BBS dedicated to storing text files on a variety of subjects and viewpoints, many of which are unusual or controversial. The name is an acronym for "Temple of the Screaming Electron".

History

TOTSE was started by Jeff Hunter, real name unknown (a founding member of NIRVANAnet)^[1] in 1989 as a dial-up BBS originally named "& the Temple of the Screaming Electron". The original &TOTSE specialized in small text files. (Hunter had an old 8088 PC XT clone with limited hard drive space; small text files were the only data he could store in reasonable quantity.)^[1]

TOTSE became available on the Internet in 1997, and the dial-up BBS system was discontinued in the spring of 1998.

Media attention

TOTSE has been featured in the media, usually for members committing crimes or for its controversial text files. The site also appears on a 2006 Australian anti-terrorism poster^[2][3] and a television advertisement.

Recent attention is due to the "hacking" of an electronic car park sign in Crawley, England, designed to display the number of spaces left for each car park. The top two displays were replaced with "Fuck" and "Off", while the lower display read "totse".^[4][5]

A number of TOTSE members placed prank telephone calls to Live Prayer with Bill Keller starting on November 21, 2006. When another TOTSE member ("BigFishy"), appalled by their actions, reported them to Keller via email, he threatened legal action against TOTSE, specifically stating that the prank calls amounted to "conspiracy to obstruct commerce"^[6]. The situation was later resolved when a TOTSE moderator ("Warweed") contacted Keller and apologized.

Recently, an alleged new "high" called Jenkem was documented by a user named "Pickwick", an American boy. This drug was originally used by children in third-world African countries, but Pickwick is believed to be one of the first members of the first-world to actually concentrate and inhale this noxious gas. In spite of creating and distributing his own photographic evidence of having used this gas (before his use came to the attention of American law enforcement and media), he has now asserted that this was a hoax in order to try and save face in the world outside Totse.^[7]

Community

The community of TOTSE is an Internet forum and IRC channel. Some users of the community refer to themselves as "Totseans". Members engage in discussion about a wide variety of topics including but not limited to religion, sex, politics, humanities, weapons, explosives, drugs, illegal activities, technology, music, the environment, mechanics, food, and do it yourself projects. TOTSE is affectionately referred to by the users as &T, &TOTSE, and "The Temple". Although Hunter has an account^[8] he rarely posts on the TOTSE forums as himself. TOTSE's main goal is to promote freedom of speech and information; the TOTSE text file archive illustrates this.^[9]

The forum software was running a highly modified version of UBB 5.47a, which has been heavily criticized by several readers due to its age. Hunter purchased a copy of vBulletin, with the eventual upgrade occurring on April 4, 2007.^[10]

References

External links

• TOTSE website