<nettime> New Economy gets ironic

["geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>]

New Economy gets ironic twist amid tech slide
Saturday December 30 10:21 PM ET
By Lisa Baertlein

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - As the technology bubble bursts, tech speak is
getting an ironic tweak as Internet workers and investors turn to humor to
cushion the fall. Not so long ago a venture capital-fueled machine was
minting new acronyms almost as fast as it was churning out stock option
millionaires. When red-hot B2C -- business-to-consumer -- Internet companies
faltered, business-to-business, or B2B, became the rage. But as Internet
workers ride out another round of layoffs in a landscape littered with
dot-com flameouts and worthless stock options, the bubble has burst on new
economy slang and style as well. B2B has become back-to-banking. B2C,
back-to-consulting.
"That's what all the business school students are saying," Edward Leamer,
economic forecasting director at UCLA's Anderson business school, said.
Leamer, who could not resist contributing his own back-to-basics twist on
new economy acronyms, dubbed B2B back-to-bankruptcies and B2C
back-to-cycles -- economic cycles, that is. Other downturn-inspired acronyms
include B2S, back-to-school, and B2M, back-to-Mom's. ASP -- which in better
days stood for application service provider -- has become awful stock pick.
"2B or not 2B," that is how Jennifer Bulka, chief executive of Busse Design,
summed up the angst that has gripped Silicon Valley's Web community. But
John Challenger, chief executive of Chicago-based outplacement firm
Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., said the joking is a healthy way to cope
with uncertainty. "Whenever you go through a period of downsizing at a
company or a sector, one of the things that gets going is gallows humor," he
said.

IN THE PINK

"Two-thirds of my friends are laid off right now," said Patty Beron, founder
of sfGirl.com (http://www.sfgirl.com), a Web site that garnered a Silicon
Valley tech following by posting launch party announcements for dot-coms.
Earlier this month, Beron helped plan San Francisco's first Pink Slip Party.
She expected 50 people. About 400 showed up. Dot-com workers -- whose
informal dress code helped push corporate America into instituting more
casual wear in the office -- donned serious suits, sipped soda and schmoozed
recruiters in the Pink Slip Party's early hours, she said.

Parties are just one way the new economy's newly unemployed are knitting a
community. They seek online solace and swap woes on Web sites like
ijustgotfired.com (http://www.ijustgotfired.com) and netslaves.com
(http://www.netslaves.com). The dot-com deathwatch -- which includes
monitoring sites like http://www.fuckedcompany.com -- has become a popular
shared pastime.
While former investment bankers and consultants flee for more solid ground,
the hard-core Internet types are digging in, said Allison Hemming, chief
executive and founder of thehiredguns.com (http://www.thehiredguns.com), a
New York City interim consulting firm. "People are definitely happy to have
the bravadoesque young entrepreneurs gone ... and it's good riddance," said
Hemming, who in July threw the first Pink Slip Party for Silicon Alley's
unemployed -- all four of them.

A POPULAR WEB SITE, NO IPO

SatireWire.com (http://www.satirewire.com), which bills itself as "New
Satire for the New Economy" offers comic relief from the bad news, with most
of its readers logging on from corporate networks and traffic doubling in
the past month. The site features a send-up of the career advice that
dot-com workers should flaunt their failures as a learning experience: "If
At First You Don't Succeed, Point that Out." A sample spoof news report
headlined "Riot Erupts at Dot-Com Refugee Camp," continues, "the violence,
primarily between rival B2B and B2C factions ... left hundreds of start-up
business plans discredited."
Andrew Marlatt, the self-styled "oligarch" of SatireWire, said the recent
success of the site, which is on track for a million page views in December,
owes something to the fact that things are not that serious for laid-off
Internet workers -- yet. "It's a little easier for people to laugh when
there's some hope," according to Marlatt, who said he quit his day job as a
reporter when he decided he could no longer cover Internet business plans
with a straight face. But Marlatt, who has just signed a book deal to write
a humorous "history of the New Economy" for Random House, laughed hard when
asked if an IPO could be in the works.  "Now that's funny," he said.

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