TOTSE

Temple of the Screaming Electron
Web address Archive
Commercial? Yes
Type of site
 Internet forum
Registration Closed
Owner Jeff Hunter
Created by Jeff Hunter
Launched 1989 (dial up BBS)
1997 (UBB)
2007 (vBulletin)
Revenue Graphical advertisements (AdBrite)
Current status Closed as of January 17, 2009

TOTSE (i/ˈtɒtsi/,[1] commonly mispronounced as "toot-see," "toat-see," or "toats") was a San Francisco Bay Area website and former BBS dedicated to storing text files on a variety of subjects and viewpoints, many of which were 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. TOTSE was closed on January 17, 2009, after a goodbye message was posted on the front page of the website by Jeff, thanking the users for the last 20 years.[2] The IRC chat channel remains open.

As of 2015, the url is not active, nor its replacement url totse.info. However, the totseans.com url seems to be the only remnants of the totse name in existence today.

Media attention

TOTSE has been featured in the media, usually for members committing crimes or for its controversial text files. A 1993 article in the Contra Costa Times described TOTSE (and other NirvanaNet BBS nodes) as "an information network providing criminal insights to anyone with a phone, personal computer and modem... offer[ing] hundreds of files providing instructions on credit card fraud, money laundering, mail fraud, counterfeiting, drug smuggling, cable-tv theft, bomb-making and murder."[3] Another feature was 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]

In 2002, an Ontario, Canada teenager was charged with possession and manufacture of an explosive material after following a recipe claiming to be for C-4 found on the website. Due to the increased security levels after the 9/11 attacks, the teen was also charged with domestic terrorism and in turn was placed on Canada's most wanted list. After a 2-year trial against the teen, the case was eventually dismissed by the Crown Prosecutor due to lack of supporting evidence and lack of obvious malicious intent.

The site also appears on a 2006 Australian anti-terrorism poster[6] and a television advertisement.

A number of TOTSE members placed prank telephone calls to Live Prayer with Bill Keller starting on November 21, 2006. When another TOTSE member reported them to Keller via email, he threatened legal action against TOTSE, specifically stating that the prank calls amounted to "conspiracy to obstruct commerce".[7] The situation was later resolved when a TOTSE moderator contacted Keller and apologized.

Community

The community of TOTSE was an Internet forum and IRC channel. Some users of the community referred to themselves as "Totseans". Members engaged in discussion about a wide variety of topics including but not limited to religion, sex, politics, poetry, humanities, weapons, explosives, drugs, illegal activities, technology, music, metaphysics, sub-culture activities, 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 had an account[8] he rarely posted on the TOTSE forums as himself. Before closing, Hunter stated that he conceived TOTSE as "a place where all types of ideas could be spoken, traded, and exchanged, where no topic was off-limits or forbidden" in the early days of the Internet; and, as demonstrated in the scope of TOTSE text file archive, he felt this was only a part of the community by 2009.[2][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]

Totse Offshoots Migration Sites

Since TOTSE shut down in 2009 many sites popped up to take its place. None of them exist today.

The official successor to TOTSE was Zoklet.net.[2] This was the longest standing successor to TOTSE. Its admin, Zok, decided to shut down the website in September 2014.[11] This was the largest and most active offshoot of TOTSE. It garnered much attention by law enforcement for alleged illegal activities by users, most notably for counterfeit coupons.[12]

A smaller successor site called totse2 also was active until it mysteriously disappeared from the web in August 2013. In its beginning totse2 was a darkbb.net domain but later moved to a .com.[13] After the .com version shut down users migrated back to the darkbb.net.[14] Today both versions of totse2 are down.

After the darkbb.net version of totse2 came IntoSanctuary. It opened its doors in July 2014[15] but due to community infighting became irrelevant to the community when a new website emerged which users migrated to. IntoSanctuary is still online as of 3/9/16 but the forums are inaccessible and have been cleared of all content that was posted before the migration.

RDFRN (an acronym for Raw Data For Raw Nerves) was another short lived offshoot of the post-TOTSE community. This website opened in December 2014[16] and closed its doors in August 2015.[17]

A number of other websites emerged as even shorter lived offshoots of the community. Most notably Avoyel.net was created in August 2014[18] by a disgruntled user of IntoSanctuary. It was later seized by the FBI for illegal gambling activity in September[19] of that same year. Other sites such as LongLiveZoklet.net and TaintedBrowser.com lasted about as long as avoyel.

The only existing offshoot of the original TOTSE exists on Reddit.com.[20] This is not an official successor but rather a subreddit created by fans of TOTSE culture.

References

  1. 1 2 3 TOTSE FAQ - Mythos
  2. 1 2 3 Closing Announcement
  3. ↑ Liedtke, Michael (28 July 1993). "MODEM OPERANDI: Tips on crime go on-line". Contra Costa Times. Retrieved 2013-01-25.
  4. ↑ Acford, Louise (27 October 2006). "Rude awakening for dawn drivers". The Argus. Retrieved 2006-10-30.
  5. ↑ Payne, Stewart (28 October 2006). "Rude road signs tell drivers where to go". Telegraph. Retrieved 2006-10-30.
  6. ↑ Australian Government (2005-08-30). "HELP PROTECT AUSTRALIA FROM TERRORISM" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-01-22.
  7. ↑ Live Prayer show archives: November 28th 2006
  8. ↑ Jeff Hunter's profile
  9. ↑ totse.com | FAQ
  10. ↑ Replacement for UBB announcement
  11. ↑ "Zoklet.net". 2014-09-18. Archived from the original on September 18, 2014. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  12. ↑ "FBI Busts 4chan Man For Extreme Couponing". The Smoking Gun. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  13. ↑ "Totse 2 - Totse2.com Read * Know * Do". 2013-08-07. Archived from the original on August 7, 2013. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  14. ↑ "Totse 2 - Portal". 2013-12-14. Archived from the original on December 14, 2013. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  15. ↑ "The Sanctuary - Index". 2014-07-31. Archived from the original on July 31, 2014. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  16. ↑ "Activity Stream - RDFRN". 2014-12-07. Archived from the original on December 7, 2014. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  17. ↑ "Raw Data for Raw Nerves (RDFRN)". 2015-08-12. Archived from the original on August 12, 2015. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  18. ↑ "zoklet.net | Security Tag Removers". www.tagremovers.com. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  19. ↑ "avoyel.net seized by FBI". abusewith.us. Retrieved 2016-03-09.
  20. ↑ "TOTSE: The Temple of the Screaming Electrons • /r/totse". reddit. Retrieved 2016-03-09.

External links

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