Internet troubles: For internet users of 2001, the vastness of the web posed only intrigue. “My surfing brought me to a dramatic conclusion,” Nexus writer Jonathan Kimak remarked with the curiosity and naivety of an infant. In our January 8, 2001 issue, the dramatic conclusion, he writes in the column Internet Talk and our very own Watergate, was a staggering 3,000 results for the search on how to play backgammon. Of that amount, however, only 200 turned out to be fruitful information; the rest junk and dead links. “How could the great and mighty internet have so much worthless crap on it,” Kimak asks early-2000s Nexus readers to ponder, unaware of an impending era of AI slop and clipfarming. Today, we may roll our eyes at such benign internet issues, but there’s a lesson to be learned here: we should really start counting our blessings.
Top 10s: Our first issue of 2001 gave writers an opportunity to reflect on the previous turn of century, which proved to be just as underwhelming as velour tracksuits were ubiquitous. On page 14, a page dedicated exclusively in this issue to best and worst lists, we discussed the top 10 “weird acronyms,” pushing the envelope for what qualifies as printworthy. Found at the sixth slot is LIBERAL—short, says writer Jon Valentine, for lazy idiot bungling English regularly at leisure. Perhaps this could come as a statement of self-deprecation, however, as found at the fourth slot is YAHOO—an acronym for yachting assistants hoarding overgrown octopuses.
Skrooge: Despite on-campus criminal activity kept relatively low during the winter break this year, our column Krime Kount revealed, this wasn’t saying much for lawfulness at the time. In fact, during a two-week period, traffic signs were vandalized and pulled from their casings, a student was restrained for walking off with reserved material, and an identity thief, claiming to be a Camosun student, waltzed into the administration office looking to access personal student information. It was, indeed, a mad, mad world.