Who killed Dead 2.0? It’s a mystery

by Mathew on September 26, 2006 · View Comments

I know the blogosphere has a short memory (except for Dave Winer, of course) but does anyone here remember Dead 2.0, that skeptical blog written by an anonymous guy who went by the name The Skeptic? He took potshots at various bubble companies and A-listers such as Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, and subjected new Web 2.0 services to the “Ask Skeptic’s Mom” test.

Then Nik Cubrilovic, who is the CEO at Omnidrive but also a friend of Mike’s, wrote a post in which he said that with only a few minutes worth of work he had identified The Skeptic as a senior executive at a technology company. The Skeptic posted a single post after that, as far as I can recall — in which he asked people whether they thought he should be “outed.”

When I checked it, the overwhelming majority said that they thought it didn’t matter who he was, a view I agreed with along with others, including my friend and fellow tech journalist Mark Evans. Well, for the past few days The Skeptic’s blog has returned a 509 error — bandwidth limit exceeded. Did Dead 2.0 just become too popular for The Skeptic’s limited hosting service, or did he decide to drop it? Or did his company make him stop?

The mystery continues.

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  • http://bizop.ca michael webster

    Too bad, I liked the feed.

  • http://engtech.wordpress.com engtech

    I’d say it’s bandwidth.

    Enough sites picked up the story and threw links at him that he could have had a traffic spike.

  • http://www.robhyndman.com Rob Hyndman

    I thought that Cubrilovic did a shabby and self-indulgent thing, and his justifications sounded childish to me. A real disappointment. I liked Dead’s voice and he spoke truth. Shame.

  • http://twopointouch.com Ian Delaney

    I too was a fan and agree with Rob’s post. I very much hope it’s bandwidth.

    Note that the dead20 ‘about’ page always said it was a multiauthored blog, which only deepens the mystery, of course…

  • Mathew Ingram

    I kind of enjoyed it too — I hope he comes back, whoever he is.

  • http://www.realestate20.wordpress.com me

    For the most part, dead2.0 was my favorite daily read – but you have to admit, he started getting a little softer towards the “end” – if it is the end. I hope he comes back online, maybe everyone should paypal him $10 to help him increase his bandwidth allowance…or maybe it is a fake error message? I dont know – with an almost all text site, I find it hard to believe that he ran out of bandwidth…anyway, I miss dead2.0.

  • http://www.b5media.com Jeremy Wright

    It’s just bandwidth (I’m sure he won’t mind me saying). On his future in blogging, I’ll let him explain that. However no mystery here :)

  • Stu

    Was an all right site, he did get a bit soft, but I think that’s only natural. I’m wondering if he’ll take this as an opportunity to disappear after his semi-outing.

    I’d rather he stuck around, Web 2.0 anti-hypers like me always could use a good site like that. But, I’ve gotta take issue with one of his recent commenters, who thanked him for having the first such anti-web 2.0 — they missed a good one with the old Go Flock Yourself (flocksucks).

  • Mathew Ingram

    Good point, Stu. Flocksucks was one of the first.

  • http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/techknow/archive/2006/10/04/4883.aspx TecHKnow : Live & Let Die

    [...] Live & Let Die By: Samantha Freeman-AtwoodA little over a week ago, Mark Evans posted a blog entitled “Should Dead 2.0 be outed?” Mark was writing about Nik Cubrilovic who, apparently through some heavy sleuthing, discovered the identity of the ever popular anonymous blogger “skeptic,” who posts on Dead 2.0 (which, ironically, is now a dead link).There’s now a lot of speculation as to what happened to the site – which is now password protected.The question is, who really cares about the identity of Dead 2.0? Will it actually have any effect on your life if you found out who Dead 2.0 is? And if we do find out the name of the blog in question, won’t it shroud our minds with preconceived notions of him that would take away from the content of the blog?This harkens back to our need to categorize everything so as to better understand it. If something doesn’t have a name and therefore fit in to a category, then it can’t be understood (and hence judged), based on the inherent or assigned qualities that make it fit into the category in the first place (a good friend of mine always gets great responses when she tells people she’s an embalmer). There are people every day on the web who fool others with their made up identities. How about the scanners and spammers? They pose as someone they would rather be, or someone who they want you think they are and do a lot more damage than Dead 2.0. Skeptic’s secret identity is a secret for a reason, so that he can express ideas without the judgments that come with knowing who he is, knowing where he works, lives and plays.Are we not more than our names, more than what we do, where we live, and the people we’re married to? I’m with Nik when it comes to not divulging Dead 2.0’s name because thus far, his postings have been harmless intellectual and cynical rantings.Last I checked the Dead 2.0 poll had an overwhelming 64 percent NO vote in response to his question, “Does who I am really matter?” Obviously I’m not alone in thinking that liberal speech doesn’t have to come with an identity tag. Samantha Freeman-Atwood is an Assistant Consultant with Hill & Knowlton Canada’s Technology Communications Practice. She joined the company in 2006. Published 04 October 2006 11:02 by Darren Leroux TrackBack URL for this post:http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/trackback.aspx?PostID=4883 [...]

  • http://www.robhyndman.com/2006/10/10/countdown-on-the-masked-apple-employee/ robhyndman.com » Blog Archive » Countdown on the Masked Apple Employee

    [...] The Unofficial Apple Weblog posts on the Masked Blogger, an anonymous Apple employee who is now blogging, in spite of Apple’s well-known antipathy towards transparency. The obvious question is, in the age of the unmasking of Dead 2.0 and the Anonymous Lawyer, how long can the anonymity – and the Masked Blogger’s employment – last? Related Posts [...]

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