Leaving The Useless Pages

It was on July 26th 1999 when John Gephart replaced Steve Berlin at The Useless pages.

John Gephart:  Steve Berlin is hanging it up! After four years of filling this place with useless links, Steve is retiring from the Useless Pages for good. Read what he has to say about his “useless” creation and about moving on.

And now Steve Berlin’s goodbye to The Useless Pages article:

So long, and thanks for all the Fiche

Why am I leaving The Useless Pages? After four years at this racket (which is about 20 years in Internet Time), it’s time for me to move on. Many would say I should have moved on two years ago. A few would say I should have never started in the first place.

There have been many high points – being quoted in the New York Times,Wired and The New Yorker, to name three, were neat things to put on my resume. Being mentioned by none other than Dave Barry was definitely a high point. Being mentioned by several now-defunct Internet magazines – well, if you don’t mention that, neither will I, OK?

But that was then, and this is also then. For the longest time, I could have honestly said I ran the funniest site on the Web. Of course, now we have The Onion, The Brunching Shuttlecocks, and several others, so I’m having trouble even making the Top Ten. But that’s a Good Thing – it would be a sad World Wide Web indeed if the best we could come up with after all this time was a stupid list pointing to stupid sites like The Big Green Button.

Several thanks are in order:

First and foremost, Paul Phillips , creator of The Useless Pages, and the one who got me on go2net,

Ron Lussier and Dan Greening, for hosting me when I needed to be hosted,

Mr. John, for bravely taking over The Useless Pages,

Al Gore for personally inventing the Internet single-handedly,

And last but not least, Regina Chavez-Berlin, because you’re supposed to mention your Significant Other in lists such as this.