h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I agree you couldn't leave due to there then being a whole in the numbering.
You've gotta love being a number. I am infact several numbers as everything I join seems to give me a number. I joined ICQ I'm a big number there.

okay so i can't spell- that was suppost to be a hole

Wot a challenge! I did it, honest, I went back before I joined, didn't, and and then wasn't a member - BUT nobody knew, whichwasnofunatall. Sooo-ooo-ooo I had to go back again, undecide what I had decided, become one again, and now NO ONE WILL BELIEVE ME. Sulk. Snot fair.

i don't believe you, but then, anythings possable (i cant' spell eather)

To Sarah:
Actually I really was thinking of leaving H2G2, well, not really leaving, just taking this identity off.

You are who you make yourself.
Just delete all that you can and remake yourself - fun!
Or do it all differently in your next life

There must be a limited number of places where the data that makes up H2G2 is stored. A person who was Howard Hughes obssessed with leaving could organise a limited number of fires/explosions. This would wipe all data and any hard copy that might exists.

It would be very difficult to destroy H2G2 even with explosions, fires, etc. This is because to a certain extent it will be not only cached by ISPs but also by indivdual user's computers.

Memories would also be cached in the former member's minds. But all that is then required is the passage of time. Caches of the ISP and the personal computers will eventually be filled with other stuff. The last surviving member dying will mean the nearest approximation of final leaving. Echoes, ripples and shadows will no doubt linger but this is unavoidable - and possibly a smell - new mown grass perhaps?

There is the small matter of criminal damage...

Zack:Excuse me, is someone trying to destroy H2G2?

Can't you just fake your death, Mr Indifferent, like any other self-respecting disappearance artist eg Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, Thomas Pynchon, John F Kennedy? For all I know, you might even be one of these people. Then you will have the advantage, not merely of having escaped the social pressures of community life, but also of having become something of an eternal legend within that community. Just make it spectacular, my friend - then we can all enjoy it...

Well, I've died! Feel free to visit me in Hell, though I don't know why you'd want to. Just click on my name.

Think not of rigor mortis think of rigour (spelled rigor in American English).

I know a way I could leave! I could have someone else take over my identity. I could give someone my e-mail address and tell them my password for h2g2 and they could have my home page. That could work right?

Yeah, but they wouldn't be able to get rid of your old forum postings and journal entries - there would be a sudden, rather dramatic change of identity around the point where the page switched hands, and I don't see how this could be covered up (unless the person you give the page to happens to be a clone of you or something)...

I suppose they could just market this as a radical image makeover, a la New Labour, and therefore just about get away with it. Stranger things have happened. But I suspect it probably wouldn't be entirely convincing (once again, a la New Labour )...

why would you have to cover it up? why not have everyone know that it's a different person?

i wonder what it would be like if i gave out my e-mail address and the password where anyone could use it.

Would would it be like? Ever heard of the Tower of Babel?...

As for cover-ups... I don't know why - just being my usual paranoid self, I suppose...

You could just change your e-mail address and people wouldn't be able to send you stuff. Your e-mail address is the only way people would have of contacting you. They could leave some on your page but you wouldn't see it because you wouldn't come.