After reading another great press release I think I now know what “Web 2.0” means. Up until now I was convinced that if you asked 10 people what it means, you’d get 10 different answers. Turns out all the tech guys have it wrong, tho.
You see, it’s all in the pronunciation. It’s not “Web two-point-zero”, it’s actually “Web two-point-oh”. As in “Web two-point-OH-MY-GOD WE’RE, LIKE, TOTALLY COOL”.
Don’t laugh.
The other day I looked with a friendly non-tech guy at some purdy web pages. (I am not dissing him for not knowing this stuff, he is not a programmer, which is completely okay. I am just telling this to illustrate a point.) It went like this:
Guy, pointing: “That looks pretty cool, what with it sliding out smoothly and all! Ah, Web 2.0, great. Is that AJAX?”
Me: “No, it’s a ‘dropdown’.”
Guy, pointing: “Or here, all these big image things with the text, that is Web 2.0, right?”
Me: “No, it’s static images with text link overlays.”
Thank you, crazy Internet marketing hype machine. I wish you weren’t decentralized so I could come visit and burn you down.
That term should be banned from the face of the net. Every time I tell people I work on the Intertubes for a living, it’s always “Wow, like Web 2.0?”.
Okay, fellow tech guys, listen up, this needs to stop. I propose answering questions like that with “No, not ‘Web 2.0’ and ‘AJAX’, we’re doing BARF now. ‘BARF’ stands for ‘Bidirectional Asynchronous Request Forwarding’, it’s hot right now. I could explain it, but it’d probably take too long. There’s a number of articles on oreilly.com, look it up, it’s great. It’s going to be in the next release of Django and Rails, man—right in the core, built-in!!”
Don’t tell me it wouldn’t work, don’t tell me it wouldn’t work.
If you’re laughing right now or thinking I am just saying this, you’re mistaken. Let’s turn the Bullshit Train around. I am dead serious.
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Update #1: The acronym was inspired by the fine Iranian soap products, of course.
Update #2: I changed the phrase from “Bitwise Asynchronous Request Forwarding” to “Bidirectional Asynchronous Request Forwarding”. It just makes more sense that way.
