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DB Web History
Dragonball has been on the web for a long time. But since up until three years ago I had a computer that would crash and burn if I tried to so much as load yahoo I don't know much about the early days. But, from what I've pieced together from various blubberings about the old days is that there was a guy named Ed Gorgon who had a prehensile tale and another, named Wuken, who was oft seen swinging through the trees.
After that more sites were made, and somewhere in there the show got ridiculously popular online. There was Planet Namek, Daizenshuu EX, DBZ Uncensored, and several other "elite" sites, along with another twenty thousand peon sites that started with "SSJ" and ended with a number between twelve and infinity. But even these did well enough. A site with a couple of broken images, a few links and a list of favorite characters -- with "Picalo" so well liked that he was listed twice -- could quickly rack up ten thousand hits. (True story, by the way.)
It's all the stranger, since I've never met anyone in real life who admitted to liking the damn thing.
Anyway, by this time many had become convinced that DB on the web was a community and not a bunch of isolated people sitting in front of computer monitors. Even stranger, some webmasters started thinking a few thousand page views a day made them akin to celebrities. Never mind that that's about as famous as the mayor of a township in Wyoming and considerably less views that, say, a funny looking rock off the side of the freeway.
But why not, eh? Things were going well. Planet Namek was bringing in $25,000 a month -- not a typo -- from banner ads and boasted over 20,000 visitors a day, Daizenshuu EX got free hosting for almost a gig worth of mp3s and other media files, and Chris Psaros of DBZ Uncensored drew a sizable following for condemning how funimation -- the company that dubs the show -- cut that closeup of Gohan taking a leak.
But then investors discovered that the "selling lots of shit at a loss" business model embodied by e-business wasn't quite panning out, and suddenly paying thousands a month for banner ads that no one clicked AND ran on a site where most visitors didn't have access to credit cards didn't seem like a good idea either. Planet Namek's revenues turned into deficits, no one wanted to host Daizenshuu EX anymore, and Chris Psaros realized he was thirty, living with his parents, and spending all his free time watching cartoons. And so they all shut down.
There are still plenty of sites, including at least one site about other sites, but most of the big ones, with their movie clips and mp3s, are gone.
Somehow I think civilization will survive.
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All images, text, and html are property of the Crater unless otherwise noted. The Crater is a fan site and no profit is realized from it. It has no affiliation whatsoever with FUNimation, or that big Japanese studio whose name I can't remember. Yeah, that'll hold up in court.
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