Lydia isn't dangerous knife-wielding end-of-the-world raving lunatic insane. No, hers is a quiet insanity. But just because she doesn't paint herself purple and hang out on street corners shouting at invisible aliens doesn't make her any less insane.
Curious yet?
Lydia, you see, collects AOL discs. Yes, collects them. To quote from the article:
Thousands of them.
Her closet isn't large enough to hold all of her
AOL discs; soon she'll create a special showroom
for her collection.
Uh huh. A special showroom. For AOL discs. She's going to turn an otherwise useful room in her house into a shrine to garbage. Because let's face it: We've all thrown away dozens, maybe even hundreds of the damned things. They stopped being anywhere near useful when they changed from 3.5" floppies to CDs, but even 3.5" discs are only marginally useful (do any of you not have a bunch handy? I have at least 30 sitting on a shelf next to my computer, most of them blank).
So we've got what is basically a baglady with a house. Which is like a shopping cart, but much larger. Unfortunately "Collecting AOL discs is unusual [Merely unusual? As if we wouldn't have come to a much stronger conclusion by this point?], but Cline is part of a small, but growing, group of collectors across the country. They keep in touch by e-mail and online message boards." Yeah, "small, but growing." Sure, in a country with 275 million residents, there are going to be a lot of idiots. And among the idiots, there are going to be a lot of morons. And among the morons, a lot of drooling cretins. And somewhere down the line you get the people in Kansas who collect AOL discs.
As a native of a part of the country where literacy is not unusual, I think of Kansas as part of the wasteland between where I live and the other coast. It's not merely a Flyover State; it's a state that I don't even want to fly over for fear that the plane might crash and I'd be driven insane by the horrors that lurk there. Like Monster Island, but with more creatures pursuing a rewarding career in multi-level marketing.
Ok, so she collects AOL CDs. Ultimately, it's just a dumb hobby, like collecting Beanie Babies, or bottle caps, or the latest choking hazard given out by fast food places. Except that Ms. Cline has paid up to $54 for an AOL disc. Checking on ebay, I confirmed that people are indeed selling the damn things. The highest price I saw, though, was a mere $5.51 (not counting the "RARE AOL CD in tin can", selling for a quite reasonable $19). So Lydia is willing to pay up to $54 for your junk mail. What really upsets me is that I could be making a whole lot of money off of idiots like her if only I had been a better predictor of future craziness. If I could sell every damn AOL disc that I've ever received for $5 (making the dumbass who bought it cough up the shipping fee)...well, it just doesn't bear thinking about.
So, what does Ms. Cline have to say for herself?
"I think AOL is a huge part of our pop culture,"
Cline said. "I think AOL has had a larger impact
than Coke or Hershey's."
Good, Ms. Cline. Corporate America thanks you for your unthinking worship. Pray hard enough at your shrine, and your prayers will be answered. Maybe one day AOL will ship a disc with your face on it! Then you'll be just like a saint! Except crazier, and pathetic.
And what about AOL itself? Did they have a comment? Yes, they did.
Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman in Virginia,
was surprised to hear how much people spend for
the discs.
Since 1993, he said, "millions and millions" of
the discs have gone out. The exact number is a
trade secret, he said.
"Actually," he said, "I collect them." So do
many employees at AOL.
"I basically grab anything that lands in my
lap," he said.
Damn. There's just so much there. First, AOL discs are just slightly less rare than grains of sand. Never before has the city dump looked more like a gold mine. Second: Trade secret? Who the hell are they keeping it a secret from? Who else is going to waste megatons of plastic and paper to barrage the world with a shitstorm of junk mail that has involved and will involve far too many items to be called a mere "mass" mailing? How many trees and how much of the world's petroleum reserves have been wasted in order to get a few thousand more people to join AOL's swilling ranks?
And they collect them. As if we needed evidence that the people who run AOL are a bunch of knuckle draggers.
And a final note: Never, ever let yourself be quoted as saying "I basically grab anything that lands in my lap." You just can't parse that in any way that doesn't make you sound like a leering pervert. Or AOL disc collector, which isn't any better.