oops... did I do that?
So I was at http://zeldman.com/ today (as I often am) and read this:
"The secret is out. Actually, of course, both 'Eric Meyer' and 'Jeffrey Zeldman' are aliases of Vicki Wong,"
"The secret" is a link to this blog entry which says that Eric Meyer (http://www.meyerweb.com) actually created Zeldman.
That made me go back through my "Outbox" and realize that I might have had something to do with the start of the rumor.
On the WD-L list (digest v02.n907 if you are curious) I wrote:
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 21:05:10 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: "Timothy J. Luoma"
Subject: [WD]: Re: Web Standards Project, Phase II
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.44.0206132101360.3024-100000@Tim>
On Tue, 11 Jun 2002, Steven Champeon wrote:
> And please, if you can, try to stop confusing "The Web Standards
> Project" and "Jeffrey Zeldman". They're not equivalent. Never were.
One of the main reasons for that, of course, is that Jeffrey Zeldman
doesn't exist. He never has. He's a figment of our collective
imagination. The world needed him to exist, so we invented him, sorta
like the Brad Pitt character in "Fight Club"
> And I should add, though this probably goes against what you were
> trying to do here, that the new WaSP site contains no tables for
> layout. And yet, it works in all browsers.
Son of a gun, you're absolutely right. I just fired up NN4.08 and it
looks good.
> Of course, as has been said here repeatedly, that's impossible, so
> I'm afraid the universe is going to vanish in a fit of logical
> inconsistency :)
Does that mean I don't have to finish reading my email?
TjL
and not long after that I wrote this email
Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 12:10:47 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: "Timothy J. Luoma"
To: "Yaches Tami (tsp3txy)"
cc: jeffrey zeldman , eric meyer
Subject: RE: [WD]: Re: Web Standards Project, Phase II
In-Reply-To: <B1611B1B224FD61185FA0008C75DE6AF019D3EFD@02usnjrarps15f0.win.us.ups.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.44.0206141204550.1956-100000@Tim>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Yaches Tami (tsp3txy) wrote:
[Steve C wrote]
> > > And please, if you can, try to stop confusing "The Web Standards
> > > Project" and "Jeffrey Zeldman". They're not equivalent. Never were.
[TjL wrote]
> > One of the main reasons for that, of course, is that Jeffrey Zeldman
> > doesn't exist. He never has. He's a figment of our collective
> > imagination. The world needed him to exist, so we invented him, sorta
> > like the Brad Pitt character in "Fight Club"
[Tami Yaches wrote]
> I'd be willing to bet money that someone's already forwarded this to
> him, if he's not currently reading the list.
> Personally, I found this statement *really* disconcerting, having
> met him at a WaSP meeting in NYC. I'm wondering if I just really *wanted*
> him to be there?
>
> Tami Yaches
What's even better is that the next message in my inbox was from someone
asking "He doesn't exist? Can you explain that?"
So I told them that "Zeldman" was Eric Meyer's alter-ego.