But, yes, Harmon says, Walkers has indeed saved lives. “A more usual situation is that someone is considering suicide and issues an appeal to Walkers for help. They’ll say something to the effect that ‘It’s not worth it, and nothing I do ever works, and I’m probably bothering you with this note.’ People respond to it and sometime call the person by phone if the number is available.” If the number isn’t, Harmon and other Netheads will try to use their knowledge of the Internet to track it down. “We don’t breach privacy unless there really is a suicide threat, and sometimes people’s accounts may be on services where we can’t find them. More usually, various people may send their own phone numbers either privately or to someone or to the list, so that other members can reach them.

“The Internet,” he cautions, “is not always a fast-rescuer—you may be lucky to get same-day service. In the programmer’s case his note didn’t even get to my list for an hour, much less get sent out to all the members. I found out about his note by getting a midnight phone call!”

Still, Harmon sees the Net as a godsend for ongoing support and as a crisis aid even if the help isn’t always immediate. Goldberg agrees: “It’s mobilized people to all kinds of interventions.”[[1.4]]

“I’m sitting here with a knife in my hand,” wrote a community college student asking for support from Walkers. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill myself—just hurt myself a little. I just feel as though I deserve pain.” She went on to tell how she had been in the National Honor Society in high school, gone on to an honors program at Loyola University for several years, then had been forced to leave. “I used to be strong, brilliant, and ambitious and now I am stupid and manic depressive. It just hurts so much. So I guess that’s why I’m cutting on my wrists tonight.” She told me when I wrote to ask about her condition—improved—that “I would be lost without Walkers.”

A near-suicide in Santa Clara, California, aided by the newsgroup alt.support.depression, recalls: “I was so close it was amazing.” Medical debts had overwhelmed him. He was a single father and his boss had put him on probation after child care gobbled up too much work time. In tears he began his note: “It doesn’t really matter any more.” A New York woman saw the note and begged people online to help. Hundreds of messages came over the Net from as far as Japan. Tracked down despite his unsigned post, the California man received help not only from a colleague at work but also from police. “Something snapped,” he recalls, “and I just realized that there were a lot of people there who cared.”[[1.5]]

Madness, another self-help group on the Net, is a mailing list for people who suffer drastic mood swings, hear voices, and see visions. Now, says Sylvia Caras, who runs the list, they can use the Net to carry on a dialogue with federal mental health officials. The Net offers a very real voice for those the world might otherwise ignore.

I could go on forever about support groups on the Net. Whether you’re short or extra tall, anorexic or 300 pounds, a victim of cancer or of child abuse, the Internet teems with people wanting to share their experiences with you—a task made much easier through the efficiencies of the Net, which have brought the cost of electronic mail down so much. I bristle when I hear people talk about the Internet as worthless unless big profits await megaconglomerates. The activities of support groups and other virtual communities may not show up in any country’s gross domestic product, but in the aggregate they’re just as valuable as anything to emerge from AT&T or Time Warner.

May I emphasize that the Net is far, far more than a mental health clinic? It’s a place, too, for political activists, boaters, golfers, motorcyclists, gun owners, gourmets, football fans, baseball enthusiasts, parents and teachers, writers and readers of many genres, pilots, airline passengers, amateur radio operators, and reggae lovers. All have their own niches, which is just what you’d expect with more than 12,000 newsgroups.

While the clueless are arguing over whether the Net has value, people like John Schwartz already know it does. Recently he wondered about lyrics by a singer and songwriter named Liz Phair. Just how did they go? Some of the biggest fun came from his hunt online. He tracked down at least five different Web areas—“digital fan magazines”—devoted to Phair. “Some had photos, some had biographical information, and a couple had song lyrics.” And yes, he found the lyrics he wanted, and in their full, unprintable glory. “Useless? Probably. Satisfying? You bet.” And Schwartz went on: “Think of all the stuff that you’d find in your public library if you pulled something off the shelf. A lot of it would be ‘useless’ for your own needs—tons of mediocre fiction, outdated information, and silly things. But would anybody say that it proves that libraries are worthless?”[[1.6]]

Other Net activities also suggest that Snake Oil is self-descriptive. A Michigan couple has started a virtual toy store complete with pictures of their staffers as children and service of the kind you’d expect from L. L. Bean; their first order came from Brazil (see chapter 2: Business[Business] on the Net: From White Rabbit Toys to “Intel Inside”). Out in California two young techies are giving hundreds of young musicians a break through a much-needed project called the Internet Underground Music Archives (chapter 3: EntertaiNet: A Few Musings on Net.Rock, Leonardo da Vinci and Bill Gates, Bianca’s Smut Shack, and David Letterman in Cyberspace). Just throw $100 their way and, for a year, you can post a sample of your music on the Net and perhaps stir up sales of old cassettes and CDs.