Time to get a life -- pioneer blogger Justin Hall bows out at 31

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 2/20/5 | Reyhan Harmanci

[SmithL]

For 11 years, Justin Hall was dedicated to documenting his life online. Composing more than 4,800 pages from nearly a decade of constant writing, which he posted on his site, www.links.net, Hall became a pioneer among online diarists and Web loggers.

For Hall, nothing seemed to be too embarrassing or too personal to write about -- with photos and links. From romantic relationships to his father's suicide to a bad case of shingles, he shared himself with a fairly substantial audience. Thousands of people read his site every day.

Then, in mid-January, he made a short film called "Dark Night'' and released it on the Internet. He replaced his ever-changing home page with a fixed red heart filled with question marks.

And like that, his Web site moved from the present to the past tense. He left a search bar next to the questioning hearts, letting readers sift through the archives.

While thousands of people start and stop blogs every day, Hall's presence on the Internet has been a constant. If he can't keep his faith in the connective powers of online communication, who can?

In a style reminiscent of the films "The Blair Witch Project" and "Tarnation," Hall speaks directly into the camera. He is visibly upset, crying at several points.

"What if intimacy happens in quiet moments?" he said. "I think the Web makes me not alone and I feed it my intimacies, and the Web is my constant connection to something larger than myself ... but what if something you do, something you practice like religion as a dialogue with the divine, drives people away from you?"

[anymouse]

Confirming that liberalism is a mental disease. Hopefully this guy finds help that mere web exhibitionism can't fix.

[Cicero]

I never heard of him. He will not be missed, except evidently in San Francisco.

[madprof98]

He started his on-line stuff in 1994. I remember encountering his work way back then. It seemed incredibly creative, the kind of effort that illustrated the possibilities the Web offered for ordinary people to share their lives and thoughts. I even sent him a modest donation.

A while back, I chanced on some of his more recent stuff. It was really disturbing. Even though he's still a young man, he seemed to be one of the burnt-out aging hippies of my own generation. One of his pages dealt with a visit to a sex club in San Francisco's Mission District. I skipped that and hoped that he would grow up before he killed himself.

Maybe he has, but given his lunatic-left background, he has no real resources to guide him in a search for genuine human intimacy.