"a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun"
for 13 September 1995. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Dear Netscape,                   

Hello!                           

Would you be so kind as to allow 
us a few moments to introduce    
ourselves?                       

Suck is a small media outlet on  
the WWW. Our mission is quite    
simple: Suck believes that the   
Internet has "come of age" as a  
pervasive force in mass culture, 
and we've elected to take it     
upon ourselves to be the         
rigorous and uncompromising      
critics - and occasionally court 
jesters - of this new,           
commercialized, consumer-driven  
online culture.                  

Suck may, at times, come across  
as a bit harsh in our            
assessments and opinions, but    
we'd venture to guess that       
Netscape, as the leading         
industrial advocate of the       
medium, hardly requires us to    
explain the value of unfettered  
dialogue.                        

We've had the pleasure to watch  
the epochal ascent of your       
enterprise from risky start-up   
to lofty megacorp and, boy, are  
we impressed! It seems as if it  
were only yesterday that we      
would sit around smirking at     
Clark's Folly, wondering how     
you'd ever squeeze a dime out of 
your efforts. Well, you sure     
showed us!                       

In particular, we've been putting
some thought towards your        
"What's Cool" page. The way we   
see it, the Netscape home page   
probably receives more visits    
than any other home page on the  
Web - after all, upwards of 80%  
of Web surfers use the Netscape  
browser in some incarnation, and 
it's our reasoning that a        
relatively few of these          
infonauts actually have the      
time, inclination, or            
resourcefulness to modify the    
home page location pref to, say, 
http://www.suck.com/.            
Undoubtedly fewer still choose   
to disable those attractive,     
hard-coded directory buttons you 
so helpfully provide at the top  
of every Netscape browser. And   
we haven't chosen to mention     
those hit counts you give to     
potential advertisers. All in    
all, we think it's a fairly safe 
bet to assume that your "What's  
Cool" page is one of the most    
popular destinations on the Web. 

Make no mistake - Suck is cool.  

We spare no effort in the dynamic
presentation of honest, relevant 
and often passably amusing       
content. And we publish daily,   
to boot! We're like "Cool Site   
of The Day" without the          
embarrassing puns on the names of
weekdays and a bit more "laff    
value."                          

Now, we took a gander at the     
current entries on the Netscape  
What's Cool page, and were a bit 
disturbed to discover (through a 
bit of cyber-sleuthery) that the 
sites included                   
disproportionately represent     
the Netscape Communications and  
Commerce Servers - not           
surprising, perhaps, considering 
the monumentally commercialistic 
goals of the larger part of the  
sites, but a bit revealing       
considering that the Netscape    
servers own less than 10% of the 
market, according to the         
WebCrawler survey and the        
better-documented but            
smaller-sampled survey by Paul   
Hoffman.                         

We'll be the first to concede    
that people giving you money is  
a pretty darn cool thing,        
indeed, but "cool", as an        
abstract concept, surely must    
signify something more profound  
than the exchange of filthy      
lucre, no?                       

Don't get us wrong - we wouldn't 
mind if people started tossing   
cash in our direction, but       
that's not really our goal. We   
far prefer support in the form   
of a little publicity, maybe a   
link to us here or there. It's   
not as if Suck hasn't already    
provided links going the other   
way, and we like to think our    
site is a solid addition to any  
hotlist, corporate or not.       

Show us that you care.           

Give us a shot...give us a spot. 

Sincerely,                       


The Society of Sucksters