James "Kibo" Parry
James "Kibo" Parry
Some of Kibo's Posts
Kibo is the founder and leader of alt.religion.kibology, and easily the best source of "choke on your burrito" funny stuff for the group (as is only fitting). He is a close real-life associate of Matt McIrvin, and he is rumoured to have been several past net-legends, both famed and notorious.
Kibo's rise to fame began years ago, when the 'net was young. There were merely hundreds of UseNet groups, not the thousands we have today. Accordingly, there were far fewer people on the Internet then than now, and some got to be well known personalities. Kibo was one of them. He was funny, he had an easy to remember name, and he frequented many newsgroups at any given time, so he was easy to find. This set the stage for James "Kibo" Parry to become a celebrity.
Then, he did something which, for the time, was a colossal
waste of time acheivement of computer science. He
searched all of UseNet for any appearance of his name, and
responded to each and every post. It must be understood that
much of his posting was done in satire, and some people just
couldn't take a joke. He repeated this searching - or
"grepping," named for the Unix search tool he employed, and
later to be called "Kibozing" - over and over again, also
searching for K1bo and K!bo and Kib0, attempts to evade his
ever-watchful eye. Kibo became known as the God of the
Internet, "He who greps," the all-seeing deity of the
electronic world.
Today, the Internet is a vast place, and many people out there, some of them newbies; some of them AOL or WebTV users, deprived of the experience of actually using a computer; some just plain old ignorant folks who don't understand the history of this vast body of information; who have never even heard of Kibo. Still, his name does carry on, and to this day, some still recite his name in the hopes of making their first Kibo sighting.
