Joe-Is there something specific about people wanting to share their stories on the web, or would these people be publishing in literary journals otherwise?

Derek- People do both. People on {fray} very often have their own Websites that you can link to from their posts. Some of those keep diaries, and publish texts on the Web anyway.

Joe- A couple of questions. Is there anything about the phenomena of your site, and other personal story sites, or memoir sites, that suggests something about the larger society.

Derek-In the broader context, you would have to say that the dominant forces of media in the last hundred years have been insanely one way. You can not talk back to your television set. The thing that I love about the Web is that it takes all of that and turns it on its head. It's almost as easy to be a media publisher on the Web as its is to be a media consumer. And that's incredibly powerful, and I almost believe that will change the world because I understand how it has changed me.

I get really frustrated when I talk to my TV it doesn't listen, but when I go to website and I can damn well say it. I can write a letter to the editor, I can post to their forums, I can make my voice heard to other users as well as to the people that are making the site, and that is very, very powerful.

Joe- I have made the argument rather than the Web creating greater personal expression, that our need for personal expression created the Web. It was precisely the bottled up frustration of being one way consumers of broadcast, created the out-pouring of personal statement that is clearly one of the driving forces in the Web culture.

Derek- That is the second part of my rant. I believe that the dominant media has spent that hundred years spooning media to us, and now we're full. Now it is our turn to spoon media out to everybody else and the Web is the first place where this is cost effective and convenient enough to do. I am Joe Schmo and I pay $20 per month for my email and it comes with 5 MB of space and I can say whatever the hell I want on my Web page. And maybe I want to tell the story of how my grandparents came to this country, or maybe I want to shoot my mouth off about what's wrong with social security. I think the fact that it allows us to do this is finally giving an outlet to a need that has been there for a long, long time.

Joe- How many of the people that write for {fray} or respond have a public persona as a storyteller, as a performing storyteller or in a {fray} coffee club?

Derek- It's funny you should mention that. I have just started {fray}.org, and the founding principal of that its {fray} in real life, its coming out from behind the glass. And I am starting a monthly open mike in San Francisco, we are doing a theme camp at Burning Man where we are doing storytelling, and we are throwing a really large party in September for {fray}'s second anniversary.

Will these people tell stories in public? We are going to test that. The answer could be no. Look, these people are geeks. They are behind their computers where there is an illusion of private space. That is one of the reasons they feel so comfortable telling stories there. Some people like me, were storytellers in public before the web and I assume they will be willing to share their stories in public, others may just be observers. I have had people tell me that after posting in {fray} they could tell there story more easily in public settings, and there have been posting forums about coming out as gay, about childhood sexual abuse, about really heavy topics and people are really amazingly honest about their experiences.

My hope is that it engenders real life conversation after the virtual one.

Joe- I feel that people have lost some of skill of storytelling both in a conversational setting and a public performative setting. So some people that have the ability to write, do not have the ability to perform the writing in an effective way.

Derek- In one sense what I am doing with {fray} is very against professionalism in storytelling. I really want true honest regular people to come in and tell their stories. I really don't want something polished. Professional storytellers have lots of places to perform already. I am interested in getting the person who would never have posted to an online discussion forum to post.

I had this happen with my Dad. He is a clinical psychologist. Before he was online he was astonished that anyone would publish anything personal. Personally, I think its because he's used to people paying him with "a lot of money to be honest, it's undercutting his business.

Because he was not online, he did not understand how the Web was also a private space. Then one day, he read a story on {fray} where the ending question was about a bar where people felt they were "regulars" and he wrote a story about a bar in Memphis. That was one of my greatest successes with the site.