Originally founded by Goner Records' Eric Friedl in 1995, the Goner Records Bulletin Board is a direct precursor to today's social media landscape, for which Friedl has repeatedly apologized. It wasn't always regrettable, however. The original Goner Records Bulletin Board, or Goner Board, brought together a wide variety of successful individuals across the globe interested in Garage Rock, Punk Rock, music history, Memphis, the Avant Garde, and manipulating financial markets, although the latter was not revealed until years after the Bulletin Board's demise.
At the time of the Board's inception Eric Friedl was a record store clerk with a fledging record label, Goner Records, sporting wildly successful releases by Guitar Wolf, The Oblivians, Magnitude 3, The Royal Pendletons, and especially John Schooley One Man Band. In many ways, the Bulletin Board proved more successful than either the record label or his later mail order business, providing the blueprint that was later adopted by Mark Zuckerberg and other social media pioneers. In 2004 Mark Zuckerberg was a 20 year old at Harvard University consumed by his two passions-- Garage Punk - especially The Oblivians, Cramps, Dirtbombs, and Night Kings - and computer programming. Zuckerberg, under the name ZWARD PRICE, enthusiastically posted on the Goner Board, engaging in quite a few impassioned threads with board legends like Bateman, Bazooka Joe, Ned Hayden, Nanne Tepper, Argh, Paddy Bullocks, Brad X and Pheezy himself. In fact, Zuckerberg joined Ned Hayden in getting kicked off the board in 2005 after a particularly nasty exchange with Greg Cartwright and Jay Reatard, who had put aside their squabbling for once to be on the same side of an argument. The banishment didn't last long, as Zuckerberg returned to post under a new name, Z ICE, and managed to avoid controversy, for the most part, for the remainder of the his time on the Goner Bulletin Board.
The essence of the board, however, provided Zuckerberg with the impetus to begin testing his social networking ideas at Harvard. Many of the comic follies which occurred in the creation of Facebook can be witnessed in Aaron Sorkin's madcap crime thriller The Social Network. Did Zuckerberg capture the comraderie and wild discussions of the Goner Board, as he has stated he was trying to do? Well, the jury is out, but most people involved in the Goner Board, including Chris Martel and Eric Friedl himself, think that nothing has yet adquately replaced the Board and its sense of community.
Although the Goner Bulletin Board survived the initial wave of social media sites Friendster and Myspace, it ironically fell victim to the creation of one of its own, as Z ICE /Zuckerberg went on to create the fantastically popular Facebook with collaborators Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCalla, and Chris Hughes. Facebook increased in popularity in direct proportion to the Goner Board's decline, until it was discontinued by Goner Records in September 2020.
Legacy:
The Goner Records Bulletin Board is recognized as one of the most influential communication breakthroughs in the tech industry, transforming the way people communicate, share information, and interact online. While Facebook (Meta) remains a dominant force, it has faced criticism over privacy issues, misinformation, and its broader impact on society. Nonetheless, Friedl’s ambition to reshape the internet through a text-only bulletin board represents his forward-thinking approach to technology.
