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NICK DOUGLAS — To everyone who was "there for the first bubble," let me speak on behalf of those of us who weren't (and those who were and don't need to keep yammering about it. We get it. You're old and experienced and SO OVER this retro fad called making money off the Internet. Now shut up and let us make some.

Let's be clear who I'm talking to. It's those of you who were in Silicon Valley or (better) New York's Silicon Alley and took part in the dot-com boom, and you know all about how stupid it was, everyone running with the bulls, though you've no explanation for why, then, you ran along with the rest of the fatheaded tourists and watched your friends get gored. You're the ones who KNOW that every startup will fail, that MySpace was a waste of News Corp's cash, that no one makes money off a wiki. Any time one of the rest of us mentions an obvious, actual waste of money (PodTech anyone?), you treat it as proof that the whole industry is doomed for collapse.

I was one of you, sure. For about half a freaking year. It didn't take me long to realize I was dead wrong about the fate of YouTube. And I was never so blind as to write off the Flickrs and Jotspots and Diggs of the world as anything REMOTELY resembling Pets.com.

You pissers, you know why you're here talking to us? Because you fucked it up. You didn't get your piece of the pie before the bubble was out, and now all the time you WOULD have spent throwing your money around, you instead spend on the free pursuit of comparing everything to "the last time."

And you know what that doesn't do? It doesn't make everyone who just moved into town go "Oops, guess my hopes and ambitions are for naught, and the future can only repeat the past! Thank you oh sir for you deep wisdom of TEN WHOLE YEARS! Teach me sensei, that I may also piss on the achievements of others!"

No, what it does is make all of us feel like the Big Lebowski, the Dude, shouting "God Walter, why is everything a travesty with you?" New adventures are happening around you and you can only deal with it by comparing it to 'Nam! You're whiny Walter Sobchak, muttering "calmer'n you are" after waving a gun around the bowling alley. But this has nothing to do with 'Nam.

Or you're like Uncle Whatever in Napoleon Dynamite, reminiscing about how great you COULD have been if you hadn't torn a tendon or quit before you vested or whatever the hell bad decision or accident you blame for your pitiful washed-up existence. And what do you do to change that around? You sell Tupperware. You buy a time machine off the Internet. You putz around at OUR conferences and OUR geek dinners and you titter at all the people with the guts to try and fail.

Well you go do that, and we'll laugh with you about our silly startups named Twitter and Meebo and our arrogant videoblogging community and Justin.tv, who may be a dick, but he's OUR dick. We'll laugh. We'll laugh all the way to the billion-dollar buyout. And when the dust settles and it's time to make the fuck-you money say "fuck you," we'll see who looks stupid.

Nick Douglas writes for Valleywag, Blogebrity, and Look Shiny. He's looking for angel funding and a Jack and ginger ale. Photo: Scott Beale, Laughing Squid