The Great GH Webmaster Debunking
By Katrina Rasbold

Lemme tell you about Laura Gedstern.  I know it sounds like I'm always aiming the sun to shine on Laura's butt, but (but-but?) I have to acknowledge the best when I see it.  I've been in this game for a few years now and I see the cut-throat competitiveness that exists between soap sites.  Laura has been nothing but wonderful to me since I came into the business and has extended herself graciously many times when she didn't have to.  I wasn't anyone to her the first time she did it.  I was a name on Soap Opera Central where I used to do the GH site and she had not reason to help me out, but she did so without hesitation and has since become a cherished net friend.  That is extremely rare in the back-biting world of soap webmasters.  Personally, I don't get it. . . 

. . .I mean, It's not like any of us get paid spit to do this, so we aren't taking dollars out of anyone's pocket with our giant scoops or scanned soap mag photos or anything.  Still, it's damned bizarre how insane people are with their information and photos and such, ranting about who scooped what first.  It cracks me up to think of some wild-eyed 200 pound housewife (Sidebar:  Most of us GH webmasters fall either into the category of 200 pound wild-eyed women or skinny, peroxide-blonde, 2am waitresses at Denny's - why do you think I have Debbie Harry on my Journal picture instead of my own fat ass?  Yeah, I know.  You thought we were all Dorothy Freakin' Parker, didn't you?  Sorry to blow the image - smile - see above pic for the real me) sitting at her computer with a Mission Impossible briefcase handcuffed to her chubby wrist with a sealed envelope inside that says, "Juan got canned."  She clutches the briefcase like it's the ark of the covenant, eyes darting frantically left and right, scanning for interlopers and chanting, "mine, mine, mine" softly under her breath as she cradles and rocks the scoop for a bit prior to posting it.  Once she posts it, she haunts the message boards, DARING anyone to say another site got the scoop first.  So much energy!  Everything is just so damned I*N*T*E*N*S*E   I don't see how anyone can enjoy living that way.  

Laura's not like that.  She's the genuine article with great resources, reliable info and a heart the size of Texas.  She is always good enough to share her exclusive scoops with us and for that we are truly grateful.  Ironically, she shares her scoops with a lot of other people too.  The difference is that she often doesn't give them permission, they just wait for her to publish her info, then take it.  More often than not, when you see a credit for a big scoop that says, "A good friend of the site" or "A source close to the set reports..." what the webmaster is too slimy to say is, "I just ripped this off of Gedstern's page!  Check it out!!"  If you don't believe it, experiment for a couple of weeks and keep track of when an exclusive scoop hits Laura's page and when it hits the other GH pages.  You can almost countdown the 15 or so minutes it takes for someone to rewrite the article. :)

So don't revere us as goddesses (OK, you can revere me as a goddess if you want, go ahead).  We're just people like you who put together info we hope you will enjoy.  We have lives that extend beyond the page and sometimes get in the way of getting items posted on the cutting edge of time.  We don't sit in an office at ABC (well, the abc.com people do, I suppose) cranking this stuff out on our state of the art PC's.  Most of us are hurrying to the POS computer we fight with daily between carpooling kids to school, bagging groceries at Safeway or making dinner.  We write with kids climbing on us like human jungle gyms, cats who love to lay on the keyboard while we're typing and food burning a few doors down.  We worry about getting our bills paid, see people furrow their brows over our energy and time investment into a project that yields little monetary return and sigh when we get an e-mail bitching us out because the spoilers are late or we misspelled a word on paragraph 4 of the front page.  

Given that, it would be wonderful if all of the GH webmaster community could be good to one another and work together to keep the GH fans informed and sated rather than turning this into Watergate or the WWF back stabbing convention.  For example, it's a shame that if a message is posted on someone's board giving a link to another site, a webmaster hurries in to delete it because it *might* take a click away from their site!!  Holy Cow!!  How anal and insecure can someone BE?  Yet, it happens all the time!

I just want to say that I don't buy that crap and it's too bad it is like that in some arenas because it just doesn't have to be.  One of the major (admittedly great) soap sites on the net WON'T EVEN POST A SINGLE LINK to another site!  I mean, how insecure is THAT?  I'm just tired of the uppity-ness and tight-assedness of others.  I started a diet yesterday so that I'd hopefully NOT be a 200 webmaster any more (I'm NOT peroxiding my hair!  I'm not, I'm NOT!), so I'm probably a little on edge, but c'mon, folks...

In the immortal words of the great orator Rodney King, "Can't we all just get along?"  

Psst:  Way to go, Laura.  I appreciate you more than you'll ever know.

(stepping off the soap box and back to the journal – ahem)         

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