tSwapper - Leave now!tShadethpc01s2f4 SWAPPERS - LEAVE NOW! c04 The modem vs swapper statement c02f1 by Shade/Digital c03Ask any swapper what he fears most - apart from programs like: DPaint, Protracker and Devpac - and he'll tell you: c02Modemsc03! c01 THE EASY WAY IN c03 It wasn't so long ago that modems were considered to be a f4luxuryf1. They were very expensive items of hardware and only a f4hardcore elitef1 could afford to own them. These were the days when the Scene occupation of the c04"swapper" c03was at its f4peakf1. It was c02veryc03 easy to enter the Scene then. You didn't have to be f4talentedf1 in any area and you didn't have to spend a long period of time perfecting your pixeling skills or gaining coding knowledge. No, why waste time being talented when you could just get yourself 70+ contacts and join a cool group as a c04swapperc03 instantly! It really was as easy as that...you didn't have to be a talented musician or coder because, as long as you could do the menial brain-dead task of duplicating disks, you could still pretend to be a scener. c01 ONCE A NEEDED ASSET c03 While swappers, understandably, have never been respected in our scene: once every group needed at least one. (although most had many, many more!) They were used to spread your group's name and productions to a wider audience...basically they were the life-line of any group and without a dedicated swapper your group would have suffered badly. c01 RISE OF THE MODEM c03 Thankfully those days have gone. Today it's a different story. Today the price of modems are negligible; you can get a very fast modem (V33.6) for little more than the cost of an external drive. Also, with the increased competition in the telecommunications industry, the cost of the actual modem calls are falling drastically too. It no longer costs an arm and a leg to upload your latest two disk demo...in fact it costs little more than the price of a c02stampc03! You no longer have to mail your group's latest production to a swapper for him to spread - if indeed he even bothers! c01 DEMISE OF THE SWAPPER c03 In today's f4modernf1 Scene you simply upload your demo to a local Scene BBS and the other modem owners will do the work for you. You can guarantee that come the next day your demo will be half way around the glob. Everybody will have access to your work. It's simple, quick and easy. No fuss, no sticky stamps and no need for c02Swappersc03! c01 SWAPPERS - BACK TO SCHOOL! c03 Modems are no longer a luxury to most sceners and it wont be long at all before c02allc03 sceners own one. Just like the hard drive and DF1, they will soon become a standard hardware item for sceners. So, thanks to the modem, the day of f4reckoningf1 has finally come for swappers. I mean, who f4reallyf1 needs a swapper in today's modern scene? Surly they're just a relic from a bygone era...a token memory of a scene we once knew. Shouldn't we just c04eradicatec03 the title of "swapper" once and for all, and force the remaining swappers to learn a c02realc03 skill! Maybe give them all a copy of Protracker and DPaint. I would suggest they all get writing articles, but could you imagine an article full of swapper language like: c04WOZ, L8TER, M8, WOZUP, CYAc03? it would be worse than reading a copy of c02Buzzc03. No, I don't think Editing is suitable for a brain-dead swapper somehow. c01 NOTHING TO OFFER c03 Let's face it: swappers are just a waste of space. They add c02nothingc03 to our Scene and are totally f4pointlessf1. Modems do the same job as a swapper, but a million times better! The only thing having swappers in our Scene does is promote lazyness...new sceners think: c04"Why should I struggle with DPaint or Devpac when I can be accepted in the Scene as a swapper!" c03Well I say: c02why should we stand for these idle, unproductive "sceners" holding our Scene back any longer! c03The job of the swapper is now f4redundantf1, and if they can't be bothered to learn: programming, music, gfx or something else useful, then they should just pack-up their copies of X-Copy and leave - c01NOWc03!