So, a while ago, I posted to MetaFilter about the hilarity that is “Ron’s First Goatse,” which I had seen at an interesting image-sharing site known, variously, as [this might be offensive] and also “themaxx,” after the site’s domain.

At the time, the site was a silent filepile imagestream mirror. I was mostly unaware of this when I posted to MeFi about the image; I had seen a lot of FP references in the imagestream, but I see a lot of the same images on BoingBoing, so I hadn’t connected the dots in my mind at the time.

Shortly after my post, the site’s maintainer and developer, known as themaxx, ran a graphic illlustrating the dramatically escalated bandwidth demands that were placed on the site after the MetaFilter post. Since that time, membership on the site has climbed, to what I estimate to be about 2000 members; many are apparently also MeFites and/or Pilers.

Apparently, over the last week or so, some sort of huge drama broke out on FilePile about themaxx’s mirror. See, FilePile evokes the inexplicably cultish “Fight Club,” and the first rule of FP is, well, you either know, or you know how to use Google, and frankly, I find the topic tiresome.

It’s been interesting catching glimpses of the dustup on [tmbo]. I have been chuckling about it all week, and a couple of days ago, I pointed this out to that expert provocateur, Danelope, who immediately frittered an hour of his life away constructing an animated fumetti.

Fumetti are photo-based comics, best known in the US as having been an importat element in the 1970s National Lampoon. This month, the form has been pressed into service with remixes of scenes from, mostly, The Lord of The Rings, and so Dan’s choice was tres au courant, if I myself did not recognize the film he repurposed. I do not have a copy of his animation, but will link to it when I find a copy.

In his animation, he made light of the dustup and provoked a storm of comments on [tmbo], notably including remarks from one “andre,” which is the first name of the Southern California-based programmer who originated FilePile. (Since this was posted, internal evidence makes it much less likerly that this andre is the FP guy).

Shortly after Dan’s posting, themaxx posted a monochromatic image, similar to the color image at the head of this post; he’d disconnected the mirroring.

The image at the head of this entry is what occurred to me as I watched all of this, chuckling, from the couch. The internet is like a slow-moving sitcom that you have to poke at and peer into to get the jokes.