This page exists as a monument to one of the most brilliantly funny websites the world has ever known. Neato Elito was not just a website; Sure, on the surface, it wasn't much more than a cool text file and a few pics of some teenagers who'd made the site. But Neato Elito was more than a joke. It was an experience.
I'm here to explain why. Now, you may be wondering, who the hell am I? The answer is strange and disturbing; I was never really part of Neato Elito myself. I was just a big fan. In time, I came to personally know the principal members of it online, mostly via IRC. One might call me a fan, one might call me an obsessive fan, one might call me a stalker. Whatever I am, I am proud to be able to show the world what once was. To this end, a FAQ-like history of Neato Elito follows.
Neato Elito is (was) a semi-popular humour website. Inspired by the movie Hackers and the rampant mockery of its lack of technical accuracy, Neato Elito began as a simple website making fun of hacker wannabees, particularly their lack of knowledge and annoying typing style, notably alternating capital letters, substituting numbers for letters, and extreme overuse of the word "elite", which was usually spelled "31337" or some such variant.
Neato Elito began as a simple website on GeoCities, mainly centered around the Guide To Hax0ring, the text file that got it all started. (You do not understand Neato Elito if you have not read and understood the Guide To Hax0ring.) Another important file in the beginning was this picture, which does a good job of summarizing the truth about Hackers.
As the site grew and became somewhat more popular, it was eventually moved to http://america.net/~cochise (its long-standing URL), where it flourished as a small but entertaining site. Eventually, the site was moved to its own domain name, amid much celebration and joy: neatoelito.org was the site's official home right up until its demise. Those who remember that happy time will recall Cochise stating in the site news that it took many nights of Orin selling her body on the street to be able to afford the domain.
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| Cochise, a.k.a. Bryan, one l33t mofo | Orin |
Essentially, NE was run by Cochise (also known as Bryan, because that was his name) and Orin (which was her real name, although she did use the nick "Zynisch" on IRC for a while). However, Neato Elito was not just a humour site, it also was something of a portal for a circle of friends, and there were various contributions from friends of Cochise and Orin, including various contributions to the "Guide To Hax0ring" and a few special events such as "Help Phrank Get Bus Fare".
Sadly, Neato Elito is gone. After failing to renew the neatoelito.org domain name, the site reverted to its old URL of http://america.net/~cochise for a while, with almost no content other than a brief message mourning the loss of all the site's content, and the small penis size of the anonymous writer. Today, the URL has even less; It still exists, but contains nothing but the word "p00p". Neato Elito lives on in the memories of the people who took part in it, but on the Web, it has been almost lost. That is why this page was created.
PHART was a website similar to Neato Elito, run by Jacob, a friend of the Neato Elito crew and a huge Jim Morrison fan. It was probably most memorable for the PHART 2600 FAQ, a parody of the actual 2600 hack FAQ, and a few other "interesting" toys to play with, the most memorable of which was probably the "PHART Jiveguy", a stupendously 'Froed man who would say various bad-ass things if you clicked on various parts of his picture (which were actually links to WAV files).
PHART never officially stood for anything. However, the site did once run a small contest, asking viewers to send in their ideas on what it should stand for. When it was over, many interesting ideas had been contributed. Unsurprisingly, a great many of these had a rectal or other sexual connection.
#bastards was the official Neato Elito IRC channel. Located on EFnet, it was run by Curt, who went by various nicks on IRC, but was best known there as "pornstar". Although the channel was taken over a few times, it remained as a successful hub of activity for the NE crew. Following one takeover, the official NE IRC channel was changed to #neatoelito, and that remained the hub of activity right up to the point where the site was abandoned.
There were a great many people associated with NE besides Cochise and Orin, most of whom I am probably not aware of, since I was never really in good with the gang. However, names which I came privy to included:
Official channel operator of #bastards. Best known for his compulsive masturbation, Curt was once the focus of a small community effort to send a sock puppet to Curt to assist in his masturbatory practices. The first (and, to my knowledge, the only) puppet sent for this great work was a sock named Blake. I am not sure how well Blake served his purpose, but I imagine he must have spent many happy nights warming Curt's penis. Curt was also known for living in Chico, a small college town in northern California.
Facilitator of PHART. Jacob is remembered by everyone as a brash, clever young man who ritually worshipped Jim Morrison.
Charlie was an anomaly simply because he was a bodybuilder on IRC. In a channel full of relatively nerdy people, a guy who looks like a pro wrestler was something special. He is appropriately remembered for the real-world wisdom that he brought to #bastards as well.
Zach was among the very first people who made up Neato Elito, back when it was based in public room Phreak on AOL. As the group began to move away from pr Phreak and change to web- and IRC-based gatherings, he gradually faded from the NE scene. I never met him, but as of this writing, he's the only member of Neato Elito who's actually e-mailed me about this web page.
The official NE slut. Not much more is known, or need be known, about Courtney.
Brad is remembered for several things; He was a huge Primus fan, he was a talented bass player, and his personal motto was "I am a gimp". If nothing else, he is incredibly cool due to the fact that he actually got Orin to pose in a photo while holding a sign saying "Brad is a gimp".
Known as "DigiPort" on IRC, this badass mofo became the classical laughingstock of the channel, for his attempts to be hardcore despite a lack of intelligence or substance.
One of the less well-remembered episodes in the history of Neato Elito, possibly because its content was hosted on PHART and not the actual NE website, the Foneman Saga was a righteously hilarious series of chat logs between Orin, Jacob, and someone associated with the the anonymous Foneman. The complete Foneman saga of nine text files is below:
1Unfortunately, I know of no good hax0r parody sites currently alive on the Web; If there are any, it is unlikely that they even approach the scope and quality of Neato Elito or PHART. This is exactly why Neato Elito was so great.
The only people who came close were the Hax0r Brothers, who produced 11 text-file newsletters, most of which were pretty good, before they disappeared. The first of these newsletters can be found right here. (WARNING: Offensive content! Read only if you don't mind compulsive studlycaps, swearing, and references to bodily excretions.) (I was going to actually put it as a normal text file, but GeoCities refused to accept it, apparently not feeling it was a valid text file. That says a lot.)
Yes. In an ironic twist, the only mirror of NE that I know of is hosted on the site that NE once ripped off. 2600.com, the website for the infamous H/P zine 2600, has a few mirrors of websites which have been hacked; It also has a few mirrors of what websites *might* look like if they ever *were* hacked one day. One of the "possible future" defaced site archives is of the 2600 site itself, and it is actually a mirror of the time when Neato Elito was designed to look like the 2600 site. (In a nod to their inspiration, Neato Elito's links page provided a link to the 2600 site, noting that "we have never actually heard of these people or seen their site, but we hear it has a nice design.") The 2600 mirror of that particular instance of Neato Elito is still online, as of this writing, at http://www.2600.com/hacked_pages/prop/prop_pages/2600/2index.html.
I have lost contact with Cochise. Tragically, so has Orin. I did, however, meet Orin by a chance encounter online, literally years after the last time I had talked to her. She is doing well, and still "enjoying" life in Mississippi, with plans to move to a better place someday soon. She remains a self-described "art fag", and in a poetically appropriate gesture, now runs the website artfags.org.
The other members of NE are, presumably, still existing somewhere in the world, but they have been lost track of. If you are them, or if you have any news on them, an update on their status would be appreciated.
The aforementioned encounter with Orin gave me a chance to ask her for a parting speech by which we could all remember Neato Elito. She obliged with fittingly beautiful and succinct words that should remain in the hearts of NE fans forever:
"I had no social life when I was a teenager because I ran a website about AOL."
Truer words have never been spoken. May the web never forget the sacrifices made by the young men and women who were, and are, the spirit of hax0r parody.