The following is Part Two of OJR's look at the rise and fall (and rise again) of Plastic.com. Part One was called, 'When Automatic's Teller Ran Dry.'

'I don't do roles. I'm Carl.'

That's how Carl Steadman responded to my initial inquiry as to what his role with Plastic was. And in his own way, he had a point. Because for Carl, Plastic is 'all I do.' And Carl is everything to Plastic. Not only did he buy the site, but he now edits it, he moved it to faster servers, he has cleaned up the pidgin html that contributed to its long load times, and he eliminated the paypal boxes, refer-a-friend program, and other remnants of the bad old days.

And as he was doing all this (as if he has finished), he took the site offline for two weeks, and in its place left a cryptic message that said, among other things, that he was now Plastic's new 'janitor' and 'friend.' Until this point, there had been no public announcement of a changing of the guard, and Plastic's new site sweeper caught many Plastic users off guard.

So the message, combined with the down time, immediately prompted rampant speculation that Plastic had gone the way of Suck. And Feed. And Inside. And The Industry Standard. And IronMinds. And on, and on. It wasn't such an unreasonable assumption. After all, Suck hasn't quit publishing, remember? It has merely 'Gone Fishin'.' And was Carl not an integral part of Suck?

But rumors of Plastic's death were greatly exaggerated. Instead, Plastic was, in a sense, regrouping. And although it probably cost him a lot of regular readers, Steadman notes that 'the people I wanted to keep would still be around in two weeks.'

And so on December 16, 2001, Plastic was reborn, complete with a letter of explanation from Carl. But the note left much unanswered. Why did he buy it? What in the heck did Carl have in mind for Plastic? How was he going to change it? How would he make any money from it?

And just where in hell is Joey anyway?

To try and answer these questions, I attempted to set up an interview with Carl. Carl felt that none of this was really news, but eventually consented to an interview as long as most of it was conducted on Plastic. He agreed to go over a couple of other issues (notably his plans to make money) privately. It was, he said, an exercise in determining who owned the news, as well as 'a good object-lesson in journalism? for Plastic's users, all reporters and commentators in-the-making.'

And that interview, and subsequent conversations, reveal that Carl's plans, initially at least, seem to be focused on overhauling the existing site, particularly in terms of the technical issues, before launching any dramatic new ventures.

'Plastic was previously hosted across three servers;' writes Steadman, 'in early December I re-launched with one, the next evening increasing that to two. I haven't yet seen the need for a third. So obviously what gains we've seen in terms of speed and stability come largely from improvements to Plastic's software, and there's yet more to achieve on that front. I still think the site's too slow; it's just no longer an embarrassment. Otherwise I've tried to limit my changes to fixing what's already there.'

Carl also notes that he's working hard to personalize Plastic. Forgotten password e-mails now come with cute messages ('If you didn't request that your password be sent, no worries. It's only you that's receiving this message. As special as you are.') from Carl himself. Other idiosyncrasies abound.

Plastic is, in a very real sense, turning into The Carl Show. Or at least, The Plastic Show, With Your Host Carl Steadman. And Carl sees all this as the fulfillment of Plastic's original promise. Something he felt the old site never lived up to. So with that, he's adding all sorts of new functions to Plastic, such as Plastic Pals and IRC chat.

And fulfilling Plastic's original promise is precisely why he bought the site before it had the chance to wither and die. 'Once relegated to the dustbin of history, Plastic becomes that much more difficult to begin again, in any incarnation,' says Steadman. 'It's difficult to rid such things of the stench of failure. So it's time that Plastic made good on its promises. That's what I'm here to do.'

'But wait,' you're thinking. 'That's all well and good, but I want to know where Joey is.'

The answer? Joey is at VH-1, where he is a senior development producer. Carl and Joey have had a falling out over Plastic. Over what? Over different editorial viewpoints, essentially. Suffice to say that the salad days of Joey and Carl collaborating are over. For now at least, Carl has chosen to go it alone.

'In the near term,' says Anuff, 'I don't think that there is anything for me to do on the Web. And I don't have the luxury of working for free.' But if Joey is bitter, that doesn't stop him from hyping his old partner, and his old baby.

'I think the site is in totally good hands,' says Anuff, 'and I don't think anyone should not use Plastic. Ultimately the one thing [Carl and I] have in common is a love for the Web. Both Carl and Joey absolutely have high hopes for Plastic, no matter what.'

So do I.

Carl met me for lunch at Crossroad's Caf? in San Francisco's South Park on Plastic's first anniversary. The choice of meeting places was somewhat arbitrary, but it did feel significant. Just last year, when Plastic launched, it was hard to find a seat here in the heart of Dot-Com country. But today, the Caf? was quiet, and we were able to choose from several available tables. And here, at a restaurant that also serves as a rehabilitation facility -- a halfway house for ex-cons -- Carl told me more about what he had in store for Plastic.

As to exactly where the money to keep Plastic alive will come from, that's something Carl doesn't want to get into specifics about (other than to note that he has in the works a line of Plastic-branded Cheap Plastic Toys, which will sell in lots of 26). He seemed more concerned with establishing Plastic's value to its users first and everyone else later. Although his plans for doing so remain nebulous, at least they're consistent. Throughout the several weeks we talked, Carl came back to the importance of hard work, understanding what it is that's valuable about Plastic, and building on that. And rightly or not, I went from jaded skeptic -- veteran of two dot-collapses and general industry doomsayer -- to believer in the garden of a second chance Caf?.

'Part of my job,' Carl wrote in the last e-mail he sent me the day after we met, 'I think, is to make Plasticians more aware of their collective worth, and how an ad hoc organization can lead to the empowerment of the individual, Star Trek: The Next Generation's propagandic portrayal of The Borg aside. It also shows the basic misunderstanding of Plastic by those who launched it: Plastic is described at the time as 'somewhere between anarchy and hierarchy' while in fact it's not between, since Plastic ultimately moves beyond the either/or. Rather, it's both. This isn't a matter of rhetoric; our ability to determine our destiny, rather than be determined by it, depends upon our ability to develop new tools with which to influence the course of events. It's not as far-fetched as it sounds: Locke, Rousseau, and others did no less by engendering new concepts of the self and society through a radicalization of existing categories of thought, the invention of new forms and discursive practices, and the radical theorization and adoption of emergent technologies. ...They published books.

Or, you know, I think too much. But I would yet argue that a key component of survival in these end-times is nothing more or less than this: Espousing a clear sense of mission and purpose. (I'd recommend choosing something other than 'creating value for shareholders,' but that really isn't such a bad place to start...) Du kannst, denn du sollst!

So we're done now, right? Right. Back to it.

Your pal,

Carl'