Peakers

Peakers (www.peakers.net) was a famous Sydney based rave, dance music and drug discussion website that ran from 1998 - 2003. Initially started by a group of friends who were all ravers, Peakers was an online guestbook where ravers could talk to each other midweek and post encounters of their weekends. An upgrade to an internet forum board in early 1999 saw the website rapidly evolve into one of Australia's most popular websites, breaking into the top 20 Australian websites in November 1999, at number 16, with over 1.1 million hits per month. [ [http://www.hitwise.com.au/datacenter/rankings.php Hitwise Australia - Top 20 Websites - January, 2008 ] ]

Discussion

The forum consisted of several discussion points such as general chat, music discussion, upcoming rave parties, vinyl discussion, MP3 sharing and many more. However, the most used (and most controversial) sub-forum of the website was the drug discussion; in particular "pill" (ecstasy) reports. Users would review the pills they'd taken on the weekend, describe the general effects, outline whether they were good or bad (in their own opinion) and state whether they'd recommend them to other users. With the massive popularity of this sub-forum a secondary discussion was born for other illicit substances such as acid (LSD), ketamine, magic mushrooms, methamphetamine and so forth. The open discussion of illicit substance use, combined with the massive popularity of the website, prompted the CIA to publish a warning about peakers.net (along with several other websites), urging parents to ensure their children use did not use the website and recommending that all web-filters block the website.

Web Crash

In the first months of 2000, and at the peak of its popularity, Peakers.net was suddenly taken offline. Its serving (host) company, based in the United States, was broken into and the actual server on which peakers.net was hosted was stolen, along with many others. Unfortunately, the owners and the developers of peakers had no recent backup, and with the only older backup kept discovered to be corrupted, the original Peakers website was gone forever. Thus, should Peakers ever be re-started, the entire membership base, post count, history and every other aspect of the original site would be gone. At this time, the owners of the website were approaching the end of their "raving" days, and there was much discussion whether to even bring peakers back or let it die. The website remained down for many months, when in September 2000 it was finally re-launched amidst much excitement in the online raving community. However, divisions in the friendships of the founders of peakers, the general non-interest in raves anymore from the original posters and the mass migration of peakers users to other websites while peakers was down meant that it never even came close to reaching its original heights. The member base never took off again, and Peakers carried on more as an "old skool" discussion board where friends from the original Peakers era posted, but with minimal drug discussion and only some discussion about upcoming rave events.

The End

In 2003, with many of the "original" Peakers crew so far removed from raves for some years (with many having traveled overseas) and the general poor usage of the website, the owners decided that maintaining Peakers was too expensive. It was offered for free to anyone that wanted it, and though there was some interest no one ever completed the transaction and in March 2003 peakers.net went down, never to return again. The domain name has since been purchased by another company, and the page now hosts a search engine suggesting speaker/audio/music websites (obviously due to peakers being one letter short of the word speakers).

Legacy

Peakers was groundbreaking in many ways, laying the groundwork which many other websites have followed - presumably after noting the success that peakers had in its brief peak. Firstly, it was the first major Australian rave/dance music forum board, and its massive member base and post count at its peak proved to many that there was a serious market to be captured. Secondly, Peakers was the first Australian (and possibly global) forum board with a dedicated sub-forum to seriously advocate the discussion of drug usage and the experiences users had, adopting the "say know" rather than "say no" ethos. This paved the way for websites like [http://www.pillreports.com/ www.pillreports.com] and [http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/home.php www.bluelight.ru] to begin, (and is where many of the peakers users emigrated to after the crash). It is also worth noting that drug discussion in a similar format still exists on these websites, as was begun on Peakers in January 1999. Finally, Peakers was the first Sydney website to stream live DJ performances. DJ Daniel Midian performed a three hour set in June 1999, which was streamed live to Peakers allowing all users on the website to listen. This set was recorded and played back several times, and in the following months several other performers submitted their mixes to Peakers to stream to their community too.

References