
               *** SWAPPING IN THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE! ***

By Zerox/Gods
[l

[1 Punisher/Gods^Nah[0   asked  for over one and a half year ago if I could write
an  article about the past swapping for his coming mag called [1 Cocktail.[0   As
that  mag  never saw the light of day, I've decided to change the article a
bit and write about the swapping of the past, present and future.

Swapping has not changed that much during the last 5-10 years, but I'll try
to write something about the difference.

In  the  past  all decent swappers had a po box for instance.  Not only the
ones that dealt with illegal activities as spreading games or cracking them
had po boxes, but also the ordinary swappers.  Sometimes you never knew the
real name of the person you wrote with, but only the handle and which group
he was a member of.  Anyway, the last 7-8 years it has become [1 more and more
rare to have a po box.[0 

Even  though there were lots of mags and packs to spread the adverts in the
past,  the  swapper usually had to pay for his advertisements.  Normally it
was just a disk or two, but some mags also asked for money.

Naturally  there  were  a  lot more swappers in the past, infact there were
lots  more  swappers  than  there  are sceners left today.  It was far from
unusual to have more than 50 active and fast swapper contacts.

To  have  many  contacts  and  fast swapping was very expensive.  Therefore
quite  many  swappers  began either to fake the stamps or low pay for their
sendings.   10  years  ago  [1 the  faking more or less stopped in the western
scene as so many people got caught for faking.[0 

I  would also say that it was quite unusual to write letters saved on disks
in  the past.  The normal thing to do from the beginning of the scene until
around 10 years ago, was of course to write paperletters.

The  letters of the past were very small also.  This was not only caused by
the  fact  it  takes  longer time to prepare paperletters, but also because
most  swappers  had  so  many  contacts and letters to write every week.  A
normal  letter  could  only  be  like this" Thanx for stuff.  It was great.
This  time  I'm  sending  you...  it's very hot.  Please spread.  C U L8er.
Signed xxx ".

The  swapper  was  usually  the  person in the group that was in touch with
other  sceners  and  groups  around.  The coders, graphicians and musicians
were  usually  more  isolated,  but sometimes they were in touch with a few
others as well.  Therefore the swapper was quite important in the past.  He
represented  his  group,  and  naturally  made his group known by spreading
their  productions.  He also got productions from other groups, so that the
groups  that didn't visit parties, knew what was going on, saw the standard
of the other groups etc.  I guss the modem didn't arrive before 1990 or so,
and  there weren't that many boards in 1990.  However, that exploded around
1992 I guess.

When looking at the swapping scene of today, it's extremely small.  I'm not
sure  about  it,  but  perhaps  there  are 20 people that could somewhat be
conidered  as  swappers?   There  are  at  least  not  many more than that,
probably  less.   When checking out the EuroChart 46 and the list of the so
called best swappers, I would dare to say only around 5 of these people are
actually  swapping nowadays.  To be a swapper you actually have to send out
some  letters.   [2 It's  not  good  enough that you sent out two letters last
year.[0 

Therefore  people  have  written  that the swapping scene has been dead for
years  now.   They  claim  that  internet destroyed the swapping.  And yes,
there is much truth in this.  Because the internet is so easy to access, it
takes  about  no  time to find what you're looking for, the productions are
available  fast  after  they've  been  released,  and it's a very cheap way
compared  to  swapping.   The  need  for  swappers  and swapping in general
disappeared.

Well,  I'll  tell  you  that there's a future for swapping.  But you should
more  or  less  forget  about  the  old forms of swapping, unless you still
believe  in  friendship  and nice letter exchanges.  If you're more or less
only  in  for  it because of the wares, then forget about the disks and the
past swapping.  The future is [1 obviously exchange of CDs.[0   With just sending
one  CD,  it's  possible to send around [2 800mb[0  of productions for a very low
cost.   Apart from the fact that it's very cheap getting stuff this way (at
least if you only possess an ISDN or analog phoneline), it also saves you a
lot  of  time.   Just  think how much time you would spend gaining 800mb of
scene related stuff.

If  you still believe in the power of swapping, and want to continue a fine
teadition, then this new way of swapping could be something for you.

Yes, swapping is [1 still alive in 2003!!![0 

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