The Pestiside Instant Interview: József Sasvári, Blog Pioneer

For many around the world, 2005 will be remembered as the year of the blog, the form of online "personal publishing" that now lets anyone with a computer and a modem become a one-person media operation. But for József Sasvári, 2005 happened sometime in 2001, when the rudiments of his popular Hungarian-language website, plastik.hu, began gelling into what is generally considered to be Hungary's first proper blog. (And always among its best: this summer, it won second place among the "personal blogs" in the prestigious "Golden Blog" awards.) A tall, sinewy 28-year-old, Sasvári personifies the modern Hungarian super-geek, right down to the Super Mario wristband, and the miss-hit-miss-miss record with women. To find out what makes a guy like this tick, we sent another guy sort of like him to find out: Peter Orosz, the author/publisher of the English-language site Kzamm Demolition Network. Orosz quizzed Sasvári about blogging, hacking, girls, butt hair, fruit juice and why he will never be a corporate drone, as the two drove around Budapest in a late-model Ford with tinted gangster windows and a fluffy little kockásfülű nyúl, Hungary's answer to Hello Kitty, hanging off the dashboard.

Have you always been a nerd?
They called me "computer" in high school. I was an outcast: I had an IBM PC instead of the Amiga all the cool kids used. My life was about being stuck on an inferior platform. Then I started programming and nagged strangers on the phone to teach me tricks. Once I said to a guy that instead of going to the bar, I'll stay at home and write a scroll routine. Then I stayed at home and wrote the scroll routine. If I had a blog back then, I would've blogged it.

You could call that a watershed moment.
Right. Until sixth grade or so, my development followed a normal path, then I felt the need to have a girlfriend which required participation in various social activities. But instead I stayed at home and hacked away at my computer and I drifted into my nerdy world.

What influenced your very public switch to the Mac this year?
Apart from a return to the Amiga platform's holistic approach to software, hardware and the user interface, it was really about scoring with chicks. But then a guy I know explained: "Young friend, you're walking down the wrong path. You passed the last exit to women a long time ago. If you believe in reincarnation, I suggest you get a new life."

How come you never studied computer science?
It's not something I was interested in on a university level. My parents suggested I study economics, prodding me with the offer of a new computer if I got accepted into the Budapest Economics University. So I began my college life, I got my first email address, then I dropped out after five semesters.

What happened?
I got tired of the environment, got tired of people whose only topic of conversation was school and career advancement and summer internships. This was also the time when I first had more or less constant internet access. I hung out all the time on IRC, then I got into Quake, then started hanging with the guys who made Internetto. I designed the Internetto site, which later became index.hu.

Did you ever feel like becoming a full-time web designer?
Designing for the web wasn't a conscious choice, it just happened. I didn't have goals, I drifted along, my parents weren't very fond of it.

How did Plastik come about?
The first incarnation of Plastik was a web design firm I did with my friend Craft. [Balázs Kovács, the art director of Carnation.] It was just a way for us to learn to develop stuff for the web. Then we lost the plastik.com domain. Later on, when it first became possible for individuals to purchase domains in Hungary, I snagged plastik.hu. Then around 2001, when I started reading stuff like kottke.org and other early blogs, I thought: why not do something similar with plastik.hu?

Was Plastik the first blog in Hungary?
As far as I know, it was. Plastik was the first site that incorporated elements of a modern blog. Around 2002, a few other blogs started appearing, then a year later, the whole scene just blew up and tons of blogs were born.

Tell me about girls.
For a long time, I couldn't talk to girls at all. I'm not sure how but I'm over that phase now, I enjoy the company of ladies. However, the girl question in a man's life is an ongoing struggle, it's never resolved. There are no rules. You can build a foundation but it's not like in a video game where once your character reaches a certain level, the problem is solved. It's never solved. You learn to avoid a few elemental mistakes but a new girl is always a whole new challenge.

How about the girls at the International Business School, which you just graduated from?
They're good-looking but they live on a completely different plane. I've realized that I need more from a girl than just good looks. It's all about personality. You can fall in love with a girl just on looks but in the long term, you can't avoid the issue of personality. I know it's a huge cliché, but huge clichés are usually true.

What's your take on shaved pubic hair?
I think that's the default these days.

There are guys who prefer natural-looking women.
Other guys. I had an interesting chat at my high school reunion with a girl who works at a beauty shop. She told me the technique of removing perianal hair.

Tell me about it.
I've always been interested in how women remove perianal hair. See, it's not like they're born without it. I have some friends who work in the porn industry and they explained that there are guys whose job is to go over every shot and Photoshop out every single hair and blemish on every single photo.

How about in movies?
Tracking software has come a long way. You can mark a blemish and have the computer track it through a take. It can be solved. Back to perianal hair: it's done with a wax strip shaped like a cone. You can also shave it off if you have a sharp blade and a good bathroom mirror.

Maybe we should give it a try.
Perhaps. My friend Alien tells the girls she works with to give it a try, see how it feels, get a shave, put on a miniskirt and take a walk.

These days, everyone wants to make money from blogging. What are your thoughts?
I don't have any big plans with my blogs. It's just a way for me to self-express. Maybe someone reads my blog and it affects his life in a positive way.

Any future plans? I hear you sell fruit juice these days.
I took a position in the FMCG sector, yes.

How did you end up there?
After I graduated from IBS, I was faced with a choice between porn and fruit juice. I chose fruit juice. After my time in fruit juice is up, I might move on to porn.

Why fruit juice? Did you get a job offer from the fruit juice industry?
You could say that. It was an opportunity I took.

Are you drawn to the fruit juice industry?
In a way. I can't picture myself doing it all my life but it's worth a try.

Would you be surprised if you still found yourself in the fruit juice industry five years from now?
Maybe. But is it any better to work at an auditing firm? Or any multinational firm? I did work for multinationals and I have no desire to do it again. It's a droid's life. People only talk about their careers and their salaries and their promotions, it's the same people I went to economics school with. The life of middle-class 30-something Hungarians is just not what I have in mind. I can't tell what the future will bring. I'm clueless, I edit my blog, I do this, do that, I'm still not doing what I should be doing.

And what's that?
I imagine that at one point you start your own company and that becomes your life. Maybe I'll use blogging when that happens. Talk to clients in a human voice, that stuff, no corporate page, no flash intro. I hate that companies cannot be honest. Don't pretend we're robots just because we work for a company.