Kudzu, WA - (March 31) - In the wake of last weeks, by now, long since forgotten mass suicide in Rancho Sante Fe, California, millions of new internet suicide cults have sprung up literally over-night -- each attempting to out-do the others in intensity of vision and extremity of action, each attempting to push the envelopes of things like mortality, the galaxy, and sexuality.

"Popular websites have seen over 60% of their regular traffic disappear," said Rebecca Kramer, a Hotwired magazine staffer who specializes in the disappearance of web traffic. "Apparently, people are fleeing in droves in order to better spend their online time organizing or joining some of the over 250,000 new internet suicide cults."

"Now that I'm setting up my own internet suicide cult," said an ex-wanker, who, for reasons we couldn't comprehend, chose to remain anonymous, "I don't have time to waste gawking at creepy kiddie porn bimbos on the Playboy, Hustler, or MSNBC sites, anymore."

The following partial list of new internet suicide cults was compiled and commented by a beta version of the new Walter Cronkbot, intelligent research agent software, using various internet (cough) search engines, and the online Internet Death and Suicide Cult Network Information Center Registry Service (InterNIC):

World Internet Polo Suicide Cult -- Because of the close association between the Rancho Sante Fe-39 and the San Diego Polo club (polo being the leading industry of Rancho Sante Fe, with breast implant application form fill-out services, a close second), polo aficionados all over the world have been suddenly drawn together via the usenet group alt.polo.suicide, where they are currently busy putting the finishing touches on the rules for the new sport of Suicide Polo, which is played in such a way that, no matter what the score, at the end of every match, everybody's dead. Including the fans.

Suicide Second-Graders -- Thanks to the President's proposal to put an internet connection in every classroom, it's now possible for schoolchildren all over the country to be online together, at the same time, allowing cults like this one to coalesce around one slightly charismatic kid. Add a little peer pressure, and you've got a whole connected generation of suicidal seven year-olds, capable of acting in unison, at a moment's notice. Like, maybe the next time their charismatic leader's havin' a 7-year-old bad hair day.

Cult Authority Suicide Cult -- Having embarrassed the fuck out of themselves on TV for 3 days straight, it's no surprise that all those "experts" and "authorities" on cults would literally race to set up their own websites, where they could immediately make arrangements to mass suicide the fuck outta here, as fast as humanly possible.

Personals and Online Marriage Suicide Cult -- Those married couples who'd met each other either online, or through personals ads like: "AT&T user, seeks same," have come together and pretty much universally decided what a big fucking mistake it's been and how they really just did it, in the first place, to get on CNN, and now, rather than disgrace themselves and reveal the utter stupidity of their decision making process, they might just as well commit suicide together and forget the whole thing.

Wired's Millennial Mind Melt Suicide Cult -- People who talk in Wired-style titles rather than human language, people whose speech is filled with phrases like Synaptic Shuffleboard, Limbic Luge, and Testicular Tennis, have formed a 24-hour sort of convenience store cult, where they simply sit around and try to out-clever each other and themselves to death, around the clock. And if that doesn't work -- like when the Phenobarbital doesn't fully do the job and you have to use a plastic bag -- then they just fucking out-communitarian, out-rad-cyber-libertarian, out-anti-authoritarian, out-anti-disestablishmentarian or out whatfuckingevertarian, each other to death, instead.

Hail Mary Blue Oyster Cult -- This group is made up of mostly has-been professional jocks who were into REO Speedwagon and Blue Oyster Cult, and would now like nothing better than to down a couplea dozen Bloody Marys and toss a couplea dozen Hail Marys -- using their own beat-to-shit earthly containers, instead of footballs.

According to the AC Nielsen Company, the world's leading authority at turning utter fucking bullshit into utterly bogus-yet-definitive numbers, "...over 97% of the 47 million people currently on the internet, have enrolled in some sort of internet mass suicide cult in the past few days."

Internet analysts fear, if this is true, it will negatively impact the total dollar value of online transactions for many years to come, which will, in turn, negatively impact the rate at which content providers will be able to provide end users with all the neat new cool exciting content they so desperately seek -- in lieu of answers to fundamental questions, and models of possible behavioral response to fundamental stupidities.