I couldn’t resist

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Interview With an Actual Blogger

There’s frequently a long delay between posts on this blog. This is because I like to take the time to get things right. I bet you didn’t know that I’d been working on that last Kit Kat review for nineteen months; it started life as a 505-page epic crime thriller , but after an extensive editorial review process the board ultimately decided that its current format and length would be most appropriate. Frequently I’ll spent up to a month in a sensory deprivation tank, ruminating painstakingly on the topic of my missive to you, my single reader (thanks!)

I had been working under the assumption that such a level of care would guarantee me a place in internet lore — if not now, then at least posthumously. In 2079, when our children’s children are kitesurfing the 7-dimensional neural holoweb, they’ll say: “Remember that guy in the naughts? I think he wrote a few blog posts or something.” Or maybe not. As it turns out, my obscurity may be a ticket to nothing more than obscurity. I came upon this realization through a recent meeting with Hans Aardensen, blogger extraordinaire and inventor of the up-and-coming outernet. Hans reminded me that most famous writers are famous for actually writing, and I reminded him that he was a poopyhead. He challenged me to write a blog post right at that moment, which is actually what I’m doing now. Yes, this is all happening exactly at the same time you’re reading it. Or, wait — maybe not, sometimes time confuses me.

DF: So, Hans, is this basically the idea?

HA: Yes, pretty much. The trick is to not think too much. Thinking is for lazy-goers and nowhere-getters. Scientists have recently shown that the “best before” date for a thought is inversely proportional to the number of thoughts that you’ve already had in your life. So if you’ve been having a lot of thoughts and writing them down pretty quickly, then you’re not going quick enough! If you go by the optimal thought-to-output ratio, then ideally you should be finished writing slightly before the thought first occurs to you.

DF: Something like this?

HA: Not good enough! Faster! Better!

DF: Canteloupe!

HA: That’s more like it.

DF: Maybe you could tell us a little about your own history of blogging and your path to success?

HA: Well, I blog about a number of things, and that’s always been the case. My first blog was actually on a geocities page back in 1996. So as far as I can tell I actually invented the blog. I started it because I was engaged in this war with a local restauranteur who had violated local waste disposal bylaws. It was then that I realized what an amazing tool a blog can be for influencing the thoughts of “normal” people — you know, the kind of people who experience deadlock in the cereal aisle. It doesn’t matter, they’ll all the same. Scientists have recently shown that Cocoa Puffs are the exact same cereal as all commercial brands of premixed muesli.

DF: But these days you’re more of a social web commentator, right?

HA: Amongst other things. I also dabble a bunch of in general technology, and a little in politics. Occasionally all three overlap, like when Rush Limbaugh’s cameraphone misfired and uploaded a picture of his swollen penis to Facebook. The “social web” is a very broad topic, however. I’m interested in things like privacy, communication, collaboration, and also, you know, porn.

DF: What’s the connection between porn and the social web?

HA: See, this is really interesting. You know how physicists are constantly discovering all sorts of things about the universe that defy conventional human understanding? It’s like that famous light hole experiment. If you cut two holes in a wall, and shine light through them and measure each photon, they appear on the other side as photons. But if you don’t measure them, they appear as waves. Similarly, if you post a Twitter update to an account with no followers, it will turn into a link to fox/velociraptor fetish porn. We believe that somewhere at a quantum level, all social media is directly connected to furrydom in a way we can’t quite grasp with our primitive brains.

DF: What blogs do you like to read?

HA: I don’t read any blogs. As someone who blogs quite extensively I know better than that. However I do comment on them.

DF: How do you manage that?

HA: Well, summarize a hypothetical blog post for me, and I’ll show you.

DF: Um, okay. Media companies have largely missed the boat when it comes to the web… they still think of it as a broadcast medium, whereas many-to-many communication is actually a game-changer.

HA: Great post, Jim. Not sure about the boat, but the broadcast is definitely a good way to examine the situation. Of course, now Twitter is changing everything! Check out my own post on the topic. Link to unrelated post.

DF: Second Life failed to fully capitalize on the hype it received because the common user is fundamentally uninterested in engaging with a complex virtual world.

HA: Interesting post, Sally. In my experience the common user enjoys quite a bit of hype, even though virtual worlds are increasingly uninteresting. Of course, now Twitter is changing everything! Check out my own post on the topic. Link to unrelated post.

DF: People still think about privacy in terms of protection from Big Brother or Little Sister, but with things like Facebook it seems that the issue is protecting yourself from intrusions not by institutions, but by other users.

HA: Okay, that sounded like a coherent thought. We talked about this. Faster! Better!

DF: Friendfeed is the new Myspace!

HA: Anne, I think you raise an excellent point. Given the recession and the increase in hungry friends, Friendfeed is bound to increase in popularity. Check out my own post on the topic.

DF: Doesn’t the emphasis on currency and rapidity indicate a scarcity of truth, though? I mean, if you write as fast as you think, isn’t that going to mean a lot of opinions that are poorly thought through, and just plain wrong?

HA: Look, truth is as overrated as it is meaningless. I mean, we’ve been living in postmodernity for what, 200 years now? I think Andy Warhol ended the debate when he did that painting about the pipe. Any opinion you can possibly have will be the truth for somebody, somewhere. I can write a post arguing that the moon is a collective hallucination, and I’ll get at least 5 commentors agreeing with me. Besides, do you want to be remembered for being right, or being popular? The correct answer is popular, because if you’re not popular, noone is going to remember you enough to remember that you’re right. So, in effect, truth is self-defeating. If truth were an animal, it would be one of those lizards that died out in the cretaceous because its razor sharp tail had a habit of accidentally slitting its throat.

DF: What if you’re not good at that style of writing, though?

HA: McDonald’s is always hiring.

DF: Well, thanks for your time, Hans. This has been really helpful. You’ve given me a lot to think about.

HA: My pleasure. Just don’t think too hard.

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