- Yes, I do know that the post uses a metareferential method first used (so far as I know) in a piece by David Moser from Whole Earth Review in 1990. I read it when the issue came out, enjoyed the piece very much, and had it in mind when I wrote the post.
- Yes, I do know that I did not originate the idea of a metareferential blog post, and I have in fact seen what is likely the best if not first example of the trope, a brilliantly minimalist 2006 post by Jim Henley.
- No, the point of the post was not merely to repeat the metareferential blogpost trope. The intent was to comment on the deadening sameness of much online discussion of political topics. This was prompted by seeing the same old [FOO]-FAIL dynamic develop after a contentious panel at a blogging convention, but I could have written it after the livejournal race and SF blogging blowout, any number of feminism-gender- race-otherprivilege discussions, or discussions of operating systems. The metareferential trope, while quite played out, seemed to me to be a fun way to do this.
- Yes, I do think I’m funny. Someone has to.
Chris, why do you blog?
P.S. I think you are very funny!
Because it beats working!
I thought it was hysterical! I was going to comment, but when I came back to it a short while later and refreshed the page, it had already been Farked and I didn’t feel clever enough to keep up.
(Oh: Yes, it struck me as prescient and applicable given my expanding disrepute with and anger from the birding community. I’ll admit it applies, something perhaps I should have realized ahead of time, but I’ll also admit I didn’t take it personally lest I let go of something I’m passionate about. Still, it was something I needed—so thank you both for the uproarious laughter and the serious introspection.)
(Thanks, Monique. And welcome.)
New to your blog today and absolutely adore it, thank you for the smiles :)
Hey, you forgot to mention bicycle advocacy! (And what the hell is fark? Am I totally clueless for not knowing?)
OK - I’m pissed off because that post eliminates the need of 90% of the blogs currently in existence. (the other 10% are personal preening and were irrelevant before this).
Whats the point of just doing it all over when you have done it better for everyone?
Thanks, I found this hilarious, sad but hilarious.
I thought it was hysterical and showed off your writing skill, if not a tragic familiarity with the typical self-aggrandizing blog. I read it again today and it’s just as funny the second time…and just as true. I’m not familiar with David Moser’s take on writing and thank you for posting the link. That’s pretty darn good and I think you were original enough not to be copying, but considered to be working on a theme, so to speak. Keep ‘em coming.
Thank you, frankdawg and JaneGael! glad to have you around.
And welcome, Donna. Didn’t mean to ignore you up there.
Well, hopefully some of them will read some of the more substantive and beautiful stuff, too. (Not that it was a bad post, it was fun, but sheesh.)
Back in 2001, alt.callahans had what was termed “The Existential Flame War”, which went some 1000+ posts before dieing a well-deserved death. If you have news access, it’s well worth the look-in.
Fun!
Just wanted to say Forget the narks, I thought the original post was excellent. The comment-types i wanted to add had already been done by the time I saw the post; they just made it better.
I’m not going to bookmark you :) but I will put you in feed reader !!
Thank you, Martin!
It’s just too deliriously delicious; thanks 1,000,001 for making it all possible. It takes me back a little further than Moser to my first reading of “Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas Hofstadter and its mind-opening/closing/reopening treatments of all kinds of paradox and recursion, and esp. his examples of self-referential sentences, which still knock me out when I re-read them today (... and you can’t re-read just one). But you’ve not only moved the fun out of the solitary mind and into what today passes for the agora, used the occasion to make a snappy social critique—a nice piece of work right there—you also craftily provoked all that brilliant playing-along. Bravo!
“..the deadening sameness of much online discussion…”
I’m still a newborn to the blogosphere, but even within my limited experience I’ve already chewed off my own leg a few times because of this. And what makes the pain all the more throbbing is that even in awareness or exposure, people seem more content only to participate rather than go to any next step.
I went through the comments and did try to ‘come up with something new, beyond, etc’, but it ended up just reconfirming the satire. There must be some theory out there about how all writing can be simmered down to, “Please just look at me!”
Maybe it’s a necessary thing, and repetition is necessary to get further. If we are all having the same conversations but getting nowhere closer to a better world community, then once in a while someone needs to stand up and say, “Wait, look at what we’re doing for a moment!”
Like Jex said, people do want to play along. We gotta keep playin’ along if we’re gonna get anywhere…
Guess this is an attempt at an explanatory compliment. To sum it up better, I’m with ya.
David Moser’s story can be found in Hofstader’s Metamagical Themas, a collection of essays based on his column in Scientific American. Hofstader used Moser’s story to conclude his January 1982 column “Self Referential Sentences: A Follow-up”.