Post #249

I'm so bored with posting that I can't even make it to 250 posts before I declare my boredom. And I'm too bored to even name this post. Well, maybe it's not boredom so much as having the illness of temperamental writers, an artistic malaise. I'd like to think of myself as a writer first and a librarian second (ok, I plead guilty, lover second and librarian third; you know me too well). I think it was brought on by watching Withnail and I. I never thought I would reach a point where I'd tire of my own company.

And I think I'm becoming an Internet atheist. I don't believe in the Internet any more. It is an unappreciative god to whom I've prayed without recognition or gratitude. So I'll stop believing until the Internet listens and answers my prayers.

But I guess there's another way to look at it:
I love lamp. For some reason, some people have decided to make this quote from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy into some cult handshake. But what I do know about this is, if you spot a trend, you'd better exploit it quickly. There have been several stories about how a small percentage of Internet users/posters produce over half of the links and comments on the Web. Here's one. Now, I don't know if the I love lamp trend is hot or cold, but I know it has a tee-shirt so that's enough to convince me that it's worth mentioning, repeatedly, so that anyone who is searching for the I love lamp phenomenon will stumble across my page and give me a visit stat. You'd be surprised to see how many hits this page gets from "superbad song played on the bus" and "skinny ties."

So my first lesson for the new year is to steal as much traffic from other's labors as possible. If 200 people are creating fifty per cent of the trendy Web, then learn what's hot and post something about it. Who cares what it is. One way to do this is to learn which bookmark and social networking sites are popular which you can find here. I'm gonna join all the sites with the highest inbound links and find ways to get my posts cross-linked. I'll do anything. I'm not talking about doing sex stuff, at least not at first. But if there's a possibility of my page getting ranked in the top 1,000 on Technorati, well some nerds are gonna get lucky (whether they want it or not - you hear that, big boy?).

If we've learned anything about the Internet, it's that all content is good. The Internet doesn't want only good content or innovative ideas. The Internet needs to grow, otherwise sites like Google, Facebook, or Digg can't grow; so we need to feed it. All data are food. Or prayers. But thinking of the Internet as a god only disappoints, but thinking of it as a large omnivorous MNMNPTH is funny enough to make me smile (a little). Cheers.