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doocing the blog

March 13, 2006

so, i'm here at halcyon, watching a truth i have long realized in the virtual world play itself out in the physical world.

for the last hour, there's been a long receiving line reaching out the door, of people waiting to meet heather armstrong. she's a cultural phenomenon born on the internet, a cyberspace hero to who knows how many people.

she was a web designer out in L.A. a few years ago, who also maintained her own blog, dooce.com. she would write about her life, which, of course, naturally included her job and the people in it. not surprisingly, it wasn't all positive, and not surprisingly, she got fired. this gave rise to the term "dooced," as in, "Doug said some ill shit about his supervisor on his blog, and they dooced his ass."

dooce.com is the phenomenon i had hoped whowantspudding would be. and heather armstrong is the mass-exposed author that i had hoped i would become through this site. she's got a book deal. right now, she's taking pictures with someone's baby, like she's a young, attractive, female pope. which is something i think the catholic church should strongly consider.

she announced a week ago that because there were a lot of people who wouldn't be able to get into her SXSW appearance, that she and her husband were going to be hanging out at a little coffeeshop called Halcyon around noon, if anyone wanted to come by.

Halcyon is, of course, the place where i've been secondarily employed for almost a year now. it's right across the street from the "other job." and of course, a few weeks ago, my boss read about my intent to resign from my job as part of quitting the law altogether, and he accepted that resignation via email the next day. sort of convenient, really.

so her appearance here seemed pretty exciting and serendipidous at first. now, it seems sort of like the web gods are rubbing my nose in it.

the complete failure of my megalomaniacal scheme is pretty obvious if you visit her site. first of all, it's visually appealing and professional-looking. changing from my blog software's default grey and powder-blue scheme to more ridiculous colors was a major technological victory for me.

she's more consistent about posting new entries. and most importantly, her content is better. more interesting, because it's entertaining, and whether it's funny or personal, people can relate to it. she's also really a better writer, so there's that, even though i think my writing is good enough if all the other factors were correctly in place.

the line is finally thinning out. i'd like to meet her, but i'm not sure what i'd say. clearly, saying what i've said here would be kind of pointless. she would really have nothing to say that would help, because she doesn't know me or my writing. on the other hand, she knows her own writing, is aware of her own phenomenon-ness, and would really have to agree with my assessment of our relative places on the success/failure scale.

"yeah, i've got a blog with kind of weird orange colors and about 40-50 readers. yours is professionaly produced. you got what, thousands of readers? let's talk."

it's like someone who makes home movies of his dog dancing in circles wanting to talk to martin scorcese, thinking they have something in common.

so, anyway, there's nothing really to do at this point other than either drop this thing completely, or revamp it completely. learn how to do fancy-assed web design (or trick someone into doing it for me for free), change the way i write, write more frequently, and try to market the thing more. decisions will be made soon.

i also think "whowantspudding" is just not working. time for rebranding. ideas?

Posted by Rob at March 13, 2006 01:02 PM

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Posted by: Gabriel at March 15, 2006 02:20 PM

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