I'm not a blogger. I'm a writer. If it weren't for blog technology, I'd be using notebooks. In fact, I don't know what I'll do with all my notebooks. Probably pay somebody to scan them into PDF. Kinkos does it for 6.25 setup fee and 25 cents a page. Until then, I'm going to do one more link to Mark Cuban, because every once in a while I sink to the level he's talking about. If I didn't I'd be a hermit. Writers write to be read, after all.
Once every week, somebody writes me and says something nice. Sometimes they do it in the blog. Sometimes they send a private email. Every time I get the email, I try to be gracious and clever at the same time. I don't know if it works, most of the time the notes are just one-offs. But they also always remind me of the old adage we learned in parochial school. If you can help just one person...
What I do here at Cobb is open my head like a visible V8 and engage sometimes socratically, sometimes expositorily with ideas. I think my thinking helps other people think, and I am satisfied to do just that. Since I get the nice letters I know I'm doing my job, which pays me approximately zero.
I have refused advertising at Cobb, and by all rights had I not, I'd be something of a larger figure at Pajamas Media. About once a month, however, one of the kind editors there points to something interesting I've written about here, so I don't really feel left out. I must confess that the choice to refuse ads was largely an ego thing, I don't like being able to control exactly how my blog looks and I really couldn't abide the idea of a large and stupid looking ad on my site. However since I am taking my props one at a time and nobody is saying how the world is deprived of my genius because I'm not popular enough, I feel OK with that twitchy sensation I get every once in a while when I feel like Oliver Willis is too popular.
I don't want Cobb to be an echo chamber - a blog just talking about other blogs, but I'm certainly confident that it won't be because I always have some curiosity that perhaps only I care to write about. So I'm original and way far down the blogospheric dragon's long tail, despite the fact that I am quite capable of breathing fire.
Something is itching me in that I think I may have lost my sense of humor over the past few months. Nor have I indulged in much creative writing. So you may expect a bit more of that not the least because I find that the serious people have not done what I consider to be the serious thing and I've rather lost patience with upbeat politics. So I'll indulge in a little hack and smash as well as some of the biting satire of my old cartooning days.
So Cuban, this one's for your arse. It just so happens that everybody is not trying to be a rock star and commercialize their crawl up the long tail. Perhaps you and 50 Cent can get over in a cloud of 'Admit One' that you sell by the thousands, but there are still people who write poetry. When I'm ready to make money it won't be from a blog.
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