In March, I went to a gathering of people who read Eschaton, a blog by “Atrios”. This guy Atrios has a pithy blogging style that I like a lot. Basically he puts out short observations about this and that (or thus and such)–much as my late dog Rosa used to just bark at random times. People then leave hundreds of comments on Eschaton in response to the Atrios dog-barks.
Among other things, Atrios likes to bark at his readers. From time to time he barks at readers who want him to give them or their blogs publicity. He barks that it is not his job to give people publicity. When he blogs on this topic he gets riled up like a proper chihuahua.
One time Atrios put up on his blog a photo taken inside his apartment. I saw on his bookshelf books by Douglas Hofstadter. So I sent him a note asking if he would like a copy of my Hofstadterian book, “Cheap Complex Devices”. Atrios did not write back.
At Eschacon, I spoke with him for a little bit. He was drinking red wine & think he was a little tipsy. I gave him a copy of my book, which he graciously accepted, and I saw him carrying it around hours later, so I know that, at the least, he did not immediately throw it in the garbage.
However, he still has not replied to my email or given me free publicity on his blog. Also, hardly anybody ever leaves comments here on Wetmachine. Finally, although Doug Hofstadter and I are now friends, he had not read my homage a Hofstadter yet either. And none of you people leave comments!
Also, this entry is much too long for an Atrios-style blog entry. Maybe that’s why I’m a minor blogger and he’s a superstar. It’s harder than it looks.
http://www.youtube.com/watc…
Cheer up, things could be worse, you could be like NTodd and not even HAVE a blog.
BTW, your books are in the que. I’ll get to them soon.
LLAP,
Spocko
1watt:
Woof! Woof!
Spocko:
Ntodd has a blog of sorts. But in any event, he gets lots of publicity from Atrios, who just ignores my existence! Boo-hoo! Wah! Wah! Sob!
I think the problem is that you can only get away with dog-bark-style blogging (nice description!) once you already have a zillion readers. Of course, atrios’s job is not to give publicity to his readers, it’s to give publicity to his advertisers.
So there, anyway, I left a comment.
Steven,
I greatly enjoy your blog(s), so I’m honored that you’ve left a comment. It is perhaps unseemly of me to go begging for them, but on the other hand, if it works, as Kermit the Frog used to say, “what the hey.”
You are of course correct that the Atrios blogging style and his hundreds of thousands of readers kind of go hand in hand. I was just being silly about his not pimping my book or blog– or even responding to my email, for that matter. He’s a busy guy with better things to do than responding to fan mail from flounders, or promoting every damn pet project of all his readers.
Still, it amuses me to tweak his nose a little bit here in my blog, even though I have no illusions that he will ever know, or care, that I’ve done so.
I do read his blog all the time & consider myself part of the Eschaton community.
But I don’t have him on my blogroll. I’ll reconsider that policy if he ever deigns to acknowledge my lowly existence. Not likely, I know. But stranger things have happened. In any event, this entry has served its purpose, which was to amuse me and perhaps a few others.
I know the feeling of wanting comments: sometimes I make a post and it’s just tumbleweed, even though I know 500 people are reading the feed. Only around a dozen of those comment regularly. Mind you, there are some very high-profile bloggers who don’t even allow comments. To which I say pshaw: if it ain’t got comments, it ain’t a blog.
Does anyone really read the whole of those 300+-comment threads on atrios?
Anyway, your post also reminded me to put you on my blogroll(s). 😉