One of the neat byproducts of this site’s minimalist layout is that it feeds very well into the processing mechanism Google, Yahoo and the like use to determine What This Site Is Really All About (and I’d be curious to know how they dare answer such a thing), which in turn allows me to see the what and how of other people arriving here. Most are fairly obvious – people looking for Andrew Reilly in Chicago, for example – but when excerpts of stories posted here purport to be what the masses want, I often wonder how that leaves the reader.
Did you come here looking for Archer Avenue? Info on Englewood circa 1963? Vanessa Carlton? Who knows, maybe you did.
But what cracks me up is that, whether or not anything put up here is what people want, so long as I say it is, it becomes what people want. Why? Because there is no way to prove otherwise.
Does that make sense? Probably not. But perhaps that is as fine a point as one can hope to pin on it because on the internet, I – and you, and you too – are only what people say we are. Nothing more, nothing less.
Or something like that.
— —
Meanwhile, the CTA moves bravely into late-1990s New York City, Slayer concerts refuse to die, Erin McKeown and HORSE the Band both rock just fine and, if my ideas are as correct as I think they are, look for me in the tabloids alongside Mariah Carey. I heard she likes dudes who can SEO.
Thank you as always for reading,
AMR
Chicago, IL / February 20, 2010
