breaking the seal

Why bother?

Blogging’s dead, isn’t it?  Calcanis quit, hating the haters.  Arrington was pushed out by unreasonable expectations and expectoration.  The 250 have moved on to Twitter, where they are all already plotting to move off to the next big thing that you don’t know about.

So there’s no glory to gain here.  In fact, for me there’s only downside to exposure.  I’ve got a prominent role at a company that’s still climbing out of its hype cycle.  I’ll have to avoid some of the topics that I’m most familiar with, since I’m not going to say too much about my work.  And it’s not like I have a whole lot of interesting hobbies to fill the gap, notwithstanding a minor OCD compulsion to pick sentences out of The Great Gatsby.  This is just asking for ridicule.  So again:  Why bother?

The best answer I can give has to do with how I used to pick bars in New York.  This was more than a decade ago, but it’s probably still the same today:  When a hot new nightspot opens up in NYC, you can’t get in.  They put up the velvet ropes, celebs on the A-list get ushered past the line, the bouncers don’t let anyone in, so everyone else can only read the gossip rags about just how cool the place is.

But in less than a year or so, the hot new place isn’t so new or so hot anymore.  The A-list has moved on to the next place.  Now you can get in, but you probably don’t want to.  The place is stuffed with bridge-and-tunnel dorks, assorted Eurotrash, and other doofi who are overjoyed to stand where their favorite star stood just months ago, thrilled to wait in line to fight the crowd to catch the bartender to overpay for watery drinks.

Ah but then, but then . . . in another year or so, the doofi have moved on.  And the place has some good bones:  the owners invested some coin in this place, and it shows.  Good location, swank interior, broad top-shelf selection, attractive service.  They’ve fired the bouncers, mothballed the velvet ropes, and lowered their prices.  The status-seekers and tourists wouldn’t be caught dead in this place.  The locals are starting to check the place out, some are becoming regulars, and they’re a friendly, interesting group.  Now it’s a good time to go.

And that’s how I think of blogging now.  Well past its coolest days, but man it’s easy to get to, everything’s clean and works well, and you sure can’t complain about the price.