blogstroking
Been checking the blogs of a bouncer, a lawyer and a stripper and they’re starting to sound like a finger down my throat. Gag.
I’ve read the Bouncer for about half a year now, and found the others through links along the way. They started out fresh and sharp, they told epic tales for my free-time perusal at school, a little vicarious living when forcing high schoolers to play English games seems less than adventurous.
Anyway, the three of them and several others have two things in common, they are talented storytellers and they live in New York City. They have also taken to talking up each other’s blogs incestuously, and apparently hanging out together in person to gather more material for cross-referencing flattery, ad nauseum. It’s getting really old.
In particular, the “i’m just a big dumb guy from Queens” Bouncer and “overeducated waif stripper” Mimi trigger a massive eye roll, they are like Issue Boy and Issue Girl petting and drooling in blogpost duet. Guardedly complimentary posts, spiked with an occasional aside* to the rest of us; What you lookin’ at! Fuck you world! My life still sucks and you’d better not think I’m losing my edge!! (Please help turn my blog into profit for me?)
Ah, well, I say it fondly. I wish them all the best, though I wonder if it could possibly work. Gossip runs wild, a dividing line forms between blogger royalty (book deal) and blogger peasantry (no book deal), with a hungry blogger bourgeois in the middle (parasitic commenters, want book deal). Jealous courtiers (will perform favors for book deal) pander to the Gawker-recognized nobility, traded linkage abounds. The blog-o-sphere is the new litererary salon, don’t you know?
*Here’s an aside. Ambient staffroom noises. A young part time teacher in a suit following a senior staff member around, listening to some explanation. His contribution to the conversation; “Ah! hai. Ah! hai. Ah! hai. Ah! hai. Ah! hai. Ah! hai. Ah! hai…”
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The bouncer just messaged me this link. Thanks for our 2am literature! (I had to use first person plural after that post about us!)
That is so true.
I guess it just goes to show that even when life is only in text and short posts - societial habits still find a way to thrive.
Completely and totally true. Especially Miss “Help Me I’m Unable to Get Out of Stripping, Even After They Fire Me!”
While i am not going to defend them i am going to point out that people tend to make friends with people from their industry. When i bounced i knew more strippers and escorts than anything else. bartenders and cocktails came in a close second. that would explain the connection… the lawyer though…
other than that i concur
Completely with you in the vomitorium! (Until I’m finished with my current in-house corporate project) I can’t look away from the horror show! I would just include the self-righteous waiter.
I see the best minds of my generation consumed by madness, selfish, shallow, floundering…
Dude, you are *so* right; how dare these people make friends with each other!
Indignant of London W12.
I just perused your webpage.
Is your pissy attitude because no one has ever read your blog before? You should be grateful to the waiter, the bouncer and the stripper. This is probably the most traffic you blog has ever seen.
So, wait… anybody cares why? I agree with you somewhat. Some of the Bouncer’s posts are a little hard to follow, and not quite as good as some of his better, older posts. But the fact is that people like the Bouncer, the Waiter, Jason Mulgrew, et al, are giving blogging a good name… it’s becoming not so much the den of angsty emo teenagers posting pictures of their slashed wrists as it is a place to find some pretty decent social commentary. Isn’t that what blogging is supposed to be about?
This, of course, means that your blogosphere commentary is just as entitled to be around as the Waiter’s ruminatings on homeless people… and more power to you. Personal attacks seem a little childish though.
Em…I like the aformentioned lawyer, bouncer and stripper blogs. Glance a bit to your left, the three blogs I mentioned are listed on my blogroll as good reading.
Hey notnamed, did you see the Waiter’s most recent post where he called a steak dish the entree God would order? If you think decent social commentary includes offending the approximately 1 billion people who practice the world’s oldest organized religion (Hinduism) by calling cooked Mad/Sacred Cow God’s dish, I suggest you consider raising your standards! It’s not the fact that those whiny dopes are friends that sickens me. It makes sense that they have found each other! What disturbs me is that people might think these messes are representative of GenX & Y New Yorkers, and that just isn’t so. Intellectually they’re alright, but emotionally they are to me of a lower common denominator than average. That’s probably because the shinning beacons of intellect that I am fortunate enough to call friends are out there expressing themselves via art and music. Not re-hashing their neuroses on the Internet!