Month / March 2007
Digg’s Pay to Play Policy
Annalee Newitz: “I can tell you exactly how a pointless blog full of poorly written, incoherent commentary made it to the front page on Digg. I paid people to do it. What’s more, my bought votes lured honest Diggers to vote for it too. All told, I wound up with a ‘popular’ story that earned 124 diggs — more than half of them unpaid. I also had 29 (unpaid) comments, 12 of which were positive.”
Jonathan Ames Alert
As regular readers know, several years ago, I made a deal with a demon at a crossroads. The demon informed me that his name was Anthony Robbins. The demon, who insisted that I call him Tony, hoped to introduce me to something called neuropsychotic programming. I informed the demon that no, I was simply looking for a good potato salad recipe, and had no desire to become a sociopathic maniac. It was the salad recipe that had inspired me to thumb my way across the country, suffering bad Denny’s meals and declining invitations to sip lemonade with white-robed men referred to as “Grand Wizards.”
The demon said, “Okay, tell you what. I’ll give you your salad recipe if you report all Jonathan Ames developments.”
“Jonathan Ames? Well, that’s easy. I like him. He’s a funny guy.”
“Do this for a year,” said the demon, “and I will give you your precious potato salad recipe.”
Well, as everyone who knows me knows, I’m a man of my word. And I would be remiss if I didn’t point you to this Jonathan Ames story in Nerve, which begins with the sentence, “She was a foreign journalist, assigned to interview me.”
Of course, I’ve been doing this for more than a year and the potato salad recipe has yet to turn up. But I’ve consulted an attorney to see if there’s an escape clause in the contract.
Let this be a lesson to all who encounter demons at crossroads.
Roundup
- Robert Birnbaum talks with Martin Amis for the fifth time. Lots of good stuff, including Amis describing how to hit the reader over the head on a character’s race.
- RIP Arthur Schlesinger, although turning Barbra Streisand on to The Economist is the least of his achievements.
- Good Man Park reports that a new issue of The Believer is out, with a Stephen Elliott essay on breaking up available online.
- Yes, screw the bloggies! Happy seven years, Quiddity!
- It’s been linked all over the place, but it’s still worth your time: ephemera from Children of Men.
- Some info on the forthcoming National album. (via LHB)
- Open Letters Monthly is now set up to review the reviewers. (via Mike Harrison)
- Michael Blowhard on the state of interviewing.
- More silly narcissism charges. I’m beginning to wonder, in light of all these allegations leveled at technology, if complaining about what others do with their lives is itself a form of narcissism. Look, someone else could be an intense Scrabble player and spend all of their spare time talking about it. But I’m not going to call them “narcissistic.” Enthusiastic, maybe. Sometimes so wrapped up in their interests that they sometimes forget to eat, sleep, or socially interact, okay. But it does not follow that these folks think about anything but their own interests. Could it be that the “Narcissism!” hues and cries are a new backlash against geeks? (via Speedy Snail)
- Good on this girl. (via Chasing Ray)
- Matthew Tiffany on What is the What: “I read a page, two maybe, at night before the words begin to dance and I drool. I haven’t been reading in traffic, or on lunch break. Then I thought that it was the subject matter; not giving me enough of an escape from the everyday. Which is absurd, because Deng in a refugee camp in Ethiopia is pretty damn far from my everyday.”
- Callie on being a writer again.
- Fuck the FBI. This is ridiculous. (via Maud)