Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Slumming
















Most people I know are loath to admit they have read the da Vinci Code. If they do crack, it is usually prefaced with a complicated explanation as to why. The dog ate the Milton, I found it in the park under a pile of leaves, I was building a perpetual motion machine in my garage and thought it might help...
But they do crack, eventually, if only to explain why it was such a horribly written book. Has anyone out there read only the first half? The first ten pages?

What happens when you are reading a blog which you know to be beneath you, but you can't help but be inspired by a particularly ridiculous statement, experiencing that thrill when sincerity, arrogance and stupidity collide in a perfect storm?
How do you justify your presence?
Michael Kinsey did, in an editorial, with an offhand, "While I was bored and reading random blogs..."* before going on to comment on the blog's inanity.
He can get away with slumming, because he is Michael Kinsey, and otherwise a busy man. If he was caught snooping around a Britney Spears fanblog, he could very smoothly spin it into punditry.
With that in mind, there are a few convenient options when commenting on a blog. Anonymous is useful to some, for a variety of reasons. You might be posting something insulting, or alternately, you cannot refrain from posting a comment wonderfully erudite, but you would be mortified if anyone knew you had been there.

"I did not have sex with that woman." Poor Bill, slumming. He should have posted anonymously.

*No, I do not have the link. Ich bin ein Luddite.

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