A common complaint I run into in our little bubble of the tech blogosphere is that the most widely known bloggers are ego-driven, and will pull any shenanigan to keep themselves on top. Sometimes, they are accused of making themselves part of the story, if not the story itself, eschewing traditional journalism rules that separate the subject from its author.While I have personal high expectations, I hope not to convey the same type of "it's about me" nonsense people have seen elsewhere. That's been helped of late by some very silly peers who took the time to mock my seeming omnipresence online with a pair of interesting endeavors - first, a parody site, and second, a room on FriendFeed that parallels the Internet meme of "Chuck Norris Facts".
Unlike other recent skirmishes online that have taken place around parody and satire, these haven't sprung up with ill intent, and I don't have any plans to stop either one, although I think it's best if I leave them be without being all that involved. After all, it's much more fun to watch the nonsense from the sidelines.
LoisGray.com: A Blog for Late Adopters
The satire site, started on Thursday, is called www.loisgray.com, featuring my inverse logo, and billing itself as a "Tennessee Valley Blog for late adopters, technophobes, RSS oblivious, and apple growers. (May also occasionally contain some TV, news, recipes, and politics...)"
Early posts on loisgray.com (which were quite funny) explained the difficult issues of getting online without AOL and using Google to search the Web. But as the article warns, "never click on the 'I'm Feeling Lucky' button because that takes you to the internet porn that you hear so much about." Good advice.
Louis Gray Facts (A FriendFeed Room)
Developed out of a silly conversation with Charlie Anzman of SEO and Tech Daily, some enterprising FriendFeeders made a room dedicated to what they called "Real, true, verifiable facts about Louis Gray", promising the ability to surpass the commonplace.
Some of my favorites from "Louis Gray Facts"
- "Louis Gray doesn't have a Backspace button on his keyboard. It's humanly impossible for him to make a typo."
- “There's a reason Louis Gray isn't on TechMeme more often: it very rarely meets Louis Gray's strict standards.”
- “Louis Gray only uses Excel for the pretty charts, Louis Gray crunches all the stats in his head.”