Thursday, October 23, 2003

Second Self, Updated

Rooraaah Mew Crumbs, whose legal name change from Andrew Paul Johnson was the subject of a rant I created in response to an article in a body modification magazine someone posted on fark, linked to my rant, and, because all his friends wanted to see the cool article I wrote which mentions him, my new hit counter became swamped with references from his blog (in fact, my own site actually crashed for a short time due to the overwhelming number of hits).

The plethora of hits from his blog prompted me to check it out. Not only did I find a very cool copy of his actual legal namechange form there, and a commendation for Matt's comments on my original rant (which, if you remember, was a comment on an article I found via a comment about it on fark), I also seem to have triggered something on Mr. Crumb's hitcounter, or perhaps the delay was just coincidental; either way, this is how Mr. Crumbs ended up sending me a pretty nifty email thanking me for mentioning him and for entertaining his friends, which prompted a thanks from me to him in return for being subject and for the hits, which just generally turned into an all around thanksfest after a while.

I know that's all pretty confusing, but there isn't really a better way to explain how I and Mr. Crumbs, once a subject of my cyberrant, actually "met," albeit virtually. But I can report that he's pretty cool.

One of, oh, about four hundred thousand things about the Brave New (Digital) World that I find fascinating is the way in which, to be crude about it, publishing and interpersonal connectivity seem to be growing towards each other. Time collapses in on itself -- a series of events and exchanges, information-and-dissemination, that might have taken months before, if indeed it happened at all, cascades in a matter of hours. In this case, I think the nuts and bolts, as well as the possibilities inherent in the phenomenon, pretty much speak for themselves.

Moral: If you blog it, they will come.

posted by boyhowdy | 9:50 AM |

---

Comments:
Post a Comment