Day 11

Today I read a review of a book by one of the guys who started that whole "spontaneous gathering" movement--you know, where a message goes out on the Internet to gather on the corner of Hull and Clayton streets with kazoos at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 15, and a thousand people show up. Okay, so I'm thinking I probably need to read this book. It's about how trends occur in viral culture, or really an analysis of how that affects our overall culture (it's called And Then There's This and is by B. Wasik). You see, if I sent out an e-mail telling folks to gather at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 15, the only person that would show up would likely be me. Maybe I'd get one other person to show if I were lucky. That's it. And we probably would look at each other askance, kazoos hidden, wondering, Is that guy here for the kazoo thing? And it's like this Friendster thing. No one seems to want to follow the trend. No one is coming back. Or maybe I'm wrong. I did get one message last night, one friend returned a Friendster message. Incredible.

This means that today's totals now look like this: thirteen Friendster friends written, two replies; eight acquaintances written or added as friends, one reply; five invitations extended, no replies; eleven strangers written, no replies. Note that the invitation extended was to someone on MySpace who e-mailed me there. Will he take me up on the offer to be one of the cool kids? Doubt it. He sent me something from the high school newspaper I'd written. How embarrassing. I'm guessing my reaction to this blog may be the same two decades from now. Is someone going to archive this and force me to read it again?