In the last part I described the humble beginnings of this still outrageously humble blog, and also that I began it with the less-than-noble intention of making a buck or two. Nevertheless the thing got done and survived long enough to see the year 2011... an exciting new time filled with possibility! Maybe I would get a mention on Twitter, or a shout out from a 'legit' and 'credible' internet personality/publication. Maybe I would be approached by CBS to make a really bad sitcom about my blog. I was dreaming big in those days, I tell you.
Mostly I was anxious and uncertain as to what would drive views. I would write something rather well paced and exciting (to me) with a great joke or two or a great sentence, and it would get 9 hits, and something I thought was much less qualitudinal would get 50+ hits and the next day I would go back to 4 hits and wonder what the hell I was doing. I figured it had a bit to do with maybe: 1) Self awareness issues on my part driving away traffic; 2) search term business beyond my simple pre-SEO understanding; 3) Life in the Content Farm; or 4) hits from automated crawlers or unlucky internet nomads Googling for information or high-power, hi-concept content. An alternative I still consider possible to this day is that I am simply incapable of getting any kind of reading on my audience, despite Google's pretty in-depth statistical records, and therefore cannot curate the content I write at all, since I am simply unsure about who reads Publicato and why.
I also took a very weak shot at embroiling this website in the twittersphere via a twitter throwaway account but I found it hard to tweet (of course now I've got some amazingly funny joke tweets, a basic understanding of twitter etiquette, and follow a number of pretty cool/inspirational/funny accounts) anything worthwhile and the plan #floundered like only the inspired failures of a lazy idiot can. Needless to say I remained firmly a sloppy blogger, and the slovenly appearance of my blog ("Templates, really? Fuck you Anonynimous Bosch...") kept me in the dark lands of the struggling writer trying out an anonymous blog – because blogging is a big joke, for morons who like words, that no respectable writer would do for any other reason than self promotion.
I watched a hell of a lot of TV in that time, it appears. I would be ashamed of the Survivor posts or even the attempts at getting more Conan buzz or maybe even a Conan mention (or a writing job in the show's fabled 'shoddy joke storage and hack room') if they weren't for the most part written well. In 2011 I wrote some of my favorite works, in retrospect, because I had a loose and easy style, was less afraid of swearing, and did some amazing pieces some of which will be included in the Best Of list nearer the end of the year. In a way, all this navel gazing is my gift to you, the reader. Maybe you missed my golden age (statistically probable)... now you can't.
Shit, I know most readers won't believe me. "Publicato never had a golden age," they'll say. I don't quite know about that... as a pessimist I would agree, but as the person who toiled on this site (okay, slacked around without often delivering fine work) I would disagree. It is true that the blog as a cultural medium is dead (Google it), and almost nobody reads this one, and if anything I should be ashamed (anonymity working as intended in this case), but I will continue doing something, anything, to prove I exist if only to myself at this point. Good moments used to happen all the time. Coming up are some of the greats, because I realize that a telling of the site's history is really not something anyone is interested in. 2011 was a quiet year, 2012 was as well, but heated up. 2013 is when I 'blew up' and the blog got about 80% of its total views (see paragraph 2 of this post to see how I feel about that). Right after I had burned out... here are some highlights from before that time, in roughly chronological order, linked via hypertext quotes:
"an otherwise great man who no doubt impersonates beggars in his spare time to help afford his suit habit"
"confrontation is the Achilles' heel of the misanthrope"
"Then again, what business do I have trying to equate reality with TV?"
"Today's "best years" are the teenage years, which makes sense, because when I was a teenager I had two shows convincing me that the best years were in later life"
"I must be doing something right, because I am not an internet millionaire by my blogging"
"the slightly toxic, slightly oily, slightly radioactive water of Canadian politics"
"a diseased time when I cared a little too much about what I listened to, and felt sharply any criticism of my musical taste"
"anything worse than using bandwidth to watch someone's clumsy hands fiddle with packaging for ten minutes while breathlessly talking about the gloss of the cardboard?"
"ideas are parasites"
"Viruses will outlive us all."
"maybe I'm a tin-eared bastard with a dumb, sloppy blog" 1*
"You'd have to be insane to look to the 80's and enjoy anything about the aesthetic"
"Then there are unpublished writers" 2*
That right there is a pretty much the definitive list of interesting and/or popular posts on Publicato from the years 2010 and 2011. Some of those quotes were chosen out of laziness, most of them seem completely audacious, but they represent my idea of the finest work of that time. Some of those articles are written in a jokey or derivative style which I have largely stopped doing, but they are all fantastique, man. There's also a Reviewing Fog article in which an online commentator just pwns the shit out of me but you have to search for something that good. As a sloppy blogger I reserve the right to let someone else do the work sometimes.
1* and 2* denote extreme quality and immense fondness on my part. Those are not links you want to miss if you have ever enjoyed reading this blog or if you are new to it and wonder why I keep on despite so obviously being a tremendous burned-out idiot. If any above links don't convince you, keep reading the blog in hopes I do post something good, or search this blog's history yourself. Note also: I would vouch for any of the above links as writing samples for not-too-serious interested parties. Well, that carries me all the way to 2012, and later I will finish this article series by summarizing 2012/2013 in a few snappy and very poignant sentences.
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