August 26, 2009

"The up side of blogging: you can be reasonably confident people aren’t reading you on the john."

A seriously deluded comment on a post about the difference between what bloggers know about their readers' habits and what magazine writers know.

The post, by Matthew Ygesias, is mainly about how bloggers know they've got to write short items. Ironically, the post is way too long.

25 comments:

rhhardin said...

There's a Dell mini-9 where the magazine rack used to be in my house.

Tibore said...

He presumes too much. I, too, have a laptop, and I... er... uhhh...


... I plead the fifth (*embarrased grin*)

TJ said...

Michael?

Michael Haz said...

iPhone. It's the new bathroom magazine.

TJ said...

Also, it's pretty clear that the commenter doesn't have a mobile with Web access. My biggest fear these days is that I'm going to drop my phone in the john.

Joseph said...

its Matthew Yglesias.

I'm Full of Soup said...

"his many years in the business"- how old is Ygelsias?

KnoxScott said...

Oddly enough, I read this on my iPod Touch while I was in...

traditionalguy said...

A good point that the hits on a blog are readers while the subscribers to a magazine may or may not be reading it.There, I said that quicker than he did.

TWM said...

Not having internet access on my cell-phone I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure that up-side isn't really there.

Anonymous said...

I once read that it's medically unwise to read while on the donicker. It leads people to spend more time there, which in turn contributes to the development of hemmorhoids.

Peter

Ann Althouse said...

Sorry about the Michael for Matthew mixup.

And I've done 2 Bloggingheadses with the guy!

I'm Full of Soup said...

In your labels, did you mistakenly place be a comma between excrement and Yglesias?

Wince said...

The up side of blogging: you can be reasonably confident people aren’t reading you on the john.

Obviously not a comment by Titus.

H_Dwight_Beers said...

Of course, people with sexy neighbors and powerful telescopes housed in their bathrooms could also easily stumble onto such neighbors reading someone's blog.
But then, such people would probably not spend the time to read them.:-)

Simon Kenton said...

From the post: "This reminds me that something I’ve come to understand in my years in the business is that probably the greatest privilege that writers for traditional magazines have is that nobody has any idea who’s reading them."

Talk about flab-prose. "Writers for traditional magazines have no idea who's reading them." Still horseshit, but taut horseshit.

Bissage said...

Perhaps our hostess will take some comfort in knowing that I, for one, have never visited her salon while grunting out a great big steaming-hot muscle-poo.

The water closet at the House of Bissage is strictly for single-panel cartoon anthologies and the A.M. Leo landscaping supply catalog.

Oh, and sometimes a Glamour Magazine, when we are not Master of Our Domain.

Ralph L said...

Many of us can scroll and type with one hand, too.

contributes to the development of hemmorhoids
that's from straining too much. Sitting is sitting.

AlphaLiberal said...

Actually, "blogging" and "excrement" accurately sum up the experience of reading Althouse today.

Pretty crappy and full of shit.

But when you die, Ann, I will bite my tongue.

Michael Haz said...

@AlphaLiberal - Why do you even show up? If our hostess and most of the commenters don't suit your view, then trouble yourself not with our presence.

AlphaLiberal said...

Mr Hasenstab, I like to see what the current state of right wing lunacy is and what talking points they're regurgitating that they were recently fed.

Ralph L said...

Then you're at the wrong blog. Our wing nuts are mostly center-right, depending on where you're standing.

Synova said...

See now... this is significant. If AL thinks that Althouse blog is occupied by right wing lunacy it says something about what AL thinks is normal conservatism or "center-right". And Althouse isn't really even center right... never has been. But anyone who isn't completely at home at, oh, HuffPo, is portrayed as some sort of crazy person, or if they simply didn't buy into the rabid Bush hatred when all of this was in genesis, they got tossed to the curb by "liberals" and then castigated for the crime of neo-conservatism. And you simply can't blame someone for hanging around with icky conservatives when she's been shunned for having a different point of view on one narrow issue.

AllenS said...

I use an electric razor when I shave. When I shave, I sit on the toilet. I call it multi-tasking. The ability to do two, three tasks at one time.

WV: marpric

That never happens.

Adjoran said...

excrement, Yglesias

Why the separate label categories?