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June 28, 2004
IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL
It's funny how small the world is - especially here in the Blogosphere. I wrote last night about how much I really enjoyed seeing Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men in DC... then today, it turns out that Pemagnet knows one of the band members and let him know about my review. Pemagnet's a new friend, someone I only "know" through this site, and only recently. What are the odds that I'd just happen to pop into a club and see a band I didn't know before but really enjoyed... and then someone who just started coming to this site just happened to be friends with someone in that band?
Another - perhaps more amusing - example of the small world phenomenon happened to the Doc and I today. At work, some colleagues of mine received an invitation to a trade show in our business... a trade show that the Doc has been to more than once and particularly enjoys. He even has blogged about it. As my colleagues and I looked through the invitation, we saw that one of the enticements the organizers were using was to list all the media coverage of last year's show. They must have just done a Google search for any mention of their show - because there it was in the invite, right between CNNfn and the Boston Globe: the Doc's site -- and complete with a link to his site!
At first, this was really, really cool (if undeserved, since Doc barely ever writes more than three lines before lazily linking to someone else's site or some other article). The Doc, listed as a real, live media source, just like the big kids at CNN and the Washington Post... being clicked to by reporters and our professional colleagues looking for actual insight or information. Trying to think of what I'd say in the IM I was about to send, I clicked onto the link to Doc's site.
It took me about 10 seconds to go from being amused to being horrified. It took me about that long to realize that a) the Doc has his real name on his site and is easily recognizable, as would be any of his friends or colleagues who've posted on it; b) the link wasn't to the archived post on the trade show, but to the front page; and c) Doc's front page featured his post from two weeks ago on the strange terms of endearment at the University of Colorado... and both his and my smart-ass and very off-color comments on other potential terms of endearment and the conversations that might ensue.
I am not sure I've ever typed faster than in the instant message window to Doc that said, "DUDE, THE LINK IS TO OUR TERMS OF ENDEARMENT CONVERSATION - GET IT THE #!@$ OFF THE SITE!" After a few minutes of emergency editing, we were able to share a really good belly laugh over the close call. But it wasn't funny while that conversation was up.
Now, what lessons did we learn from all of this? Maybe we should choose the subjects of our posts a little more carefully? Or maybe we should at least be a little more well-behaved in our comments?
Naaaaaaah. We just decided that the Doc has to change the name of his site a little.
