Comments on: Going Big

By: Tasty

Tasty — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 19:18:40 +0000

Bravo! Bravo!

By: pauly

pauly — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:08:55 +0000

Dave Eggers had a smiliar rant to this here:

http://www.armchairnews.com/freelance/eggers.html

By: Rori

Rori — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 19:27:30 +0000

I am in tears. You have no idea how much I needed that today.

By: Claire

Claire — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:46:04 +0000

This reminds me of the time when a person I respect ridiculed me for admitting that I like Sheryl Crow. I felt so small. Don’t I have a right to my own taste even if it is not “hip.” I also like the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Etta James.

I say add ads if you want. I personally never even notice. I do not think you “sell out” if you start to make money. I DO think you sell out if you lose quality in order to make money. I read both you and Heather everyday. I would only stop reading if it became less interesting. So as you say about your comments, “Don’t suck.”

By: PhilipN

PhilipN — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 11:18:58 +0000

Hi Jon, it’s taken so long to login it to the Type Key thing I can barely remember what I wanted to say. I have only recently discovered yours and Heather’s blogs and through you others. So I am one of the thousand/ millions that have ’stolen’ you both from the elite group that ‘owned’ you in the past. But on the other had I have been a U2 fan since 1980 when I bought the WAR album. I now share them with millions. The first concert I saw was U2 in Dublin a couple of weeks before Live Aid which is often seen as their arrival on the world stage.
Yes it can be difficult to get tickets and yes there may be days I will find it hard to get on your site, but that’s life. Big is sometimes good.
I am not sure how to define my relationship to the bloggers I read, I am not sure if it is a relationship. I don’t comment on every posting, but I am disappointed if there is not a new post since my last visit which in your’s and Heather’s case is daily (sorry for the high expection level). But then I understand that bloggers are human and whatever their reasons for writing I have only one reason to visit and that is to read and most times enjoy.
When others grow ‘Big’ and I continue to enjoy their output then I will not desert them because they are now ‘mainstream’ I just have to content myself that there are more people on this small planet that have similar likes to me. The more of us that recognise what we have in common the greater chance we have of spreading that opinion and maybe then we can all concentrate on the similarities and stop fighting over the differences. (Sorry for the preaching but I was on a roll and couldn’t stop.)

Glad you enjoyed Amsterdam.

By: kat@ohmtastic

kat@ohmtastic — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 10:23:39 +0000

If you haven’t seen the Shirky article on the power law distribution and blogging, check it out:

http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

The #1 blog gets something like twice the attention of the #2 blog, and 100 times the attention of the #10 blog. Is #1 100 times better than #10? Probably not. But it gets an inordinate amount of attention for being at the top.

It’s not to say that the top blogs, or Coldplay, or Starbucks aren’t amazing at what they do - but at some their popularity balloons out of proportion with reality. How else is Colin Farrell making $20 million a picture?

By: Christy

Christy — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:56:05 +0000

I think I used to be that way too. I didn’t realize how elitest and snobby I was actually. I used to cherish my privacy and not want to share anything about my personal life. Imagine how well that went over with small town midwestern coworkers. I’ve found now that if you share a little bit of yourself, unasked, people feel closer to you. It also makes me feel like we are all connected in some way.

By: robert

robert — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 21:00:39 +0000

“All that is real…melts into air”: that is the paradox posed by the substitution of commercial exchange for other social forms, isn’t it? And with the rise of commercial/industrial culture has come a loss of heterogenaity in human affairs. We are now witnessing the passing of thousands of languages, as well as the knowledge of local environments, resources, and strategies for survival that they held. Homogenaity has advantages; true, delivering as it does efficient distribution of food (albeit at the expense of a large quantity of energy and other resources), and freeing people, in its way, for non-farm work. A therapeutic ethos helps to ease the transition to an anonymous and impersonal bureaucratc industrial social system, with its attendant culture of consumption.

By: raff

raff — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 20:09:49 +0000

My husband and I were talking about U2 this weekend and I think his insight might be valuable for thinking about the larger picture that jon raised as well. He was saying U2’s first big effort to write a huge rock song was “pride” on the unforgettable fire album. which, when you listen to the album, clearly doesn’t fit in that sonic landscape, and it did bring them their first taste of commercial success - it was a precursor for joshua tree no doubt. some, especially in ireland, thought pride was a sellout. but pride was a song about MLK and bono clearly felt passionately about issues of social justice at the time. so was he going big - Yes. but was his mind open to thinking big and using the exposure for the good - yes. now, fast forward to the present and are U2 still doing the same? thinking Big because they are absolutely Huge? I don’t know. is “vertigo” a big thinking song? it doesn’t seem so to me. my point here i guess is that by going big, like u2 did with pride - can have wonderful results. the challenge will always be to not let being big alter the quality of the work itself. i think u2 has lost something with this last album musically. as a band, and as humanitarians (which they have always always been) being big just keeps making them better and more effective.

By: peafly

peafly — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 15:52:33 +0000

Go Big or Go Home.
A tatoo artist friend of mine had this framed in his studio, but it works for lots of things!