0 people entered my contest
'why, and how, did this happen?'
seems like an email i received this morning may contain the answer to that question
this morning 'mcgraw-hill,' the leading publisher of college textbooks, working on an anonymous tip, emailed me expressing interest in using the tao lin experimental contest case as 'the main case study/concrete example' for the sociological concepts 'the bystander effect' and 'diffusion of responsibility,' replacing the kitty genovese case, in next year's sociology 101 textbooks, to increase the relevancy of sociology, by connecting it with blogs, they said, and also to appease christian groups that complain about the violence and implied nihilism, that the murderer just wanted 'to kill a woman,' which 'the kitty genovese case' seems to promote
i'm not sure how i feel about this, seems offensive yet lucrative
should i do it, they want me to capitalize my sentences, and not use the word 'depressed'
is it 'even' true, does 'the tao lin experimental contest case' really demonstrate 'diffusion of responsibility' and 'the bystander effect,' will professors still be able to assuredly put those concepts on mid-terms, without fear of students arguing with them
does why 'a person could have paypal'd tao lin 1 cent to gain ~$250 worth of items, but didn't' correspond with why 'a person could have called the police to save 1 person's life, but didn't,' is this an analogous situation
or have i 'simply' alienated the 2500+ people that viewed the contest, a demographic that includes 'people with little interest in me that want to participate because it might help them with their own careers,' 'people who are "really bored,"' 'people who feel pressure to "support the arts,"' 'people who i've supported in the past who now feel pressure to "support me back,"' 'people who constitute "my entire 'real' fan base,"' 'people who feel lonely for 20 minutes and want to "connect, however vaguely" with anyone,' 'my friends and family (even my mother did not enter the contest, i think she 'doesn't have it'/'doesn't know what it is' re paypal)', and 'people with a "vested interest" in me, my career, literature, art, vimeo, contests, or blogs'
will nyu and columbia blogging professors in 2050 project my blog post onto a screen in front of ~200 students and talk about the concepts of 'career-ending blog post' and 'large-scale fan base alienation'
will the progenies of noam chomsky, howard zinn, and [someone else] 'riff' on my blog post, in expensive guest lectures, extrapolating various aspects of my vimeo video and prose style to foreign affairs, linguistics, and, creatively, marine biology
have i finally 'broken in' to the academic world inadvertently
have i finally blogged the blog post that 'actually' 'ends my career'
will college students be able to internalize the concepts of 'diffusion of responsibility' and 'the bystander effect' (and 'fill in' the correct bubbles on their test forms) without the memorable aspects (violence, 'stabbed to death') of 'the kitty genovese case'
have i inflicted irreparable damage to my brand/career in the past 3-6 months/years via 'too many' cash-related blog posts, interviews where i seem 'brain-damaged,' and '"unseemly" "tweets"'
worried about 'the future of sociology in this country'/'my career'
seems like an email i received this morning may contain the answer to that question
this morning 'mcgraw-hill,' the leading publisher of college textbooks, working on an anonymous tip, emailed me expressing interest in using the tao lin experimental contest case as 'the main case study/concrete example' for the sociological concepts 'the bystander effect' and 'diffusion of responsibility,' replacing the kitty genovese case, in next year's sociology 101 textbooks, to increase the relevancy of sociology, by connecting it with blogs, they said, and also to appease christian groups that complain about the violence and implied nihilism, that the murderer just wanted 'to kill a woman,' which 'the kitty genovese case' seems to promote
i'm not sure how i feel about this, seems offensive yet lucrative
should i do it, they want me to capitalize my sentences, and not use the word 'depressed'
is it 'even' true, does 'the tao lin experimental contest case' really demonstrate 'diffusion of responsibility' and 'the bystander effect,' will professors still be able to assuredly put those concepts on mid-terms, without fear of students arguing with them
does why 'a person could have paypal'd tao lin 1 cent to gain ~$250 worth of items, but didn't' correspond with why 'a person could have called the police to save 1 person's life, but didn't,' is this an analogous situation
or have i 'simply' alienated the 2500+ people that viewed the contest, a demographic that includes 'people with little interest in me that want to participate because it might help them with their own careers,' 'people who are "really bored,"' 'people who feel pressure to "support the arts,"' 'people who i've supported in the past who now feel pressure to "support me back,"' 'people who constitute "my entire 'real' fan base,"' 'people who feel lonely for 20 minutes and want to "connect, however vaguely" with anyone,' 'my friends and family (even my mother did not enter the contest, i think she 'doesn't have it'/'doesn't know what it is' re paypal)', and 'people with a "vested interest" in me, my career, literature, art, vimeo, contests, or blogs'will nyu and columbia blogging professors in 2050 project my blog post onto a screen in front of ~200 students and talk about the concepts of 'career-ending blog post' and 'large-scale fan base alienation'
will the progenies of noam chomsky, howard zinn, and [someone else] 'riff' on my blog post, in expensive guest lectures, extrapolating various aspects of my vimeo video and prose style to foreign affairs, linguistics, and, creatively, marine biology
have i finally 'broken in' to the academic world inadvertently
have i finally blogged the blog post that 'actually' 'ends my career'
will college students be able to internalize the concepts of 'diffusion of responsibility' and 'the bystander effect' (and 'fill in' the correct bubbles on their test forms) without the memorable aspects (violence, 'stabbed to death') of 'the kitty genovese case'
have i inflicted irreparable damage to my brand/career in the past 3-6 months/years via 'too many' cash-related blog posts, interviews where i seem 'brain-damaged,' and '"unseemly" "tweets"'
worried about 'the future of sociology in this country'/'my career'
68 Comments:
I think you should try it again.
People feel like they've missed a great opportunity and now they're kicking themselves for not taking advantage.
A second round will make people feel like they really have a better chance of 'winning'.
Still cant believe it.
Tao, why is 'zero' not in helvetty/arial? seems to go against your brand/identity.
I would have entered your contest, but i am broke. damn
Haw!
@graham seems too 'traumatic' to 'do it again'
@michael 'fixed it'
@axngrrl420 'damn'
'didn't get paid til thursday'
This means I won @zeroreference's contest with my final guess of '$2.75' since your total collected was '$0.00'.
Feels sweet.
If he actually paypals me the $15 i think i would use it to buy 'bed' since i dont have it and i just drank an energy drink.
Damn
Bro
Damn
sad that your contest didn't get mad hits.
sorry bro,
would have entered, but i make $8.60/hr.
the main reason I didn't enter is that I assumed so many other people would enter and bid/pay more than I could afford that I wouldn't have a chance of winning. let's rewind time! this is sad.
damn, wishing I had bid. wishing you had gotten 'mad' money. damn.
can i suggest that even though it seems too traumatic to redo, that you should try doing it as an actual "auction" - i guarantee that people will pay a lot more. you have proven that your 'donation lottery' idea isn't really working that well, and I would gladly pay $70+ for a Tao Lin t-shirt... so why not throw those babies of yours on ebay and see how much more money you can make?
can i suggest that even though it seems too traumatic to redo, that you should try doing it as an actual "auction" - i guarantee that people will pay a lot more. you have proven that your 'donation lottery' idea isn't really working that well, and I would gladly pay $70+ for a Tao Lin t-shirt... so why not throw those babies of yours on ebay and see how much more money you can make?
Should have announced something like 'Brandon Gorrell wins by using Sara Schneider's PayPal account' just for the 'shitstorm' that would ensue.
@brendan paypal me $50 and i will mail you 'the last remaining tao lin shirt [of that design' as you saw in the video
no, you can't do it again. people will surely send you money and imagine how that will make you feel.
i mean, i want to send you money right now. that is the effect this is having.
unless you're ok with that, in which case i'll paypal you some money right now.
lmk.
i do not discourage paypal'ing me money
seems sweet
or you can just buy things from here
done. best of best.
'have i finally blogged the blog post that 'actually' 'ends my career''
hahahah
u can solve both worries by going to grad school in sociology
don't think this 'embodies' the concept at all. perhaps this should lead to a new term relating 'exclusively' to self-aware people facing an anonymous gamble. the 'responsibility' part of the kitty genovese case was pretty 'evident', since it involved 'bringing some scumbag to justice', but this isn't really 'responsibility to do some socially just action' at all but an opportunity to win a contest. most people probably just thought they'd lose $5 to some 'white collar asshole who has a thousand dollars to spare'. maybe the majority of your readers are cautious/'self-aware'/skeptical in their actions. if you would've promoted this on an 'extreme sports' or 'texas hold 'em big shot' forum, maybe people from there would have been more ready to gamble at least a little something for 'an array of artsy things they wouldn't care about anyway'. this probably just says more about the personality of your 'fans' than a bunch of 'random citizens thinking someone else already called the police'. just feels silly if that e-mail is legitimate and that they are 'actually thinking' about replacing that with this. don't feel like this would go over well with the 'academic community'.
tao, if/when you decided to off yourself, i will as well.
You need to read the Wikipedia article on Kitty Genovese. Recent studies have demonstrated that the effect you are describing was highly exaggerated.
It was a story so disturbing that we all still remember it. But what if it wasn’t true?
In the paper’s morning edition for March 27, 1964, The New York Times ran one of the most indelible leads in its 155-year history. “For more than half an hour,” began a front-page article by the reporter Martin Gansberg, “thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.”
The murder was ghastly, but it wasn’t the details of Moseley’s attack that made the story so chilling. It was the response of the neighbors. According to the Times, as Ms. Genovese screamed out, “Please help me! Please help me!” lights came on in nearby apartment buildings, faces appeared in windows, a man shouted, but nothing more. “Not one person telephoned the police during the assault,” reported the Times; “one witness called after the woman was dead.” For 35 minutes 38 people simply watched—the word is right there in the lead—as Moseley slaughtered their pretty young neighbor. One witness explained himself with a phrase that became infamous: “I didn’t want to get involved.”
Almost from the start there were murmurs that the Times had exaggerated details of the case. The reporter John Melia aired some of these doubts in the New York Daily News in 1984. Joe Sexton alluded to them in a 1995 article for the Times. The most recent debunking is the work not of a journalist but of a lawyer and Kew Gardens resident named Joseph De May, Jr., whose analysis of the original Times article, posted at oldkewgardens.com, is exhaustive and eviscerating.
No one has ever questioned that a horrible murder was committed or that some Kew Gardens residents could—should—have done more to help Ms. Genovese. But that description of 38 people watching the murder for more than half an hour struck many as implausible. Indeed, as a matter of geography, it seems impossible.
Ms. Genovese was first stabbed on Austin Street. But after the initial attack, which lasted no more than a minute or two, she staggered to a narrow foyer at the back of her building, opposite Austin Street and facing only the tracks of the Long Island Railroad. It was inside this foyer that Moseley discovered her after temporarily fleeing the scene. And it was here, out of view and earshot of nearly everyone in Kew Gardens, that the greater part of the assault occurred.
The Times initially described three attacks, based on a faulty police report. In fact there were only two attacks, the one on Austin Street, the other in the foyer. The Times later noted the discrepancy, but to this day three is the number generally cited in histories, adding to the impression that scores of people had the opportunity to watch Ms. Genovese’s murder for a sustained period of time.
The true number of eyewitnesses was not 38 but 6 or 7. To be sure, far more residents heard something, but the perceptions of eyewitnesses and earwitnesses alike were mostly fleeting and inchoate. Many of the witnesses claimed that they did not grasp what was happening; they thought it was a lovers’ quarrel or an argument spilling out of the Old Bailey bar on Austin Street. The Times insinuated that such excuses were disingenuous, but all those psychology studies spawned by the case suggest otherwise. It’s generally not stone-cold indifference that prevents people from pitching in during emergencies, psychologists now agree. It’s states of mind more familiar to most of us: confusion, fear, misapprehension, uncertainty.
A. M. Rosenthal, the young newly appointed metropolitan editor at the Times in 1964 who got the tip about the 38 witnesses and went on to edit the article, stood by it to the end. “In a story that gets a lot of attention, there’s always somebody who’s saying, ‘Well, that’s not really what it’s supposed to be,’” he told this writer in a 2004 interview. Rosenthal, who went on to publish a book about the case (Thirty-eight Witnesses) and later became the Times’s executive editor (and who died last May), dismissed criticisms as quibbles. “There may have been 38, there may have been 39, but the whole picture, as I saw it, was very affecting.”
Well, yes. And no doubt that picture gave shape to the free-floating end-of-innocence anxiety many Americans already felt in those strange days of the early 1960s, just months after President Kennedy’s assassination, as social mores shifted rapidly and New York’s murder rate suddenly shot off on a three-decade upward trajectory. Real good came of the story too. The 911 emergency phone system was launched in its aftermath. The understanding of human psychology was expanded. Consciences were pricked.
As to how affecting a more tempered, more accurate account would have been, we can only wonder. Certainly the much-maligned residents of Kew Gardens, most of whom quickly moved away after the murder, would have been treated more sympathetically. The caricature of New Yorkers as callous, self-centered creatures might have been milder as the city entered its dark days of the 1970s, and perhaps, in turn, New Yorkers would have behaved less callously. One of the key insights of post-Kitty psychology is that people tend to gauge their actions, moral or otherwise, on the actions of those around them. In Good Samaritan, “prosocial” environments—New York City in its heroic mode after the September 2001 attacks, for example—people are more likely to behave altruistically. The corollary of this is that Bad Samaritan environments tend to breed Bad Samaritans.
It’s a stretch to suggest that the Times article made people Bad Samaritans. At the very least, though, it’s a good bet many Americans glanced at their neighbors more suspiciously after March 27, 1964. That bespectacled man in 6F? The petite brunette in 3A? Would he, would she, stand idly by and watch me die?
Lost in the uproar was Kitty herself. She was never the story. What mattered was not how she lived but how she died. So it comes as a surprise to learn that she was a spirited young woman, funny and warm, hardly the victim-in-waiting that gazed from photographs. Right after her murder there were hints in the press that she traveled with a “fast crowd.” In fact, at the time of her death, she was living a quiet life in a committed romance with her Kew Gardens roommate, Mary Ann Zielonko. No newspaper would have mentioned Ms. Genovese’s sexuality at the time, on the grounds that it was taboo and immaterial. But her character, her likes and loves, speak to the complexity of flesh and blood behind those who have the good or bad fortune to become symbols.
Of course, complexity is not really the province of daily journalism. Even the best of it, the sort The New York Times has produced for many decades, is provisional and imperfect. It’s the job of history to add layers and nuance. One final irony, though: None of us would still be writing, or reading, about Kitty Genovese 42 years later if the Times had gotten the story right in the first place.
Commenting on the post about how no one entered your contest IS THE REAL CONTEST.
We knew this the whole time.
The short version is:
There were only 2 attacks, not 3.
The attacks were not continuous. There was about a 10 min. interval between them when the killer moved his car to a parking place farther away.
There were not 38 eye witnesses to either of the attacks. Only 3 people are known to have seen one or the other of the stabbings.
The first attack on Austin Street - the one that awakened the witnesses - was likely over before all but a few of the witnesses got to their windows.
Probably many more than 38 were ear witnesses to Kitty's screams. However, that first attack occurred a few yards away from a bar known for its late night rowdiness.
After the first attack, Kitty left the scene under her own power without making any outcries for help.
The second attack took place in a small vestibule in the rear of a building where only one witness was in a position to see it.
Given the layout of the crime scene, it would have been impossible for anyone to have seen or heard everything.
Assuming the police were not timely called - a big assumption in my opinion - there were reasons apart from apathy why they were not
Anonymous,
That is so RIGHT ON! I moved into the Mowbray about 4 years after the killing, and lived there about 3 years. I lived next door to the super, and when we became friendly, I asked him about what happened. He was very passionate about how inaccurate the reports were, and how they were blown out of proportion. He took it personally that someone would accuse him of ignoring anyones cries for help. He prided himself on checking in on the older folks in the building if he didn't see them for awhile, and was definately a man that cared and would get involved if he knew someone needed help.
The windows of the apartment I lived in directly overlooked the bar, (I lived on the 3rd floor) so I can speak factually of what it was like at bar closing time, and what could be seen in the middle of the night. It was noisey! People laughing, yelling, arguing and being loud after an evening of drinking.
You have to realize that the people who lived in the building were sleeping at that hour of the night, with the windows closed, since it was winter. You get conditioned to the sounds and noises. Unless it's something REALLY out of the ordinary for a prolonged period of time, you sleep thru it. It's not ignoring cries for help, it's just sleeping thru the noise.
One last fact about living across the street from the bar...
During the time I lived in the Mowbray, one night there was an exceptional racket going on at bar at closing time. Enough yelling that it woke me and my roommate up, so we went to the window to see what was going on. There was a man laying on the ground yelling at the man standing over him. My roommate called the police to report it. We figured the man standing was trying to mug the man on the ground, and he was yelling for help.
We stayed by the window to see what happened. The police arrived quickly. It turned out the man on the ground was drunk and had fallen. The other man was trying to help him up, and the drunk was being abusive and yelling at him.
Lesson learned... you really can't tell what's going on from a window across the street, even with good visability. You certainly could not see a weapon or blood on the sidewalk in the middle of the night!
Thank you for the opportunity to write this... I've wanted to since the late 1960's. Kew Gardens and the people of the Mowbray got a bad rap, and I always wanted to help set the record straight! The story as reported was based on sensationalism, not fact.
the case isn't really supposed to demonstrate 'apathy' but the 'phenomenon' of 'feeling like someone else is going to take care of something important'.
even if only 3 people witnessed the entire situation, if no one called the police, it's still interesting to say that not one of the 3 called 'rescue 911' because they assumed someone else had already done so since this was something publicly observable. this isn't supposed to demonstrate that no one 'cared' but that no one felt personally responsible to 'take charge' and 'alert authorities'.
lol
damn
The murder of Kitty also led to psychological research. This psychological phenomenon became known as bystander apathy, the bystander effect or Genovese syndrome. It is basically a phenomenon where someone is less likely to intervene in an emergency situation when other people are present and able to help, than they would if they were alone.
An individual alone is more likely to intervene if someone needs help - bystander intervention. In 1968, John Darley and Bibb Latane studied the bystander effect in the laboratory. They left a participant alone in a room and told them to communicate with other participants via an intercom. He/she was actually just talking to a recording. During the study, one participant suddenly pretends to have a seizure. They found that the amount of time taken before the person seeks help varies according to how many other participants were perceived to be around. In other words, the more people we think are also witnessing an event, the slower the person will be in dealing with the situation themselves. So if you have a large group of people observing an emergency, we would expect they would be less likely to help - we expect others to do the helping!
Other examples of this bystander effect have been shown. In 1972, Wolfgang Friedmann was murdered in broad day light and bled to death. In 1995, Deletha Word died after witnesses did not stop her attacker. James Bulger was also another well-publicized case, where James was abducted in a busy shopping centre.
Why does this happen? There is another psychological idea of diffusion of responsibility, which leads to social loafing. People may assume that others in the group are better qualified to help than they are eg. A doctor, a police officer etc, so they are not needed. They may not want to "lose face" in front of others in the crowd, when a "superior" helper offers assistance instead. Another suggestion is that people look at the reactions of others in a crowd to see how they are reacting to the emergency situation. They use this to decide whether to intervene. However, if everyone else in the crowd is doing the same things - is anyone going to help?
So what do you do if you are the one being attacked? The best suggestion is to pick a specific person in the crowd and ask them to "call the police" so they know it is THEIR responsibility.
So back to Kitty. Her death led to a reform in the New York Police Department's telephone reporting system. It led to a lot of media coverage on how we respond to emergencies. It led to a lot of psychological research. Kitty's Death also led to the formation of Neighbourhood Watch Schemes. So Kitty's death did lead to some good and useful outcomes.
However, new research has suggested that Kitty's murder was not as reported. There were actual only 12 witnesses, not the reported 38. In 2007, three British Researchers have investigated this murder again. Manning, Levine and Collins have disputed this iconic event. They have found no evidence of the presence of 38 witnesses, by examining documents from the time. They have not been able to find evidence that witnesses remained inactive.
The story of Kitty Genovese has become an urban myth or modern parable, telling us about coping with emergency helping. The research of Manning, Levine and Collins will be an interested addition to all psychology students and teachers alike - new textbooks out soon no doubt!!!!!!
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so r u saying that if someone was killing tao and eveybody saw it, none of them would call the cops?
Mike,
There was no 911 in 1964. People had to look up the police precinct phone number in the phone book.
'my bad'
They had only rotary phones in 1964. If you dialed 911, nothing would happen and it would wait for the remaining digits.
the more u know =====*
I first became interested in studying sociology as an undergraduate. In a class, we read the story of Kitty Genovese, a young woman who, in 1964, was stabbed to death outside her apartment in New York City. The fact that she had been killed was, perhaps, unremarkable. But what lead to a sensationalized report in the New York Times and was the reason that I was reading about her death some twenty years later in college, was remarkable. Investigators found that no fewer than thirty eight of Kitty’s neighbors had either heard or seen the attack -- which took place over half an hour -- and yet, none acted to defend her or stop the attack, even though at one point the attacker left and Kitty tried to drag herself to safety. As a student, I was shocked by what seemed to be such cruel indifference. I wondered what happened to those people that they either cared so little or were so frightened that they could not act? I told myself I would have been different. I would have done something. Then I started thinking about all the times that I had NOT done something. Certainly, I had never witnessed such an attack as that on Kitty Genovese, but how many smaller things had I failed to stop or interrupt? Had I always objected when I heard a racist or sexist or homophobic comment or joke? Had I always stepped forward when I witnessed behavior that I considered morally reprehensible? Had I averted my eyes and walked on when approached by a beggar or homeless person?
Today, I continue to study how we behave in groups and societies. What I learn is not always comfortable, but it is fascinating and it is, I believe, our best hope for becoming a better, safer, more egalitarian world.
Tao, I hope that you will join me in my studies. Please apply to graduate school.
-Sarah R. Phillips, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
Pacific University Oregon
In 1964, 911- would not have either been an area code or a local phone number. All area codes began with either 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and ended with one of those numbers; the only middle numbers in an area code were 0 and 1.
That is why 0 and 1 were never used in the seven-digit phone number as the second numeral. You could have numbers beginning 92-, 93-, 94, etc. but not 91- or 90-.
Also, there were two-alphabet letter and one numeral prefixes.
9 would have been part of an exchange like WHitestone 7 or YOnkers 4.
I don't say Tao's a great man. He never made a lot of money even though his name was on Google quite a bit. But look, he's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person. You people call him crazy... no, a lot of people think he's lost his... balance. But you don't have to be very smart to know what his trouble is.
can i buy a copy of the short story
i have paypal now
some comments on the previous post made me nervous about entering
i feel great that i got the t-shirt, but kind of bad that maybe i'm profiting off the furthering depression of Tao Lin
feel like i can see you packaging it, saying 'fucking fanstastic' while focusing really hard on the picture of your own face.
fuck this shit
Dear Tao Lin,
You are intelligent. You are not a good social critic, and your poetry is middling. Please apply your talent to one of the following fields:
1) Health Promotions
2) Engineering
3) Medicine
4) Policy
Failure to do so will result in the immediate removal of all "history-shaping" privileges claimed-- or implied to have been claimed-- at any time.
Yours, Truly,
The White Hat
I haven't read his books, but I don't get the sense that Tao is depressed.
there do seem to be a lot of cash related posts...but maybe that's because those are the only posts i really look at.
Maybe it was just a 'bad idea'.
I did it.
4 reasons nobody entered ur contest:
1 - recession, ppl are out of work, no 1 has $
2 - google 'tao lin' & 'contest' togther, u get Tao Lin Wins His Own Contest and Refuses to Refund the Entry Fee Money to the Other Contestants
& u sd no $ wd be returned
3 - google 'tao lin' & 'scam artist'
4 - u have rep as liar & keep feeding it, like mcgrawhill didnt call b4 contest ended, besides they wdnt have to pay u $ to put u in textbooks, its free
bonus reason 5 - yr stuff looks like crap ud just thro out
You asked the questions, here are a few answers.
Your hipster aura was tarnished recently with a couple of "meh" reviews in icons of hip journals/papers; some of it admitedly "old style" hipster, but still, you know hipsters. The first wiff of #hipsterfail and they'll leave you like so much roadkill back at mile 9.
Your ironic/smartass stance is fine for your fanbase from a distance, but they don't want to get involved with you one-on-one because they're afraid you'll somehow make them look foolish.
Here's a longshot, but it might have something to do with it: Too much commerce, not enough art. It seems like everytime we (your fanbase) turns around you are selling something. There is already that weird thing going on (thanks to the Internet and writers having to promote themselves by "relating" to their fans) of a sort of reverse stalkerism. It would be kind of like in the old days if you bought a Richard Brautigan or Ken Kesey book and they personally followed you home and kept asking you how you were liking it. You might think: "Dude, I bought the book, not you. Back off." (This might also have something to do with a bit of overexposure for you, though how to make that point is a bridge too far for me at the moment.)
And finally, be careful...Comic genius (alleged) Andy Kaufman once ran a contest/took a poll to see if the viewers of Saturday Night Live thought he should do more shows or never come back. I guess enough people thought he was irritating enough that the majority voted that he should never come back. And he didn't. In my opinion you are not annoying like Kaufman, but that's just me -- I don't have my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, so maybe the Kaufman example can be useful, if not instructive for you.
Another thing -- the age bracket you are aiming to sell books to? Fickle. Think of the life span of the careers of most rock stars. If I might leave you with one thought it's: Don't try to be a rock star of lit. Wait, on second thought; what the hell, go ahead. It might be interesting.
I think most people didn't care, and as such it is not like the Kitty case. Some thought they'd never win and didn't bother, and some live far away and dont want to pay postage.
Stunts like this wont always work out, who cares?
Keep writing please.
James (UK)
damn, bro, hope things work out and you don't die
i feel you'll have an career altering, money-earning epiphany soon
i meant career death
@anonymous re 'winning own contest' go here
this is hilarious.
steve holt
kim testani
When I was 7 I won a contest. I was supposed to get a free photo of myself with a blue sky background. The sample portraits showed a slight fuzz around the faces of other children. I went in and they sat me down. I asked if they can make me fuzzy, I thought it made me look more heroic. They took the photo congratulating me and then led me to the front desk. I got there and they told me I now had to pay them 20 dollars to have it framed. The man was very angry. I think I urinated a minuscule amount. He told me to go get 20 dollars. I went outside and I was very sad. Never again.
Seems like a small scale, survivable example of career failure, (or even a covert success 'in that' I think one can feel better about being in a demographic of 'tao lin readers' knowing that they are not ________ (something bad)).
here is what i thought
1. i do not really want what tao lin is giving away
2. someone else with more money will probably outspend me because so far people have been surprisingly willing to spend money on tao lin.
and therefore i sent nothing.
if you had made it public, you would have received "more than enough money."
steve holt.
If you consider yourself an artist, then you cannot possibly cause damage to your reputation.
If you consider yourself anything else, though, you may have fucked yourself over.
sounds like writing for a textbook could be a 'fun, new experience' or could be rationalized as such to 'make a buck' off fuzzy speculative sociology (read: the entire study)
(jk!)
regardless, it is 'something to do' and you 'only live once'
and 'no one will care'
especially after you die
i might have sent you a dollar but i didn't see the contest and i kind of don't know how to use pay pal
My psych. professor uses your work now just because she loves it.have you ever seen the response of hicks from georgia reading your work? i think it would make you smile.
couldve been great in sociology class but dont off yourself or anything...because then psych will suck again.
Tao, here is how i would view the results of this experiment/contest/digisocially produced new-media stunt:
i am probably one of the longest ago readers of your works, blog poetry before going to print. over the last months i have read nothing from this blog because it changed addresses and your voice and the voice of 'Carles' became interchangeable that i had forgotten of the new 'hehehehehe' blog.
my potential participation lost, your mother and myself separate but equally loyal fountains of readership, failed completely to engage in the project.
let me quote an illustrative line from CBT: "the rest of myself feels like a rare form of the placebo effect."
the new book seems funny. thank you.
yeah right. Like the publishing company actually writes the textbooks. Like they would really care whether you used the word depressed in Soc101. You need to get out of your own head bro.
I wish I had actually known about you during the time of this contest. Or, if I did (which I think I did) then I knew about your blog. And, if I did (which I don't think I did) then I would've participated in this contest. Now my Paypal has about $.60 in it, which may be the maximum amount for the next few months or so. Unless I get fired from my job in the summer, which means that it will be like that forever.
Sometimes I wish I was in your place, Tao, so that I could sell random shit on eBay as a source of income.
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