September 1, 2006
revealed: "the secret a-list"
Obviously, Nick Carr and Kent Newsome have never heard of "The Secret A-List".
Unknown to most, there exists a secret brotherhood of 25 uber-A-List bloggers who, every year at the height of the Winter Solstice, gather at a secret chateau in France, and decide who the x-hundred or so "Public A-Listers" [aka "the A-Listers" to most people] are going to be for the next year. And these chosen Public A-Listers in turn will go on to decide who the B-List is going to be. And the B-List decides the C-List... and so forth and so on, all the way down to poor ol' X, Y and Z. Sure, it's a brutal system, but it works. And it's a fun weekend, for sure. French brandy. Yum!
Hey, we've got a lucrative social network to protect. Right, Loic?
To my fellow Secret A-Listers [You know who you are]: Sorry for divulging our little secret to the world, but what they heck, I reckon having our existence out there in public domain isn't going to change the writing habits of too many bloggers. Most of them just want to write about their cats, anyway.
Besides, look on the bright side. It'll probably be good for traffic.
Posted by hugh macleod at September 1, 2006 11:19 AM | TrackBackBlunging right?
Posted by: Lee at September 1, 2006 11:52 AMFinally... All is revealed... Great fun!
Posted by: Sheamus at September 1, 2006 12:51 PMStirring! A great wind-up!
Shhhhhh but is it.....????!
Posted by: robert at September 1, 2006 1:05 PMYou should have checked with me first, you just blew my cover. Now we'll have papparazi lined up taking our pictures and we'll never get a moment of privacy.
Posted by: Seth Finkelstine at September 1, 2006 1:18 PMThats OK buddy. I love the brandy every year!
Posted by: Gaurav at September 1, 2006 2:32 PM"I reckon having our existence out there in public domain isn't going to change the writing habits of too many bloggers"
Not mine; I'm too far down the alphabet to worry about it.
Posted by: Milan Davidovic at September 1, 2006 2:40 PMCan you get me the contact info of the person(s) in charge of the S-list? I'm looking to suck up a little and move up from the Y-list.
Hey, at least it's warm here in the pile of bodies.
Posted by: Chris at September 1, 2006 4:42 PMI thought it was a group called the Pentaverate -- including the Queen, the Pope, the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up -- and that it met fortnightly in a secret location known only as "The Meadows."
Posted by: Mathew Ingram at September 1, 2006 4:59 PMThe A-listers said it, I didn't:
"Welcome to Foo, you lucky few"
But I did say this:
"A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.
A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.
Somebody who has not been invited to a hot party is a discoverer of the power of social connections."
Don't tell me - there is a shamanic high priest by the name of Sig who burns an effigy of a giant owl!
Posted by: John Dodds at September 1, 2006 6:57 PMMathew busts out with the "So I Married an Axe Murderer" reference...
Score!
Posted by: Brian Clark at September 1, 2006 7:56 PMThe BEST part is how deliciously arbitrary it is : )
It's hilarious that some folks actually believe that what blog readers find useful somehow matters. As if! LOL!!!
"To my fellow Secret A-Listers [You know who you are]:"
That's just sad....
Posted by: Mack Collier at September 2, 2006 3:08 AMDamn you Hugh, I thought we were gonna keep this secret? WTF?
:-)
Posted by: Robert Scoble at September 3, 2006 7:34 AMWe're having a marketing book club meeting here in Indianapolis this month on 'The Long Tail'. Rest assured, this one will get a great chuckle out of the team!
I laughed out loud (and then put a copy on my blog).
Thanks!
Doug
hmmm tail...
I need another beer
Posted by: Vidar at September 4, 2006 3:52 AMInterestingly, some major global commercial publishers had promised to offer access to countries having less than $1000 per capita incomes. But they went back on their word, on the plea that they enjoyed sizeable subscriptions in India.
So, will this solve the dilemma of having so much science, and yet so little of it -- for a world which is "developing" but where the gap is simply growing?