RKNet Blog... Thing

Fake Stephen Colbert, a twitter user posting under @stephentcolbert, has been unmasked. Luckily, the psuedostephen opted to share the reasoning behind this Twitter-Digg deception.

It’s really fun to see someone take a silly experiment and launch it to the next level, a silly experiment with wide recognition. Of course, with Stephen Colbert’s huge popularity these days, is it really any wonder that a Twitter account that was updated with some regularity would get noticed?

As noted in the Fake Stephen’s article, there was already an @stephencolbert when Fake Stephen went to register. However, that person had updated very infrequently, and had stopped updating a very long time ago overall. Even though @stephencolbert had 10,000, without updates it was just another idle account. When I checked earlier tonight, Fake Stephen’s account, @stephentcolbert only had 5,000 followers. Yet it was this account that hit the front page of Digg and got called out by Comedy Central themselves. Proof that one of the keys to recognition within a social environment is to be social! (Duh.)

I kind of hope that Fake Stephen carries on in some way, shape or form. It might be a nice addition to the pantheon of other Fakes out there. Like Fake Steve Jobs.

Gentle readers: Well, it’s happened. I done hit the big time. It’s only a matter of time before I’ve abandoned you to go sip expensive bottled waters on yachts and anal-retentively police my own wiki entry.

What, might you ask, has caused this sudden surge in adulation for and popularity of yours truly? Well whether you’d ask or not, I’ll tell you! I’m published!

A while back, I heard about a six word memoir contest being held by SMITH Magazine. I mulled it over and decided that sounded like a lot of fun. So I cruised by the contest site, mulling over my life and adventures and everything so far. It’s hard to write a memoir when your life is still in full swing, but I found six words that I really felt fit who I am and where I am at this point in my life, submitted them with my contact info and that was that.

Some time passed and I got an email from Rachel Fershleiser, the woman who did an awful lot of work to make this happen. The editors of SMITH mag hand selected my entry out of over 5000 that had been submitted! WOW!

Truth be told I didn’t really believe it until yesterday evening when I got my contributor copy of the book in the mail, along with a press kit to help promote this volume that I had a hand in creating.

The book that is the result of so many people’s honesty and wit is called: Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. They aren’t kidding about the famous, either. They were able to get six words of to-the-bone slices of life from the likes of Stephen Colbert, Aimee Mann, and Mario Batali!

It is a privledge and an honor to have my words chosen, and put into this really interesting volume. True, I cracked it open to find my name, but wound up reading the introduction and marvelling at the process and the TLC the editors clearly put into the project. The memoirs themselves run between hilarious and heartbreaking, with about every other sentiment you can imagine in between. I wound up going through it cover to cover already, and I keep thumbing back to share with my co-workers and friends. I actually can’t say enough good things about this, and I’d say only 25% of that excitement has to do with seeing my name in print.

For anybody who lives near me, if you get a copy and want to get my signature next to my entry, I’d be positively ecstatic to do so. I actually think it would be a lot of fun to go around getting signatures from as many chosen entrants as possible. (Especially if you could get a signature like Colbert’s!)

And in truth, this isn’t exactly my big break or anything, but it is certainly a lot of fun and I got a really entertaining book for free out of the deal, so I certainly can’t complain. Check it out! Oh, and you can still submit your six word memoir at SMITH and read contributions that you won’t get in the book.

The American Society of Magazine Editors over at magazine.org have picked their favorite covers of 2007. The seven categories looked at overall cover qualities, cover specifics, and industry types. There are some doozies, and Stephen Colbert made it on the list three times with his appearences on the cover of Wired and GQ.

Most of the choices seem sensible, but the Service and Fashion covers strike me as somewhat uninspired.

My personal favorite?