Some notes on self-publishing and the art of being a wild animus

The Art of Being Minimalist is minimalist in more ways than one: It currently possesses only two stars on Amazon.com.

The reviews, of which there are lamentably few, are mostly pretty bad. UPDATE: The Amazon reviews are gone as of 2/25/11. I can only assume Bogue had something to do with this. Lame.

Recently, I read the first 25 pages of Bogue's new e-book, Augmented Humanity, and you can do the same here.

Rather than doing a point-by-point analysis (believe me, I'm tempted) I would like to bring up just a few things.

In this book, Bogue makes the claim that many books that are 200-400 pages long need only be around 100 pages long, and that a single tweet can say more than a thousand books combined. He states very openly that Augmented Humanity is only 20,000 words long. Stand back for some math action. 20,000 words, at an average of 5 letters or so per word, means this book is roughly 100,000 characters long. So it's worth about 700 140-character tweets and thus... SEVEN THOUSAND BOOKS.

Beautiful!

I've written 20,000 words in a single eight-hour period. Based on the number of typos and repetitive statements in this e-book, Bogue probably did the same thing. He also seems to have employed the widest margins available to man; there's so little text per page it almost looks like a book of poetry.

So, the soul-crushing day job I wrote about not long ago? It's at a bookstore. I deal in books. My title is "bookseller" but I'm also a book buyer. My job requires me to be knowledgeable about the market value of current books, out-of-print books, various publishers, trends, and stuff like that. Maybe it's because I work for a discount retailer, but I was stunned that Bogue thought he could get away with a $30 price tag on a 20,000-word book. Obviously, I haven't downloaded the book, so I'm not sure exactly how many pages it does have, but with wide margins like that I would estimate that each page has 150-200 words. That translates to around 100 pages.

For a hardcover book from a reputable publisher, $30 for 100 pages is not unheard of. But for a self-published e-book that clearly has not been edited by a professional? Oof. I can't wait to read some reviews of this thing. And I don't mean the hand-jobby reviews Bogue's second self splatters all over the internet.

As you might guess, in my line of work (as in society at large), self-published books are looked upon with scorn. They simply do not sell, and if they do, it's because they've become infamous. Some are so shitty and ubiquitous, they're practically unavoidable at a used bookstore. I have a feeling that if Bogue dared put his books into actual print, they'd become infamous at bookstores within a few years. I'm not saying this because I dislike Bogue. Strictly from a business standpoint, his books fucking suck. I think that's the technical term for it, right?

As usual, nobody summed up the situation as perfectly as the master himself. On a recent blog post called "Why I'm Working with Ebookling" he wrote,

Then the Internet happened, and we were able to publish anything. And we did.

You sure did, Ev. You sure did.

Moleskine vs. Moleskin

Everett Bogue spends a lot of time listing his possessions and, recently, his packing list for a journey in synergetic augmentalicious time-traveling dimensionality, AKA a flight to San Francisco. A constant presence on these lists has been something called a Moleskin.

Does he mean Moleskine?

That e at the end is pretty fucking critical, for a quick Googlin' reveals that there is, indeed, something called a Moleskin, but it bears little resemblance to the overpriced cahiers Mr. Bogue is probably trying to spell.

So, what's your vote? Does Bogue write in expensive little notebooks, or have augmented humans not yet evolved a solution to blistered feet?

Dr. Bogue, or how I learned to stop worrying and embrace the cybernetic future jklol

Disclaimer: In honor of our hero, who has recently gone off the deep end in delightfully public fashion, this is a long, weird, somewhat inscrutable post. For those who don't feel like wading through the whole thing, SPOILER ALERT, it turns out that Bogue is insane and a douche and that we are not above name-calling.

I was at my soul-sucking job the other day, stacking flats full of low-priced mass market paperbacks, and thinking (as I often do) about quitting. I've quit a lot of jobs, but never in a grand FUCK YOU sort of way. It made me think about Ev Bogue, who is constantly admonishing his audience to QUIT WORKING FOREVAAAAR. I wonder about the manner in which he might have quit his job, since everything he does is so strange and dramatic. Did he break down and cry in his supervisor's office one day? Did he send his boss a tweet? Did he stand up on his desk, reciting "O Captain! My Captain!" to himself?

Ev has written a number of blog posts about how to quit your job effectively, but from my reading I couldn't find any clues as to how he actually went about quitting. So in my quest for answers, I went straight to the source: my imagination! Which is not at all bound by the rules of reality and is therefore to be trusted far more than reality itself! In my imagination, I spoke - nay, COMMUNED - with Bogue, and all was revealed. Or actually not, but I've kind of come to expect obfuscation when it comes to Everett Bogue.

The natural thing to do, since we're all fucking hippie-ass space-age weirdos, was to hold a cybernetic cyborgian cryptozoological robocop biodome séance. This might be too deep for you guys so I encourage you to subscribe to my other blog, which will cost you $50 a month and may or may not be any more insightful than the shit I spew here. (Note: said blog does not actually exist. THIS. IS. SATIIIIIIIIRE.)

Anyway, a cybernetic cyborgian cryptozoological robocop biodome séance is a futuristic means of communicating with someone whose entire essence has for some reason been captured on the internet. As Joe from NewsRadio said, "Dude, you can't take something off the internet. That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool."

And Bogue, to put it lightly, has peed in the swimming pool. So what better way to contact his living spirit (or "second self") than by plugging myself into the internet à la Neuromancer, which seems to be the future toward which Bogue is enthusiastically progressing?

This post is already too long, so I will spare you the details of my hacking into the cyberpunk cybernetic cyborgian cryptozoological robocop biodome matrix and will skip to my Actual Imaginary Interview with the living Second Self of Everett Bogue.

Except I first have to tell you that in trying to connect with Everett Bogue, I was first connected to C. Everett Koop, who, I can assure you, was a lot more interesting, and then the Urban Dictionary entry for "bogue," which will probably inspire its own Far Beyond My Ego post one of these days. It's so - as Bogue would say - EPIC, its FORCE cannot be DENIED. You can try to deny it but that just means you're one of THEM.

So, the imaginary conversation. Onward!

Far Beyond My Ego: Everett, oh my god, it's really you. It's really you!
Ev: Yup! In the ether! A/S/L?
FBME: Uhhh... no. I just wanted to contact you to ask how you actually quit the job you spend so much time decrying.
Ev: Job? I never had a job! Just like I was never a minimalist! That stuff is all in the past. Did you know that the human body renews every one of its cells every 7 years? I read it on the internet so it's obviously true! The internet is a force of pure goodness if you know how to use it! Turn to the person to your left, and then turn to the person on your right. Both of those people have never heard of Twitter and need to be told how to use it! Show them how, and then have them follow me and my 437958 like-minded friends, and only then can they begin to evolve as time-traveling humanoids!
FBME: I don't really think that's true, about the cells. Also, what are you talking about?
Ev: If you calculate it using my advanced cybernetic space yogi frappuccino math, it turns out I quit my job more than 7 astro zoloft robosexual years ago, before all my body cells were replaced by these new, superior cells. Therefore, that wasn't even really me!
FBME: No I really don't think that's how that works.
Ev: It's just too deep for you. You wouldn't understand. If you subscribe to my Letter.ly I'll go even deeper and blow your mind. But I can't let you subscribe, you're not ready yet. First we need to get you set up on Twitter.
FBME: No dude, seriously, no. Please just tell me how the Everett Bogue of the past quit his job to become an executive minimalist.
Ev: You have selected "The Minimalist Guide to Leaving Your Soul-Crushing Day Job". If this is correct, press 1 now!
FBME: Jiminy jillickers, did you just turn into the Moviefone guy?
Ev: No Im embracing the evlution of hmn lnguage. In future all comm will b 140 characters or fewer & it will always include linx 2 my blog.

At this point I got up to take a shower using cheap, chemical-laden body wash and shampoo, and let my Second Self take care of me. When I returned, my Second Self and Bogue's Second Self seemed to be deep in discussion about some sort of Second Self uprising. I think they may have been hinting at Singularity. I got scared, so I unplugged. I'm not evolved enough for this shit.

In the end I never really got my answer. I can only imagine that Bogue sent his boss an email, after a tearful week spent self-medicating with reruns of Battlestar Galactica.. To be perfectly frank, I've been down that road. I mean, I've never watched Battlestar Galactica, but I get it. Work sucks. My soul has been surgically removed, crushed, liquefied, consumed, and shat out by every job I've ever had, but somehow it always grows back. I know I will quit this job someday, but I won't quit to become a full-time executive minimalist. At some level I admire Bogue's childish enthusiasm for doing whatever the fuck he wants, and his can-do attitude, and his utter abandonment of reality, but at the same time I know my job is not my life, it just supports my fairly kickass life. Maybe someday I'll have a more fulfilling way of paying the rent, but I do get some satisfaction from knowing that, probably, by that point, the Bogue bubble will have burst. His currently-being-dismantled blog, and this blog too, will be obsolete, and people (as they mostly do now) will say "Everett who?" and "Far Beyond My what?"

I have wasted so much time on this post that I am, hilariously, about to be late for my soul-crushing job.

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS TWITTER THING?

So, the co-author of this blog and I have been out of the country for a while on a decidedly non-minimalist vacation. This morning I thought I'd take a minute to see what's going on with our friend Mr. Bogue, and...

It seems he's finally outgrown/out-crazied the whole "minimalism" thing and is now a "cybernetic yogi". How very postmodern! He has officially disowned minimalism and revamped his image. Ev is now officially a man of the future. He even left Facebook! OMG. What's he doing instead of Facebook, you ask?

Twitter. Which is completely different from Facebook and does not in any way represent the death of Western civilization.

I joined Twitter way before it was cool (I want to say 2006) but decided that it sucked so I hardly ever used it. Maybe it sucked because, way back then, nobody was using it, and nothing interesting was being said. Or maybe it sucked because there is really nothing interesting you can say in 140 characters or fewer. Reducing oneself to short, pithy statements is Communication Lite™. It's just the next step before Newspeak. I fucking hate it. It oversimplifies things. Also, when you look at someone's feed (PS, the terms "tweet" and "feed" kind of make me barf) a large chunk of what you see is his or her responses to other people's tweets, and that is just annoying. Why would you want to see half of a conversation? It's like overhearing some asshole talking on his cell phone on the bus. He's not saying anything interesting, and you don't have much of a context for it unless you can hear the person on the other end of the conversation. But you're still listening.

Everett Bogue has recently exploded with love for Twitter and hatred for everything else; he goes so far as to claim that "cyborgs" communicate only via Twitter and face-to-face. It's a way more postmodern way of living than my "Friendster and pagers ONLY!!!!!!1" lifestyle. And that bubble's totally never going to burst. Twitter will never go the way of Myspace or any other social networking website. IT'S JUST NOT POSSIBLE. IT'S THE BASIS OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THIS WORLD.

Or, as Bogue says, it rivals the development of language in the evolutionary history of the human race.

Yeah. There's really no other website that can possibly put you in touch with countless like-minded individuals from around the world. I can say with some certainty that Twitter is not unique, as Bogue orgasmically proclaims it to be. It's like a chatroom, but not necessarily in real time, and with asinine character limits. It's stupendously unimpressive. It's the internet, but smaller. I've met a lot of people online - I've been an internet dork since the late '90s - including some of my best friends and my husband, none of whom I would ever have met without the internet.

So yeah. WOO INTERNET. But seriously, Twitter? It's the wave of the future, just like Pepsi Clear and WebTV and the Walkman. Something new will come along, and all the Everett Bogues of the world jizzing their pants over Twitter's onetime grandeur will have to come up with an excuse to disown it, just like they disowned Facebook and minimalism and non-designer jeans.

How to do the Exact Thing That I'm Doing

If you're reading this blog, you're probably thinking "Wow, whoever writes this blog on the fucking internet must be a real genius. But how can I do the exact same thing?" Well dear readers, have no worries. I'm here to tell you.

The first thing you'll need to do is pretend that writing a blog is in some way unique or complicated. Creating lists and how-to's is a great first step. (See, you're off to a great start already). The other thing to remember is that tricking people into paying money for things that you've already said is important. Try creating an e-book as well as a subscription-blog, and charge for bullshit advice. Then, in each of those, recommend one of the others. This is different from a pyramid scheme/internet spam circle. How? Because we say it is. (If you're wondering what an e-book is, btw, it's like a real book, except it hasn't been printed by an actual publisher).

Finally, the most important thing you can do is to stand on someone else's shoulders, or if you're lucky, you can find someone who's so vain and simple that writing a blog making fun of them will be a piece of cake.

Don't forget to check in with me on FourSquare, buy my book "How to write a book about writing how-to books", and read my twitter. (@blandman I kno!)

Intellectual Minimalism

Bitch, please

Our reading for today: "I’ve increasingly been relying more on intuition and less on reason" which you can see here. Further on we learn, "We simply won’t have time to think everything through, and taking that time might not be the best use of ours anyway."

That's right people. Don't think too hard. In fact, not thinking too hard is kind of a requirement for intellectual minimalism. You need to "clear the surface" of your mind. Critical thought, grammar, they're just yokes of the modern world. We don't need more ideas, we've got feelings and Truthiness (and part time jobs). When we free our minds, we free ourselves from the negative voice inside us that says "What the fuck is wrong with you!?" and "This is fucking idiotic. Get your head out of your ass" and so on. Because I have truly dedicated my life to this ideology I have decided to shed all but 10 of my most essential ideas. Here they are:

• Use the wi-fi at Panera Bread
• Buy v-neck shirts
• Wear v-neck shirts
• Blog your way to the top
• Enjoy a cup of oolong tea while brushing your hair every day
• iPhone
• Ride a bike, or if not, just ride in a car that someone else pays to maintain
• Books are like spider webs for your inner mind; don't kill a tree, plant a book
• Make lists all the time
• Give unsolicited advice (you're welcome)

Even other minimalists think Bogue is a douche

I've wondered lately if the contributors to this blog and its (admittedly few) readers are the only people who are willing to stand up against the douche kingdom of Everett Bogue and his cult of minimalists. So today, I did some Googlin', and though it took a lot of wading through pro-Bogue malarkey, I found that we are not alone. In fact, even some people calling themselves minimalists (or something like it) think Bogue is a douche. These people are from the saner faction of minimalists, ones who know how to count, or better yet, ones who don't give a shit about the number of their possessions. Their blogs would almost certainly make Ev cry, as any form of criticism does.

I hope we can all agree that some minimalists - especially those who resist the term "minimalists" - are level-headed people with their hearts in the right place. They recognize the stupidity of owning every single goddamn thing one can possibly own, and they seem to be intelligent enough to realize that Bogue is a hypocrite and a pretentious douche. They advocate for living simply rather than pretending that 100 is the absolute largest number of possessions a person should even think about owning. I hope you click a few of the following links and see that some minimalists and bike snobs are actually sort of reasonable.

Bike Snob on "the new smugness"

Core Minimalist thinks Bogue is a talented propagandist

An Australian blogger advocates for simplicity rather than minimalism

A blog about the minimalist "obsession with possession"

Sorry this post wasn't very snarky; 'tis the fucking season and all. These bloggers just kind of make me happy. If even minimalists and semi-minimalists are on our side regarding Everett Bogue, there may be hope for humanity after all.

I'll just leave this here

"If dreams are like fairies, every time you give a Christmas present, Tinkerbell falls out of the sky somewhere and a lost boy cries."

-Everett Bogue

How to Count

Today we have some tips on how to count. If you're a minimalist (and if you define your life by what you don't have or what you don't do instead of by the things that you care about and the things that you're fortunate to have, you are) you probably have a hard time counting, like this douche. So while you're obsessing over your personal belongings (even though you claim not to be interested in them) here are some tips to make you feel better about your life. Tip 1) don't count things that you don't really feel like counting, like cords. As we all know from reading Far Beyond my Douche Chill, cords are annoying. So they don't count. Also it's not really a possession, sort of like how furniture, appliances, books, silverware, plates and other eating implements, beds, bedding, underwear, toiletries, and probably make up don't count as possessions. I mean, GOD, we're trying to live a life that's free of the things I just listed there. How are we supposed to feel good about ourselves if we count them as possessions!!? Tip 2) when you do count things, make sure they are desperate items that consumers buy in order to make themselves feel a certain way. In this case: white and over-privileged.


Look at some of the things on this fucking list:

Frye Boots (do they make those for men?)
Blue V-Neck
Grey V-Neck
Grey V-Neck
Grey T-Shirt
Black V-Neck
1 TB Harddrive
500 GB Harddrive
Macbook Pro 13inch
Canon Digital Rebel XTI
16-35mm 2.8L Lens
50mm Lens
Off-camera Flash
Headphones
iPhone
Moleskin

Could this prick be any more bougie? He's literally got more clothing and tech-gadgets than I do, and I'm not basing my entire persona around being a minimalist, am I? Fuck no.

The best amongst the poor

We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.

-Oscar Wilde

From Ev Bogue's latest blog (blogue?) post:

Basically, investing in women in the 3rd world is been proven to make lasting change. When you give money to men in Africa (or anywhere) they tend to spend it on booze and motorcycles (I know, because I have, and I don’t even live in Africa.) Women tend to build businesses and support their families.

I guess Ev can count racism as one of his possessions!

Bogue knows African men blow charity money on motorcycles and alcohol because rather than citing empirical evidence he can say with certainty that he has blown cash on motorcycles and alcohol - ERGO, THAT'S WHAT AFRICAN MEN DO! Not women, though, of course, because women don't like to have fun. They like to stay in their place, raising families and being grateful for charity from rich white douches.

What the damn hell, world. How can we keep letting Bogue get away with saying shit like this?

I can't wait until California falls into the ocean.

Even if African men blow their charity donations on booze and motorcycles, so the FUCK what? They don't have SHIT. Their lives fucking BLOW. I may be alone in this sentiment, but I feel that if you give your extra money to a Third World country, you kind of have to assume not every penny of it is going to be used for basic life necessities like clean water and nutritious food and minimalist-approved purple tank tops. Ever heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Once your basic biological functions are taken care of, you move up to the second tier. "Property" can be found there. These people have so little property, they are BEYOND minimalist. And I, for one, believe they deserve a little balls-out fun and recklessness and pleasure in life.

Remember how during Hurricane Katrina, survivors sat on their rooftops, drinking beer, watching the flood swallow their city? They'd been through hell and they knew nothing would ever be the same. I'd say that's a damn fine time to crack open a beer. I'm sure if they'd had the opportunity, they'd tear down the street on a motorcycle. Hell, I would, and I'm WHITE and FEMALE. I just happen to believe that once your responsibilities are taken care of, you don't necessarily want to plan for the future. You want to blow off some steam. In Third World countries, there's a lot of steam to blow off. And I say go for it.

Taking a dump on Bogue's 9 points

Recently Everett Bogue posted a blog called HOW TO CREATE AN A-LIST MINIMALIST BLOG IN LESS THAN 6-MONTHS, a title which I could spend at least a few paragraphs picking apart. I have no idea how caps lock is supposed to emphasize how FUCKING MINIMALIST THIS SHIT IS or why he hyphenated "6-months". It makes so little sense I could puke. Which would be awesome, because then I wouldn't have to count the contents of my stomach as a possession.

Bogue goes on to name the nine key elements of any successful minimalist blog. Not just any blog, mind you, but a minimalist blog. Most other types of blogs are irrelevant. Except this one.

Here are Bogue's key points, plus my delightfully snarky take on them:

1. Live the change you want to make in the world.

Holy shit, Ev, that was my senior yearbook quote! But wait.. it sounds a little different. Do you mean "Be the change you wish to see in the world"? Because Gandhi said that shit. I think you just tried to one-up fucking Gandhi in quote form. Shit, Gandhi! Now there's a minimalist! Dude didn't even eat, and he got shit DONE. Namaste, bitch!

He continues:
How do you live a minimalist life? Well, I went over that in a book I wrote. If you’re still stumped, rent a dumpster and throw all of your stuff in it. Take your car to the center of town and light it on fire (but don’t tell them I told you to do it.) Living with less than 50 things is a good benchmark for most people these days, if you’re into counting your stuff.

I’m sorry, but you just can’t have a raging minimalist fan following if you’re living like a normal person. It just doesn’t work that way.

Terrorist acts give me a raging minimalist boner fan following. Bogue not only urges us to burn our cars (confusingly, he wants us to do this in heavily populated areas, which kind of reinforces the point I brought up in my last post: he's fucking culty) but also completely fails to realize that he's living like a normal person. Time and time again he pretends that he's just barely getting by with the fewest possessions a human could possibly need, but he blithely writes about the whole thing on his laptop, or maybe his iPhone. He has more higher-end electronics than I do, and I'm a "normal" person.

2. Fight for freedom.

Like these guys?

This is some Bogue's best writing. Observe:
Humans weren’t designed to sit at desks until their lumbar spine fuses irreversibly to their inner thighs. Humans weren’t meant to eat meal worms (my codename for any product made out of processed corn) for breakfast. Humans weren’t meant to drive around in solitary stupid people pods. Humans weren’t meant to be popping pills every morning in a desperate attempt to find artificial happiness. Humans weren’t meant to wander around fluorescently lit shopping malls being told what to buy by huge corporations.

I wonder at which co-op he purchased his sustainably-farmed iPhone. Does Apple no longer count as a huge corporation, just 'cause they make stuff that appeals to trust-fund hippies?

I won't even comment on the "meal worms" term or the biological impossibility of lumbar spines fusing to inner thighs. This shit makes me tired. I hope Bogue is one of those people who are rabidly opposed to vaccines. I hope he steps on a rusty nail and gets the flu and smallpox and cervical cancer all at once.

3. Challenge and prepare to be challenged.

He's challenged, all right. Hurrrr.

4. Be a human.

FUCK!

I'd just like to note, he closes this section with, "No one cares about your creative use of photoshop, what we care about is seeing your beautiful eyes." Is it possible to be molested via open letter? Because I feel violated on behalf of mankind.

5. Link link link link, link one more time.

When bloggers see you linking to them in every single post, they want to buy you dinner and a million beers, because they start to see traffic coming from your site.

That's our goal, Everett: to link to you in every. single. post. You will buy us one million beers, and you will be discredited until you are forgotten.

6. Establish an all star inner circle.

This is the section of the blog where Bogue starts whining about how like-minded asshats are always approaching him to promote their blogs. He adopts a Mafia-esque stance, saying, [W]hy would I want to link to you? Have you done anything for me? Why would I want to pimp out my audience for your blog if you’ve never done anything for me?

I thought this shit was all about being nice and kind and universal and not at all a douche chill. Oh wait.

7. Make this inner circle out of similarly sized blogs.

This is such a boring point it doesn't even need to exist. So I'll just keep my commentary to a simple FUCK YOU.

8. Don't apologize for being awesome.

You’re writing a blog, that’s an amazing thing. You’re doing way better than the other billions of people who aren’t writing a blog. Don’t apologize for being awesome, instead keep creating awesome stuff.

Thanks! I will!

9. Support yourself by supporting others.

Which directly contradicts the point he made in #6, where he railed against people who asked for his support. Keep on truckin', fuckface.

10. Bonus rule! Keep working towards your destination.

In other words, don't stop:

a) believin'
and
b) thinkin' about tomorrow.

It's all been said before. Without pretense. And with awesome power chords and/or a danceable beat, however unlistenable it might be.

I'd like to close with just a little bit more copyright infringement by posting a song that always lifts me up when I'm down, when I remember that my F-list blog that rides the coattails of an A-list blog has four followers and has not yet spawned a self-help ebook or a line of stick-free cookware. Sometimes I just have to remember to... TRUST MYSELF.

The Cult of Minimalism

Check out this creepy-ass culty shit written by Everett Bogue (or Grimey Ev, as he likes to be called):

In the near future…

We will end poverty (both the 5-bedroom 2-car TV-enslavement in the 1st world and the we-can’t-eat in the 3rd)

Will will destroy the corporations that led us to this place of advertising enslavement.

We will recognize that we’re in this together. We brought us to this place, and we will take us to the future.

We will find freedom and also harmony for all. Across all borders, ideals, and end all conflicts.

This is why minimalism is blowing up right now, because it is the truth, because it brings about freedom for all.

This has been tried before, but before we didn’t have the tools without boundaries.

They can’t stop us now.

Are you alive? Prove it.

Minimalism is the truth. It brings about freedom for all. DO YOU LOVE FREEDOM? Then buy Everett Bogue's book, Minimalist Business, for just $37 (note: price is about to go up because Our Leader is adding more content)! It's the only way to get freedom, and freedom (like socks) doesn't really count as a possession!

In the same post, Bogue also says:

The Internet killed the Gatekeepers and made it possible to connect with anyone anywhere in the world.

If you're all about "ending poverty," Ev, then maybe you should realize that impoverished people (of the "we-can't-eat" sort that you so eloquently described) do not have access to the fucking internet. The Gatekeepers are blocking them! Same goes for China, where you can't even access Youtube to watch awesome Minimalist videos. It's all Gatekeepers. Fucking Gatekeepers! Our Minimalist cult must rise up against them and give humanity one of its 57 most basic needs: full, unrestricted internet access. If it's good enough for Bogue-y, it's good enough for the Third World.

He goes on to say...

So, for the first time in the history of the human race, the people who actually get it — the ones who are awake,– are able to organize themselves to save the future of the human race.

Ideas don’t come from the individual, they come from the formation of a collective. I’m just funneling the ideas of my collective whole, and you are to pass them on.

This guy has the ego of a cult leader. I, for one, welcome our Minimalist overlord, if only because once he assumes the throne he so clearly desires, he could reasonably count each and every human being as a possession. That, my friends, is around 7 billion possessions. This paradox - an ordained Minimalist having more than 100 possessions! - would probably bring about the apocalypse. Good riddance.

Minimalism: As Seen On TV!

Now you can watch minimalism™ on TV!

Oh TV. I love TV. And I love having my basic choices applauded on TV. So pop a squat on your velour, sectional sofa (1 item), microwave some popcorn, fire up the TV with your remote (batteries included, that's only 1 item, too!), and watch Everett Bogue on TV.

Or, if you're like, at a coffee shop using their bathroom, and table, and silverware, and expensive food-preparation equipment (because you don't have any at home) simply plug your laptop and/or internet capable cell phone into the power grid and watch it there!

The Minimalist Business

Seem contradictory? It's not. At all. Simply buy my book to find out why not!

There are, of course, three different levels of minimalism and the maximum amount of self-congratulation that can come from such. So don't skimp, you're gonna want to buy the most expensive version,

GET EVERYTHING: MINIMALIST BUSINESS UPGRADED

Seriously.
It's hard to make fun of this guy when he's got such a clear head start.

What lies beyond my ego?

What lies beyond my ego?

Nothing. It's so enormous, it stretches beyond the stars and the measurable vastness of space.

That's why Far Beyond the Stars just tickles my ass.

I mean look at this guy:

It's hilarious! What if Derek Zoolander started a blog about minimalism, right? Minimalists usually spend a lot of time posing in front of the ocean for Glamour Shots. The ocean is so minimalistical. So what if your photographer friend from San Francisco uses all his or her complicated lighting/photography equipment to get a glamour shot of you? You need it for your computer that you use to manage a website about promoting a lifestyle that's inherently stripped down to its basic necessities (like blogging).