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!)

Minimalistpedia

Dude.

Have you ever looked up Everett Bogue on Wikipedia?

He doesn't have his own page. It sort of makes me feel for him.* Maybe he's taking a minimalist approach to his internet persona, restricting himself to farbeyondthestars.com, evbogue.com, twitter.com/evbogue, and facebook.com/evbogue. Google him and you get 16,000 results. He has written books and made TV appearances and is frequently interviewed on other blogs.

Robot fetishism, farting, Oligonychus sacchari, and the number 9630 all have Wikipedia pages dedicated to them, but Everett Bogue does not.

HOWEVER.

When you search his name on Wikipedia, you get a few results that are actually relevant to him. His name is associated with location independence, unschooling, and, uh, Battlestar Galactica!

I just think that's darling.*

He made a number of contributions to New York Magazine, but Battlestar Galactica is what he's known for on Wikipedia.

I wonder if he's still into that show.

Anyway, I think someone should start a Wikipedia page for Bogue, strictly stating facts. Just the cold, hard facts. Memorable quotes, of which there are many. A link to his Minimalist Guide to Sex? (Crap, candles aren't on my list of 57 things, so I guess I can't have awesome candle-lit minimalist sex.)

I think I'm kind of developing a soft spot for ol' Bogue-y. He seems like a nice, if delusional and flaky, person.* There. I said it. He mentioned us on his Twitter and kind of led me to believe he might have a sense of humor about himself (though he still hasn't sent us that love note). So I hope he won't mind my saying this. It was recently brought to my attention that purple (as we all learned in preschool) is a combination of red and blue. Red is the color favored by the notorious Bloods, and the Crips prefer blue. So maybe, juuuuuust maybe, Ev wears his purple tank tops as a sort of armor, shielding himself against two rival gangs on the mean streets of San Francisco.

Or maybe, y'know, not.

* These statements may or may not be endorsed by more than one of this blog's two authors. Today's post brought to you by the one who voted for Cynthia McKinney in 2008, lovingly mothers a perpetually vomiting cat, and eats a lot of raw vegetables.

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.

Great Minimalists in History

Gandhi was definitely a minimalist.

He probably only had a couple cell phones. Not like all these "consumers" who eat at "McDonald's"...pigs. I consider him a great inspiration to me, and I'm sure that since he was reincarnated as someone else, I'm a great inspiration to him, too.

An African child.

Look at how much this child has been able to shed from his or her (hard to tell) lifestyle. Not tied down by cell phones and jobs and computers. Well done children. I can see that you've seen minimalism on TV and decided to buy into it.

The Rapanui (from the Easter Islands)

These guys were so minimalistical that they pretty much don't exist anymore. Cross "functional society" off your "list of things you own" list.

So it's not that hard, people. You just need to look to people like these who intentionally get rid of material possessions. Go buy a book about it.

How to Count, Part 2

Everett Bogue often likes to state in his blog that he has over 70,000 readers. In fact, the header of his website proudly boasts this statistic:



Lower on the page, however, the counter gives a far different number:


I have a feeling I know which is the more accurate count.