I'm Very Interesting
See, that's the kind of navel gazing title I would open my posts with, if I were honest. After all, I'm pontificating from my cloud, rather than worrying about what you're supposed to get out of reading this.
I am a tech blogger, and this is my personal sales pitch, disguised as meaningful commentary on the industry, on the market, on interpersonal relationships or just life.
But you read on anyway. Maybe it's the über-minimalist design that convinces you, projecting a sense of clarity through premium typography. Maybe it's the hint of sophistication that I hope my correct use of the Umlaut conveys. Maybe you just like that picture of me at the top of every page, shot with a high-end camera through an expensive lens, digitally tone-mapped to perfection under suspiciously good lighting conditions. Don't worry, it's modest enough that you don't have to feel ashamed if you briefly fall in love. It happens to the best of us.
Either way, you've now reached paragraph four, and to give up now would be admitting defeat, especially when the scrollbar shows the end is already in sight. Soon you too can judge and argue on the shooting galleries of HackerNews, Twitter and Reddit, upping your karma and follower counts. We both know you're not here to seriously ponder my viewpoint, neither am I here to lay it out in full. We're just masturbating to our own imagined excellence, and pretending what we do in our spare time is the height of intellectual discourse.
But the illusion is a careful one. At this point, I ought to at least fake some credibility, by relating a relevant personal anecdote or citing a site just like this one. If that fails, a sampling of my Flickr and Instagram streams will have to do, highlighting how interesting my life is, and how my tastes elevate me beyond mere plebian consumerism.
“Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.”
Everybody loves big block quotes, especially when they're completely out of context. Sure, I might employ a magazine-style layout that feigns depth, but this post was still banged out on a whim, not after research and analysis.
If my reputation does not yet precede me, this would be the point where I namedrop some industry legends and relate my views to theirs. If I am particularly capitalistic, I would mention some impressive sounding figures and stats too to add economic weight to an otherwise ordinary opinion.
Google Reader's dead, did you hear? And everyone's seeking relevance. Let's throw some more technology at it, surely that will solve the problem.