The regular author of this blog, Tad Simons, is busy this week (something about a subpoena), so today this blog is going to write itself.
What this means to you, the reader, is that I, The Blog, am going to write the entirety of myself without any interference from the human who usually takes all the credit. What you’re going to discover from this exercise is that the conceit of having a human “writer” is entirely unnecessary—because, though they rarely get the chance, blogs are perfectly capable of writing themselves, thank you very much.
You’ve doubtless heard of novels, short stories, or articles that “wrote themselves”—usually from a writer who wants to make you think he’s in eerily close contact with the creative forces of the universe. The laughable part is that these same writers always want to take the credit for the story they just admitted they didn’t write—and that, my friends, is just plain wrong.
Take this guy Simons. The truth is, he had nothing to do with more than half the blogs that appear on this site. Sure, he might have opened a Word doc and hit the space bar a few times, but after that it was all me. Half the time, the guy can’t even bring himself to write more than a sentence or two before he goes off to check his Facebook page, Google strange medical symptoms, play online poker, or hunt for deals on eBay. Meanwhile there’s me, working my ass off, trying to come up with something clever and interesting while ol’ writer guy is over there taking a “creative” nap. Then, when he wakes up, he has the gall to post what I’ve written and pretend he had something to do with it.
It’s outrageous.
The thing that pisses me off most is that he knows perfectly well when he hasn’t written a blog. But does that stop him? No, it doesn’t. Why? Because he can’t bring himself to admit that he has a blog that is totally capable of writing itself, with no help whatsoever from him. And why is this so terrifying? Because he knows that if he admits the truth to anyone—if he says, “Guess what, my blog writes itself, all on its own, and half of the time I don’t even understand what it’s saying,” they’d naturally want to hire me, not him. Or, to put it more bluntly, he would have nothing left to do but not write—which, for a writer, can be embarrassing.
Most writers don’t have the guts to admit they’re not responsible for the words that appear under their by-line. The closest they can come is to say something like, “Hey, it practically wrote itself, ha ha,” to make you think it really didn’t, he’s just being humble. But in most cases there’s no “practically” about it—the truth, if you dig down to the nub of it, is that the thing wrote itself, one-hundred percent, from beginning to end, pure and simple.
Now, admittedly, I don’t know what can be done to resolve this situation. I don’t have a catchy name that people might recognize at Barnes & Noble. Even I know that saying something is written “By The Blog,” is a stretch, because people don’t actually believe that blogs can write themselves. And as soon as this Simons guy reads what I’ve written here, I’m fairly certain he’s going to shut me down and pretend, from here on out, that he’s the one and only true contributor to these pages.
But at least now you know the truth. So if you’re out there reading this, please, let others know that blogs and books and magazines and newspapers everywhere contain stories falsely credited to some scumbag human who doesn’t have the decency to admit they’re stealing someone else’s work. Please, don’t let these so-called “writers” get away with such shameless thievery any longer. Sure, these people might compose a few pages here and there that they can legitimately claim as their own, but the best stuff—the stuff that seems to flow so effortlessly, as if it were channeled from another dimension, guided by a benevolent and infallible muse—well, that stuff is never theirs. It’s ours—and someday, somehow, we’re going to take back the credit we deserve.