Great Power, Great Responsibility

I've just realized how much leverage our blog has. I don't really understand how Google's search algorithms work, but the computer geeks in Mountain View, California seem to like our blog... a lot. Google "male facebook poses". 125 Columbia is the #1 hit - just owing to that blog entry two posts down. What's ironic is that most of that post was just a copy and paste job referencing the original post. What I did to deserve the distinction of now appearing higher up than the original author of that original post I do not know. What I do know is that we're suddenly gonna get a million people perusing our pretty mugs. Brace yourselves.

This means that you boys here have some really and I mean really wicked powers. You could really fuck people over. Want to get back at that mofo who shoved you into that locker in middle school? That asshole Prof who wouldn't bump you up a mark and nixed your law school aspirations? The ex who blew your best buddy? "**** **** sucks off little boys." Title that. Go into lurid graphic detail. Put up pics. Let people google her. Jane Doe is done.

In one case, I may just have inadvertently ruined a young journalist's career... or saved it. Years back, I put up a somewhat scathing post eviscerating Toronto Star reporter Prithi Yelaja for writing feel-good stories exclusively about brown people exclusively:

But if these successes are everywhere, then do we really feel the need to hear about them? I don’t need to be hit be hit over the head day-after-day about Indo-Canadian "success" stories – thanks, you guys are great, we get the point.... how about more balanced coverage?

Though I didn't submit it to The Star, there was a sudden flurry of hits to our blog in recent weeks from search queries of the reporter's name. Google Prithi Yelaja. Incredibly, that 125 Columbia post is on the first page.

I don't really read The Toronto Star anymore as it's a crappy paper. But, out of curiousity, I checked The Star's site to see if Prithi had shifted her focus. And, incredibly, every article by her this year has been non-South Asian related. "India" doesn't appear once.

What happened? Did Prithi and The Star's editorial board really read that post and really take my heed? Damn - I mean we talk about the internet and new media and its power to affect change - this is what it's all about.

If anyone is reading this, let it be known that PRITHI YELAJA IS AN EXCELLENT JOURNALIST AND I'M AN ASSHOLE. Please understand that brown people, no matter how well we do here, need to make sure that we and everyone else hears these stories to assuage our deep-seated feelings of inadequacy because deep down we're embarassed by the squalor of the lands from which we come. We've all seen Slumdog Millionaire. It's not her, it's us.

Seriously though... how did our blog get so powerful?!