I think this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void is one of those funny-because-true kinda things. It puts me firmly in mind of the awkward approaches to seduction that certain smart-but-foolish young men attempt, having as yet no clue about better approaches, nor yet the skills to put better approaches into action:

geek seduction

On a more serious note, Hugh gets hatemail, like most bloggers sometimes do. The latest one called him “too obscure for general consumption”, to which he responded:

I think worrying about what interests you, what stirs your passion, is a far more effective recipe for success than worrying about “general consumption”.

I have to agree. Blogging is unsustainable if you approach every post worrying about what people will think, or if you spend too much time fussing over your writing or your background research or your whatever. Do you think I’m proud of writing a line like “I think this cartoon…is one of those funny-but-true kinda things”? Hell no, how inarticulate is that? But it was fast, it introduced the cartoon and got me to the next sentence where I explained my reaction to the cartoon, and more to the point, it enabled my blogging passion, which is hooking y’all up with other people’s interesting contributions to the cultural conversation about sex.

Hugh’s right, then. By worrying about what interests me, and be damned to the critics, I’m still here after four good long years. In that time I’ve linked to, and later sadly delinked for reasons of moribundity, dozens of sex blogs that were “better” than mine — better written by my own lights, more carefully crafted, better focused, and above all, slicker; which is to say, produced with an eye toward “general consumption”. Produced, that is, for a few weeks or months, and then dropped, establishing with each demise a prima facie case for lack of passion.

Here’s to passion!