It's about seven hours past the real midpoint of the year here on the West Coast, a time that I often become contemplative, feeling slightly superior to those who think that the midpoint is actually the end of June 30 and a little inferior to those who would know better than to ever type the first portion of this latter half of this sentence in a public forum carved into electronic stone. My mind turns to meta, but not "awrrrr, I'm going to eat off your face!" meta, but fun meta, a consideration of what it is we do here, how nice it is in so many ways, and what unsolicited suggestions I might make to take what is and make it a little more like what it should be, except for the outraged frenzy that these sorts of suggestions of mine seem invariably to elicit.
In other words, I've been reminded by brillig's Intro to tonight's Top Comments diary that I have plans, Big Plans, for what she calls the Divider-Doodle.
Oh, yes! Did you see it? There it was. Just above this line. You won't see it's like again in this diary, unless I take a screenshot and crop it and save it in Paint and then move it to my DKos Pictures directory and upload it to Photoshop and Gah that's so much work! we all know I'm not going to do that, especially after last night's exertion with the Prosser video. No, no, just look at that Divider Doodle, that Thingamajig, that Doohickey, that "Fleur de Kos," that -- well, I've been trying to get to people to call it the "gnocchi" -- because I once had a gnocchi in gorgonzola sauce dish in I think Manhattan where the gnocchi looked exactly like that, except for those two little loops in the middle that sort of spoil the visual analogy but that I just explain away, because I like the analogy, as little curls of Parmesan -- but few of any have followed me in that endeavor.
When I took a poll on the Doohickey during what was for reasons I don't even want to explore the Least Successful DKos Roll Call Probably Ever, there seemed to be a slight preference for "Fleur de Kos" over "gnocchi," and even for "squiggle" as well, which was dispiriting, but I dealt with it because with advancing age I have learned that not all good ideas are mine, not all of my ideas are good, not all good ideas are good, and not even all of my ideas are mine, so what the hell, call the Doohickey the Fleur de Kos (although please not the "Divider-Doodle"); most of you didn't have the gnocchi with gorgonzola that night, so I can hardly hold it against you -- you have no idea how good it was! (Yes, I'm just having fun here. Relax.) But what struck me and still strikes me about the Divider-Doo -- fleur de kos! -- is that it's just so damnably inert. It doesn't do anything. You can't click on it. And that's what led me to the inspiration that led to the other part of the poll, the clear winner in the poll, by vote of 19-3, not counting the 20% or so that can always be relied on to choose the last snarky answer in a whimsical poll just because they think (rightly) that that's not what I wanted them to do, and that was this:
Should clicking on it take you to some random diary or comment from somewhere in the website's past?
OH YES! OH YES! I've got you now. You've already got most of your thorax and one knee on the bandwagon and you didn't even have the conscious thought that you wanted to jump for it. "Click on the Doohickey and go to a random post"! Has there, really, ever been a better thought in the entire universe! It would be hard to prove it to me, mostly because I don't really want to sit still and hear you try.
A wormhole! ("Worm orgy" was another possible name for it that went nowhere, by the way.) Our own little "Stumbleupon." Except, this would be even better, because it would be limited to the DKos universe, and so it would combine the wonder of bumping into the awesome and unexpected and the comfort of leafing through an old high school yearbook.
IT. MUST. HAPPEN!
And it will happen, and I'll tell you why. Because I'm going to tell kos how to make money off of it.
For someone who click the Doohickey and get sucked to another point in DKos space-time as if by Floo Powder -- except for those to whom it might happen by accident, which you must admit would be pretty damn funny, because several of you have already figured out that you could then take the code from the doohickey and attach it to whatever link they'd like -- they'd have to be pretty fracking bored. And what do people who are bored want to do? They want to be treated with kindness. And they are willing to endure a small commercial.
And here, by the way, this turns into a short treatise on Internet Advertising, but I put all that stylized swoopy-doopy prose up there because I only wanted people who can really dig what I'm about to say -- or who are, as I mentioned, really bored and thus one of my target audiences -- to make it down this far.
I hate ads. But, if you gave me a Doohickey that would take me to any random page or comment from DKos history, I'd endure an ad.
It would have to be a very special kind of ad, though. It's the kind of ad that the Internet should see more of.
Short. Sweet. Not pushing anything. Just branding. A wink, a smile, and you're off.
That is how to do Internet advertising, people! Hey, Comedy Central -- if I click on one of your links and have to sit through a 30-second video, I pretty much don't care how witty it may be, and I don't care that it is helping pay for the service, because I am feeling just one thing: impatience. That's right, I'm mentally pairing your product or service with impatience! This is not what you want! I would charge you for this information if I could, but mostly I want you to start advertising the right way: make me smile!
And do you know what makes me smile when I go to a link I want to see? Getting there!
So if you put a simple sentence up there: "Best wishes to DKos from Powell's Books" and then shoot me the frack over to where I want to go, I'm going to be happy! I'm going to like you! Eventually, when I next have to go out and buy a bookstore, I will buy a Powell's Bookstore! That's building up brand loyalty!
And here's what in it for Markos: five cents.
Yes -- and I am not crazy here (dammit!): every time you clicked on the Doohickey, the advertiser should pay Markos five cents (with some limits about how often from a given IP address, how many times this could happen in a set time, etc. We're not out to bankrupt Powell Books, folks.)
That means that if I'm hanging around DKos, feeling restless, I can say to myself, "I'm going to check out some random comment or diary in the history of Daily Kos, and in the process of doing so, I'm going to make Markos five cents! -- and that is going to make me smile.
And then I'm going to briefly, and in a friendly fashion, see the advertiser name, and I'm going to associate that good feeling with that name.
And that is worth five cents to the advertiser!
So: make it so.