So. Say this Blog Brother idea of Tom's becomes a reality. Which webloggers would you like to participate? (Name however many you want, and please give me URLs so I can spend valuable work time looking at them.)

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2000

Answers

Let's try:

Dan of ultrasparky and the basement blog. The obligatory yummy gay guy.

Steven of ethel the blog. The obligatory terrifyingly erudite computer guy.

Joseph of goatee.net. The obligatory nerdy nerdy nerd.

Miromi of mirmomi.org. The obligatory artist.

Whatever-her-name-is of ctrl-alt-ego. The obligatory Republican chick.

You know the score.

-- Anonymous, August 05, 2000

Suzanna.org is already posting a daily e-pinion on the Big Brother show. She also states she will apply for the next one, if they have one. I personally like her opinions-right on track.

-- Anonymous, August 07, 2000

I know this is ever-so-slightly off-topic, but I have some Blog Brother *format* (as opposed to participant) suggestions:

Each week contestants should be given a subject to discuss. The first weeks topic will be extremely broad: say, amazon.com, cats vs. dogs, nostalgia, pants. As the weeks go by, the subjects would get increasingly specific and difficult to talk about extemporaneously. Latter topics might include a painting on a museums website, an Emily Dickinson poem, or perhaps a single-sentence aphorism by Nietzsche. It doesnt have to be highbrow, of course. And no topic should be anything that any particular member shows a great deal of mastery in, or has discussed at length in their blog before. Contestants MUST show a knack for constructing sentences and the ability to discuss any subject with ease.

Each contestant would have to fill two quotas every week. There would be a word-count quota (say, 500 words the first week, 600 the next, etc.), as well as a (ahem) "circle-jerk" quota, where a certain percentage of a contestants words would have to be devoted not merely to the topic at hand but ALSO to what other bloggers have said about the topic. Oh, and yes, each person would have to stay on topic. Three impartial judges within the blogging community would determine whether or not a blogger stays on topic or meets a quota. Not meeting a quota would means getting disqualified.

(To prevent bias, judges should come from small, new blogs made by bloggers with little connection to the community. And although their votes should be public, perhaps the bloggers are kept anonymous until the end of their run. Maybe there could be a different set of judges each week. It would be cool - albeit logistically hard -- to get as many blogs involved as possible. There are other ways to do this, too, now that I think about it...)

Im not sure how those little voting doodads on peoples sites work - how do they prevent ballot stuffing? Perhaps Big Blogger participants should vote be the ones casting the votes instead. Also -- is there a way to prevent Stalinist revisionism of one's posts?

Theres ample opportunity for strategy with this format. For example: should a contestant be nice or contentious? In other words, should one try to play to the audience or should one try to be duplicitous and direct the conversation in such a way that would make the other bloggers look bad? Should one try to comment on the entries of a popular blogger or not? Would it just succeed in making them look more interesting?

Should one try to fill their quotas as early or late in the week? Well, you probably want to get your quotas out of the way as quickly as possible so you can get on your life, right? Unfortunately, blogging early in the week gives you less time to formulate something interesting, and makes it harder for you to meet your circle-jerk quota (because there will be less entries for you to comment on) and makes it easier for your fellow contestants to meet theirs (because it gives them something to comment on). Blogging later in the week is the reverse situation.

Filing quotas wont be the sole concern of each contestant - staying fresh and interesting to the audience will be. But just like the banal day-to-day tasks of Big Brother or Survivor, quotas insure that contestants actively contribute to the game.

Bloggers should be allowed to post their material onto their own blog. In fact, they should be allowed to make use of their blogs as much as possible - either to appeal to the audience or to incessantly gossip about the other contestants!

Time zones would have to be taken into account in some way. (Maybe there can be a Blog Brother UK, a Blog Brother West Coast and a Blog Brother East Coast to reflect this.)

Finally, I'd like to change the obligatory-cute-gay-guy suggestion to Ernie of little yellow different. I've just realized that I've been calling Dan "cute" far too many times than is healthy and I don't want radiate any creepy stalker vibes, ya know.

-- Anonymous, August 07, 2000

Thanks Michael, for the compliment. I think. :) Incidentally, it's funny that someone brought up bigbrotherblog, because by coincidence, I had started up a SURVIVORblog, similar to the game show Survivor that is so big in the United States right now. I have my ten people ready -- I just need to set everything up. Harder than I intially thought, let me tell ya.

Incidentally, I had no idea that anyone else was thinking about this idea. Michael told me about this thread, actually.

SURVIVORblog, knock on wood, will happen on Sunday. I hope. The URL, for now, is http://www.littleyellowdifferent.com/survivor/survivor.html . I'll let you know how it works :)

-- Ernie

-- Anonymous, August 22, 2000