Showing Your Private Parts

Some of the most prominent and successful bloggers out there shock me. But they are the ones I check first. The boring, professional, how to tips, nifty anecdotes, lists, etc., bloggers get eventually deleted, even though I know they work so hard. I wander off to look at somebody confessing their personal business and deep-down secrets–bending over, pulling down their pants and showing their ass. Blog porn.

There was an article about James Altucher, a guy I have in my reader, in Businessweek. Businessweek! This guy tells all his business. He talks about his bathroom habits, details of his past, anybody else would shut up about, but he does give a lot of self help advice, such as how not to deal with crappy people. Business Week is cool with that. They call him Wall Street’s keeper of the pain. Catchy.

“A year ago I had a revelation,” he says. “I’ve failed time and again, hurt myself and others, woke up angry and scared at three every morning. I needed to open up and share.” In October 2010, Altucher started posting confessions on everything from business failure and sex to death and depression. Example: “I was completely lost, four years old, running around the department store looking for my parents who I was afraid had abandoned me. …I’m still wondering why they were thinking of entering the elevator without me.”

This guy is about money–venture capital, start ups and the stock market along with techy Internet stuff and he’s writing about his personal failures, childhood, and answering questions from the lovelorn? And he’s wildly popular because of all this transparency? Yeah, he is.

That doesn’t mean that a lot of people don’t hate him. It seems success and transparency does open one up to haters. He regularly writes about how people don’t like him and diss him both online and in his private life, such as at dinner parties.

Penelope Trunk is another one. I discovered her when I ran across her post about sex with her husband. She has Asperger’s syndrome and she wrote how it is to have sex with somebody with Asperger’s, or rather, how it is to have sex with her. A more graphic and real account of married sex, I haven’t seen elsewhere outside of literary fiction. She’s a real person and so is her husband and she’s writing intimate details like this on her blog? Her husband let her live? It was a WTF moment, but I came back to read her again. I’m often aghast at what I read. I can be aghast over her personal life because she tells all her business. All of it. She has a fight with her husband and she writes about it. He hit her once. Everybody said leave the muthafucka, but she didn’t. He doesn’t beat her ass every night after dinner. They fight a lot, but they have kids and commitment and sometimes life works like that. She has a girl friend live with her, then worries if her husband wants to screw her.  She throws temper tantrums in front of her kids.  Jesus.

What is her blog about? Career, jobs, and workplace tips. I kid you not . The New York Times linked to her blog several times! She’s offering a course many people are actually paying her for to be a professional blogger, because she’s a success at it. Why? She’s a good writer, but many people are. What she does differently from the rest is show her ass. She can blame forgetting her panties on her Asperger’s, but WTF?

On some level, I feel I know Penelope and James because I know what their asses look like. They’ve done everything but post pictures of their genitalia. So, I find myself worrying about whatever stupid shit Penelope did or what James is angsting about now. This is strange.

Is that the secret to big time blogging success, where venues such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal cite your personal blog and you make $5000 a week from advertising alone, is to let your privates hang out? Everybody has them, all basically the same, but a little different too. I guess other people are interested in what other people’s private stuff looks like.

I don’t have the balls for that. I’ll show who I am, but the panties gonna stay in place. I can’t believe anybody wants to see all that. [chortle!]

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