Dumenco Opines: People Read Blogs Because...

Ever since I started blogging, I became a lightning rod for questions about the emergent technology: isn't a blog the same as a website? could anyone start a blog? and why would they want to? Now, media expert Simon Dumenco announces the answer to that last question: people read blogs because they want to get laid:

In this week's Media Guy column for Advertising Age magazine, Dumenco contends that knowledge of the hippest, hottest blogs can increase hook-up opportunities and boost sexual attractiveness. He maintains some people are using niche blogs such as Gawker.com and Defamer.com to gain pop cultural insights that make them more socially desirable and ultimately more likely to get lucky.

Picture it, Los Angeles, sometime last month. I'm sitting at a Coffee Bean with Nina Litvak, the co-writer of the new movie When Do We Eat (billed as the first Passover comedy, review coming soon...). A man at the next table, clearly also a writer, starts schmoozing with us..."are you guys comedy writers?" Nina explains that she's just co-written a comedy, and I say something along the lines of "I have a column in NY, and generally do a lot of writing, and a great deal of that is comedic." He looks at me, pauses, and says, "You're a blogger, aren't you." He said it just like that, no question mark at the end, just a period. He knew. And that was when I decided to dress a little nicer for the rest of my trip, and always put on some semblance of makeup, even if I was just going to the Coffee Bean. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if I looked like Cameron Diaz, no one would have assumed that I was a blogger. But in my jaunty cap, a sweatshirt, no makeup and jeans, and I was instantly identifiable. Which brings me to my point: blogs, and by extension, bloggers, are not perceived as sexy. As I've said before, after standing in a line of bloggers waiting for admittance to a screening of Serenity, "we are not a pretty people." Additionally, I believe that my blogs--particularly this one--have actually cost me dates. True, anyone who wants to know the real me will by definition need to understand and tolerate the blogginess of me. But there are those men who are easily scared by a woman who has a forum online and an audience of hundreds in which she can discuss any manner of dating-related customs, behaviors and miscellany. Never you mind if she doesn't actually discuss her own dates, relationships and specific personal behaviors the way some of her peers do. That the potential, the readership, is there, is enough. Couple that with my singles column in the Jewish Week, and it's a daunting media machine to come to terms with before a first date. So, although I hadn't ever intended it that way, acceptance of my blogs has become a prerequisite for dating, the way other people feel about having a guy get them a glass of water or opening a car door and waiting until they go inside. If anything, for me, involvement in blogging is impeding the lucky-ness that Dumenco seems to indicate that blogfollowers hope to get... Looks like I'm going to have to kiss a lot of blogs before I find my prince. No offense to the rest of the blogtribe, but I'm hoping that people don't always look at me and say, "You're a blogger, aren't you..."