Why bookofjoe works

It occurred to me the other day while I was doing something close to nothing (but different than the day before).

I was pondering why it is that I find the internet so boring.

I mean, the great bulk of what flows into what's left of my mind comes from print — newspapers, books, magazines and catalogs.

This makes no sense on the surface.

You'd think that someone as absorbed in producing web content as I am (no, I haven't yet reached the magic 50–straight–hour mark after which, at least if you're a gamer, you drop dead) would find most of what interests him in the same place.

But you'd be dead wrong.

As I noted last month, 85% of what ultimately appears on bookofjoe comes from print media.

The answer to the mystery is obvious once you twig but isn't that like so many things such as how, when you look back at your life as you grow older, it becomes very clear where you went wrong and what you should have done? But I digress.

The secret is that print media are edited.

More explicitly, for every story that makes it into the New York Times or the Economist I'll bet there are a hundred others that could've been equally well substituted.

The editors chose.

Just as, back in the internet bubble day, all dotcoms looked alike — and oh, so very promising and beautiful — but turned into pumpkins 99% of the time when the pinprick of reality hit them, so with what makes up our world.

An editor winnows out the chaff and hopefully leaves you with good wheat.

The internet is news before it's been edited and so is predominently uninteresting or inconsequential.

What's important is buried and for all practical purposes almost nonexistent.

By leveraging the superb intellects working at all levels of media, I get a much better selection to choose from.

So simple, really, once you look at it from that angle.