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Who Jason Kottke Is and Why You Shouldn’t Care

Kottke wants readers to pay him to blog, because he doesn’t want to do anything else. He has quit his day job to spend his time “blogging for blogging’s sake, I guess.”

Everybody and their cat is talking about this. The first thing I read about it that I liked was Angie McKaig’s take on the situation:

But then again, what he’s trying is new. Because he’s basically saying: my name is my brand. The looseleaf collection of things I write about, at times elegantly and at times far less so, up to and including my cat, should be enough for me to make a living from.

That’s it. Blammo. No business model, no theme, no hint of what kind of content might be planned, other than the possibility that, like Seinfeld, it may very well be about nothing.

And this, after some consideration for the past 24 hours, is what’s bothering me.

I liked McKaig’s post, because I didn’t like Kottke’s idea either. And no, like other people who don’t care for the business model (”The thing that really gets me is that, in my opinion, Kottke’s output doesn’t have any monetary value to me, in any way”) I don’t particulary want to see him succeed.

Kottke is an a-list blogger who is now “attempting to revisit the idea of arts patronage in the context of the internet.”

That is an idea I like. The idea of micropatronage — leveraging the connective power of the internet to support folks before the big foundations do, or even instead of the big foundations doing it — is fascinating and rich with possibilities.

But micropatronage to support cat pictures? I don’t think so.

My problem stems from the idea that I don’t think kottke.org is art. I don’t think he’s providing vital and innovative social services, or advancing needed scholarship. And I don’t want to see an idea — micropatronage — joined to irresponsibility and ego in this way. I don’t want this stunt to sink the possibilities for growing communities of economic support online.

And that is why I don’t wish him well in this endeavor.

I don’t want, to use McKaig’s words, give him some money so he can play and I can watch. That isn’t what micropatronage should be about.

Amen.