The Maturation of the QOTD (content)
1/24/07
I just finished writing at length the history of the quote of the day’s form. Now onto its content. The first couple years, it was glorified potty humor. Actually, it wasn’t even glorified. It was straight-up potty humor. I appropriated comments such as “you can’t fit that whole thing in your mouth” and “wow, you have a tiny head” from conversations and let them do their work out of context. It was easy. It was working. And it sucked. Oh, it was funny to the 10 people who were there when it happened or just to those people that knew whoever said it, but it was crap. And it has completely ruined close to any sexual innuendo that can possibly be made now. I can’t judge anymore. Somebody will make what might be a decent joke based on sexual innuendo and I can’t even tell if it’s funny anymore because I’ve become such a snob about it. I feel numb to the genre after living in it for so long. And so there came a point, I forget exactly where, that I decided this stuff was not funny anymore at all to anyone and I refused to be a party to aiding its success. But this did not make the people happy. Now if we were out at dinner and such a phrase was uttered, everyone would turn to me and say “Uh-oh! You’re gonna be on Dustin’s quote of the day.” This was an accomplishment for some people. They were proud to be mentioned on my quote of the day. Chris Meawad tried for years. He’d say something clever and look at me and his ears would perk up and he’d give a funky grin. It was quite comical. But anyway, it was time to put the potty humor to bed.
I started to accrue a pretty extensive audience after a little while. I had lots of people on this list. College friends, fellow employees, ex-girlfriends, current girlfriends, my family, other people’s parents, other people’s girlfriends, friends I made on the internet… the list was pretty impressive. So now I started to need to worry about the content. Do I want to talk about how wasted I got to my mom? Or the chicks I try to score with to my ex-girlfriends? Or current girlfriends? (joke) I was having a problem. And so I made a rouge list called the “x-rated quote of the day.” I only sent out one of those. Really, what I needed were several different security clearances for the messages I would send out. OK for ex-girlfriends, NOT OK for current bosses and certain student employees. OK for sister, NOT OK for mom. I struggle with that still to this day. I kind of started to have an approach of “just pretend this isn’t necessarily me, but a guy a lot like me who works at some college Rec Center somewhere else in the country.” That sounds great, but doesn’t really work out in practice. I wrote a story about kissing a girl on the Subway last year on New Years Eve (my birthday) and a girl got so offended that she asked to be taken off my “frequent bullshit list” and called me an asshole. Sometimes people just weed themselves out of my life depending on how well they can take a joke. And I’m not talking about the kind of joke where I hide cocaine in her jacket when she goes to the airport or anything. I really think that I lost a chance I had with one girl because of a joke I made in my column. Sure, it put me in a bad light, but that was the intent. I poke fun at myself. I make myself look like an ass. I am exaggeratingly critical and/or angry and/or pathetic. It’s a lot funnier, trust me. I do my best work when I’m unhappy, so even when I’m not, I need to pretend to be to stay on my game and keep my voice alive. Unfortunately, a lot of the content is self-deprecating. I wish more people would have a better understanding of the concept of voice before they judge me. Do you really think Steven Colbert thinks all democrats are terrorists? I doubted. But it’s damn funny. Do you think some democrat senator is going to write him and tell him that he’s out of line? Gosh, I hope so. Because it would prove politicians have no sense of humor. Anyway, I’ve gotten myself in trouble and I feel like I need to be a lot more careful now, so I am glad for this medium now. I will still give my adoring public what they want to read, but I can write it in here first and edit for content in the off chance I still have a chance with anybody on this list.
And really, it’s all about trying to score with women anyway. But hey, it looks to be the best chance I got.
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