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Law of Internet Invocation

metamanda reads John Scalzi's WHATEVER blog all the time, so I was pleasantly surprised to find this comment from Scalzi on Making Light (poppy z. brite thread)

Also, as a general rule, if you don't want someone to show up on your site, or in your discussion (or whatever), don't name the discussion (or whatever) after them (and especially, I would think, don't name them after authors, who are by nature curious about being fictional creatures in someone else's universe). Thanks to the twin powers of search engines and personal vanity, putting someone's name on something on the Internet is tantamount to inviting their presence, not unlike (depending on your perspective) invoking angels or demons. And we all know how much trouble that class of creature can be.

Henceforth, the above observation is to be known as the Law of Internet Invocation: "If you name them, they will come."

This is assuming no one else has yet made this observation (which I'm sure someone has). Posted by: John Scalzi on January 11, 2004 06:09 AM

I searched for "If you name them, they will come," and all I turned up was an Oct 2002 police report mentioning the names on a police warrant, so at the very least attributing this to Scalzi passes the Google Test, which does carry a certain level of omniscient certitude.

I found this quote to be serendipitous, given that metamanda's postings on her blog have summoned Scalzi, Paul Dourish, and others, which for me brings everything full circle. One of my postings attracted Eric Meyer's attention, but only due to it's incorrect attribution which he kindly corrected (by giving the credit to someone else). My postings have also managed to attract the attention of submitters to the Style Invitational, Khleo generics fans (but probably the man himself?), and who knows who else. Go Google/Technorati/Trackback!

Update: Scalzi's own post on the matter. Also, more on eponymous laws in the next thread.

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Law of Internet Invocation:

» internet invocation from Metamanda's Weblog
I also want to make a note of this little meme that seems to be floating around amongst a couple blogs that I read. John Scalzi noted the Law of Internet Invocation, which Goonley proved by invoking him. I thought... [Read More]

» Newsjunkie by keyword from kwc blog
PubSub lets you create virtual RSS feeds based on a search term. For example, you can subscribe to Nanotechnology, Stanford, or a search term of your own, and it will return articles from over a million blogs. Here's one I... [Read More]

Comments (2)

And, validating my own rule, here I am.

Ken:

Woohoo! Though I do feel weird now summoning bloggers as if they were spirits :). It creates this image for me of bloggers floating around in the Internet, waiting for a Technorati result to awake them from their slumber and transport them to another blog.

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This page contains a single entry from kwc blog posted on January 11, 2004 11:19 PM.

The previous post was Moons of Mars.

The next post is While I'm on the topic of "laws".

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