Bill Simmons is popular


The New York Times has a Media & Advertising columnist writing about Bill Simmons, probably because his "Book of Basketball" was #1 on the New York Times non-fiction Best Sellers list last week. One things he tried to do was get a discussion with readers, so I tried to create a new email address for FIWK readers (quick betting line: O/U 7.5 readers* not counting the four of us?) to contact us directly without having to add a comment.

But FIWK@gmail doesn't work because Gmail requires at least 6 characters and F*ckIfWeKnow doesn't work because Gmail doesn't allow special characters (*). Ideas? Do we even need a separate email address?

*I'm counting readers as people who have come directly to our site to see if we have put up a new post.

10 comments:

  1. By the way, I found that article on Google News under Spotlight.

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  2. Under 7.5 readers, by a large margin

    I like the idea of a communal website email. What about FifWeKnow or EffIfWeKnow or something like that? FkIfWeKnow?

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  3. FIWKapalooza@gmail.com
    TeamFIWK@gmail.com
    TheFIWK4@gmail.com
    FIWKtastic@gmail.com

    I'm really just brainstorming at this point, throwing things against the wall

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  4. talktoFIWK or askFIWK @gmail.com

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  5. Aaron, you didn't even feel like putting one of the pictures of us with Simmons in SF? Weeeeak.

    Another though: friendsofFIWK@gmail.com

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  6. Yeah, I'm triple-posting (what?). My initial take on the NYT article itself: eh.

    It reads like your grandpa trying to talk about DVR technology. And this section highlights why hard-copy newspapers are an endangered species:

    And he has done it without the benefit of the print apparatus — no newspaper column, no contract with Sports Illustrated. Indeed, Mr. Simmons, who voluntarily stopped his column in ESPN The Magazine this summer, seems at times to run away from print.

    Noam, this isn't 1968, or 1988, or even 1998. You don't need a physical apparatus to be widely read or appreciated. The Internet has been the future for years now, and to marvel at how Simmons has succeeded (in the pages of the Old Gray Lady, no less) is to show a stunning lack of appreciation for the shifting media landscape.

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  7. Mik I'm glad you wrote that about the Simbo article, I was about to write JUST the same thing. It's almost like the author has really no idea what he's talking about?

    On the other hand, there is an angle to Simmons along the lines of Gladwell's "Outliers" corollary: Simmons started writing at the PERFECT time to be an online columnist working his way into the mainstream as print shriveled. Five to ten years earlier and he might've gone down the print road and taken some writing jobs at The Globe, maybe resulting in his being just old enough not to jump online as it started taking off. Five to ten years later and someone else would've been already doing what he does, and he would've had an exponentially harder time breaking through.

    Still, I think the print/internet discussion misses the point of Simmons. He's a lot like a good comedian in that he gets you thinking and laughing about things that you immediately recognize but couldn't verbalize the way Simmons just did. He's a cultural touchstone for sports fans of a certain demographic.

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  8. Since you brought it up - can you imagine a more complicated way of creating a standardized measurement? I mean holy crap, wtf were they thinking?

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  9. They were thinking there had to be a better standard than King Henry VII's waist (36 inches = 1 yard).

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