Tales from the Glitter Gym: Addendum

This past weekend MAS posted a new Tale From the Glitter Gym: The Old Guy and it warmed my heart. I won’t spoil it but it’s great.

I was a the guilty party responsible for hastening the end of Tales back in 2011. I thought and still think MAS’s series is a funny, well-observed slice of life. Satiric, yes, but true. MAS was a person who I’d read for many years by that point, and here more than a decade later he’s still in my RSS feed.

On that fateful day I posted his site to Metafilter. It did not go well. I regret it still. You can read about the end in his post “Tales From the Glitter Gym – The End.”

His readers were indignant, but MAS took the criticisms in stride. In the comments that day he said this:

Their opinions are valid. If you didn’t know me and skimmed a Glitter Gym post quickly – you might think I was a jerk too.

I enjoyed writing Tales. No regrets. I wrote a new edition of Tales a month ago, but thought it was too mean to publish. So I never did. Mean only works if the funny content exceeds the mean. It didn’t.

That is strength of character. Thought so then. Think so now.

I never read his posts and thought that the mean exceeded the funny. But it was an object lesson that a sudden influx of readers may disagree. As much as I’m excited for the blogging renaissance that’s happening right now in the IndieWeb, I am very well aware of the negative attention that can come from attention.

Anyway, MAS is great. Read his stuff.