In my 2 1/2 years at JU, I have discovered what TV producers, shock jocks, musicians, and tabloid publishers already know: taht normalcy is boring and only through being sensationalist do you get read.

See, one of the main life goals for me has always been to be a writer. And, while being a paid writer is admittedly a nice idea, I decided years ago that I would simply settle for being a writer, for having my ideas read and my thoughts heard.

But see, here's the kicker. Sans pay, my reward in writing is readership. I may joke about being a "points whore", but the simple truth is that, without a paycheck coming to my mailbox or my paypal account, I NEED readers. I don't write just to have my material disappear into the ether. To me, everything I write is pretty damn important (well, uh, MOST things anyways), and the worst thing that can happen to it is to have it "back paged" and disappear.

The tragedy of it all is that in my experience, the best written, most meaningful pieces I have written have gone down like a cocktail down Lindsay Lohan's gullet. And a lot of tripe has garnered mega points.

Well, you can PLAY high and mighty, but honestly: given the choice between a masterpiece that nobody ever reads and a salacious tabloid-esque rant that nets you mad Google search rankings, which would you choose? You may SAY the latter, but i've read your pieces, I know different. You choose the same materials I do; the materials that get you READ.

Even as we complain about television and movies, the truth is, they operate on the same mindset: the stuff they make is the stuff that gets the buzz. They will always sell anything that provokes, outrages, or inspires because the simple truth is, word of mouth advertising is far more effective and cost efficient than print, TV, or radio. Make it controversial enough and people will come to see it just to see what it's all about.

So if you're on a mission to "clean up" JU and other online forums, there's a rather simple way to do it. Read materials that contain what you want to see on a blog site. Don't demand that someone else read them, read them yourself, and encourage others to do the same.  When you demand that offensive articles be "censored", you aren't contributing to the solution, you're contributing to the problem. Time and time again, it has been proven that the surest way to promote a product's success is to argue for its ban. I can't think of how many people I've met, for instance, who watched "Brokeback Mountain" solely because of the controversy surrounding it.

The reason this came to mind is because Tex issued JU "writing assignments" at a time when it's a sore spot with me. At a time when I have a damn good nostalgic piece lingering in the JU wasteland because nobody bothers to show up and read it (and, ironically enough on a forum category that exists largely because many on JU lobbied for its creation). I'd love to produce more stuff like that, I'd love to produce more material that touches people or has a lasting impact, but the truth is, having that material ignored hurts worse than having it flamed. I simply don't have it in me to put my heart into a piece only to have it sit on the bookshelf, unread and alone.

But I don't think that makes me abnormal.