The blog must go on

People have told me I should just go on with the blog and pretend that nothing happened.

That seems like pretty good advice. There will be pleny of new gullible people to replace the old gullible people. And no one will have any new incentive to “out” me because I’ve already been outed.

So this is what will happen. In twenty-four hours, I will post a new girl picture and delete all posts, comments, and trackbacks relating to Libertarian Girl not being a girl.

UPDATE

After the Instalaunch, pretending that it all never happened is no longer looking very viable. My only hope is that the buzz generated will sustain the blog, but the pessisimst in me tells me that a hot female libertarian creates a lot more buzz than a clever hoax revealed.

Comments

[Henry]

Go ahead, it's what he">http://amandadoerty.blogspot.com">he did.

[austroblogger]

Given our capacity for the suspension of disbelief.... Id say you have a GOOD chance keeping this alive. You have a problem though: I would be prepared to bet that a small number of your existing readers will be prepared to out you again if the discussion gets too intense. Still I reckon that is a minor irritation.

[David]

I see Glenn Reynolds mentioned you and I suppose I should say congrats about that, but as envious as I am of the coming Instalanche my overwhelming feeling is how sad it must be to get attention for everything BUT good writing or insightful analysis or something productive anyway.

And, I don't care if you put back on your girl suit or not, this has gotten boring.

[Downtown Lad]

Who cares. Your posts were good! We need MORE libertarian bloggers.

[dadahead]

Right on dude. You've got a good thing going.

As for not getting attention the "right" way -- I don't know ... there are so many websites out there, you've got to do something to break through the clutter. Television advertisers know this; no matter how good your product or commercial is, if it doesn't do something to draw attention to itself no one will ever notice it.

Incidentally, my site is apparently piggybacking on your "Instalanche" because my hits have gone way, way up over the last couple days. So I am like your parasite.

[Jacqueline]

Oh no, into the memory hole it goes.

[Hijk Selur]

Just make sure you don't get your new, um, body from an online porn site. Libertarian bloggers spend a lot of time there, too.

[Jacob]

"My only hope is that the buzz generated will sustain the blog, but the pessisimst in me tells me that a hot female libertarian creates a lot more buzz than a clever hoax revealed."

I suspect you're right, but for what it's worth I ignored your blog for as long as I thought it was written by a ditzy blonde who only got attention for her picture. Now that I know you're really a clever prankster I've blogrolled you and subscribed to your RSS feed.

[Ron Chusid]

As your main concern appears to be a desire to maximize attention for the blog, this should at least fulfill your goals short term. If word of your scam gets out, you might even see an increase in hits as people come to see what new picture you come up with.

[Doug]

I'm with Jacob. You once posted to my blog (I assume this was part of your marketing strategy to get attention), and I followed it back to find this one. Eh. Pretty girl has a blog. Big deal. So I moved on.

But now that I've read the "outing" and your response to it, I'm far more inclined to read you. Because it's kind of funny. And because you seem to be a rather clever satirist who leaves people guessing where the satire ends. That's good stuff.

[Lornkanaga]

Not all libertarians are ugly. My dad, my oldest brother, and my older sister are libertarians, and none of them are ugly.

Shame on you for perpetuating such a myth.

BTW, I recommend using cleavage shots for your pic rather than faces. DaGoddess uses one. And no, you can't use mine--get some libertarian cleavage--I'm a republican.

[Aaron]

Are you just fishing for readers to send you photos of hot girls?

heh heh heh

[Ron Chusid]

Sounds like he was clever in building readership by using other blogs, and didn't rely just on the picture. I also found the site after tracking back sites when "Libertarian Girl" linked to a blog I write for in a post.

Not surprisingly, the right links make a big difference. When one major blog gave us a plug last week, we got about 1000 hits in the first hour or so. Over two days we got about 6000 more hits than usual.

"Libertarian GIrl" may have a win-win situation here. If nobody mentions the scams, his readers continue to come. If enough blogs mention the scam so that it doesn't work as a scam, the extra hits from such links will keep him going.

[Ron Chusid]

It's just as I suspected. Check out his site meter stats--he's doing better with the notoriety for being outed.

[Steve]

There are several things you could do. The list of options includes but is not limited to:

1. Keep the pink color scheme. Retain the "Libertarian Girl" name. Post an ambiguous yet girl-ish picture (think pixies or butterflies).

2. Keep the pink color scheme. Retain the "Libertarian Girl" name. Post a pic of a hot chick. Make sure you don't get the chick picture from any online source. This is the Achilles heel tripped up both you and "Hot Abecrombie Chick".

The blog becomes dedicated to libertarian girls rather than written by one. If people come to the site and get the wrong impression, so much the better for their reading pleasure. Make sure you include regular posts on Rose Wilder Lane, Ayn Rand, and Isabel Patterson. Familiarize yourself with their work. Comment often on the most recent writings of Cathy">http://reason.com/opeds/young.shtml">Cathy Young and Wendy">http://www.ifeminists.net/index.php">Wendy McElroy

After "Hot Abercrombie Chick" got outed as a hoax, the blog continued and sustains a regular readership with many new readers each week. HAC retains some credibility by sticking strictly to the issues rather than writing bogus kiss-and-tell posts. HAC purged the archives and often needs to delete comments that refer to the hoax.

[Steve]

You might consider leaving your archives intact and simply ignoring future references made by future commentors to the unmasking. If that doesn't work, then revert from Pland B to Plan A and purge the archives.

[J]

I came to your site because of all the "outing" talk, but I found it very interesting and will be back. I suspect that a lot of other people will, too. Your site is very thoughtful and well written. Maybe it was all a fun ruse, but it worked.

[Sephen Littau]

Personally, I think you should keep it real. I found many of your posts to be very good. I even recommended my readers to visit your site just before the hoax was revealed. The readers now know the truth and you have a following. As long as you have good posts, I'll continue to read them and I suspect many other LG fans will too. Besides, too many people know of the scam. To keep everyone quite would be next to impossible. Reintroduce yourself to your readers as yourself and keep the good posts comming!

[Joshua]

When Odin Soli was outted as the author of Plain Layne it gutted his readership stats. He's still getting about an order of magnitude fewer readers than he did back when he was publishing as Plain Layne.

But I think some of that was reaciton to what a dick job he did of coming out; he insisted on playing it off like he hadn't been trying to fool anyone. Your attitude seems a lot better so maybe people won't be quite so pissed off about the whole thing.

I came here via Rambling">http://www.ramblingrhodes.mu.nu/">Rambling Rhodes when he mentioned the similarity of your hoax to the whole Plain Layne thing, so I don't know how good your earlier stuff was.

Also, for what it's worth, I'm inclined to agree with you about girl-blogs getting more hits. And I'd be willing to bet that all the women who are pitching you shit for your scam consider female authors who achived literary success under male pen-names during times when women weren't taken seriously as authors to be pioneers, bravely trespassing behind gender lines.

Fuck 'em. Do your thing.

[Max Goss]

The Instalanche will end almost as soon as it began. Besides, if you pull the hoax off again, despite a surge in publicity, you will be a serious stud. Ergo, you must stick with plan A.

[Max Goss]

I should add one vital qualification: the new girl must look as nubile, and therefore as unlikely to author a libertarian blog, as possible.

[Michael Duff]

I had three Instalanches last year and I'm still nobody. Each time, I got an incredible number of hits, and the traffic evaporated in a matter of days. Not even a full week. The hits evaporated in less than 48 hours.

So yeah, you'll get a nice short-term boost, but long-term you would have been much better off staying female.

I'm reading you now in hopes that you will elaborate on lessons learned during the hoax, but that doesn't help you long term.

I'm afraid the only way to stay on the radar is to stay in the conversation. Keep putting out good content, display (and stick to) a clear ideological bias, pick fights frequently, link to a-list bloggers, and make sure you comment about their stuff in your blog.

A-list bloggers link to each other frequently, and they all say the same thing about the same issues at roughly the same time. It's a peculiar kind of groupthink, and it's really quite democratic.

Bloggers basically end up voting for "representatives" who end up on the a-list because they represent large chunks of the blogosphere.

Glenn Reynolds is popular because he appeals to a large demographic -- partisan enough to satisfy their prejudices, and mature enough to avoid pissing them off.

I've also found a shocking number of a-list bloggers who check their referrer logs obsessively, and are not afraid to come back at you when you comment about them.

Insult and misquote them, they'll send you an email within minutes. I screwed up and misquoted Jay Rosen last week, and within ten minutes, he had posted an angry comment in my blog.

As long as I'm dishing about this stuff, let me tell you a sure-fire way to get an Instalanche, or at least the only one that worked for me.

The first two times Reynolds linked me, he linked to posts that made me sound like a democrat, reluctantly agreeing with the Bush administration.

He misidentified me as a democrat TWICE, although the posts contained no mention of party affiliation, and the rest of my blog clearly identifies me as a libertarian.

So, if you really want to maximize your exposure, recast yourself as a hot blond Democrat, slowly coming around to the Republican way of thinking. (Although if I were you, I would try redhead next time.)

Start every post with, "I really hate Bush, but..."

"I really hate Bush, but it seems like we're really helping people over there."

Conservative bloggers love to link examples of liberals, "seeing the light." So if you pretend to be one of those -- play the hot confused damsel, slowly changing into a libertarian hawk, your numbers will shoot through the roof, and you'll be able to capitalize on your liberal "street cred" when you attack former colleagues.

Basically, recast yourself as David Horowitz with tits.

Good luck!

[Karen]

I think the traffic will last long enough - people aren't tired of "flaming" you yet. (Is that lingo too old-fashioned?)

[dadahead]

Michael Duff --

Damn, you've really thought about this shit. I think that plan would work swimmingly.

Karen --

I think it's funny that any "netspeak" might be considered "old fashioned", as the internet is what, ten years old? (I mean, I know it's technically older than that, but it's only been over the last decade or so that a really significant number of people have been online.)

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