zwolanerd

 

Tomorrow will be the second anniversary of zwolanerd.  Use “two” instead of “ten” in the clip above and you’ve got a taste for what’s going on in my head here (aside from the “being a professional killer” part).

When I started zwolanerd two years ago, I had an idea that I wanted to do a Monday-to-Friday pop culture blog and I knew that I wanted it to be a celebration rather than a snarkfest. Those were the only details I had in mind, specifics be hanged.

What it’s become is what I might term “digital nostalgia.” I like revisiting pop culture from my youth and there’s evidence that one or two of you enjoy that as well. I like to talk about new stuff, too, but run into a couple of problems:

• I don’t like to spoil things for people (though I don’t really mind things being spoiled for me)
• I can’t consume it fast enough for it to matter, so by the time I’m able to, it’s too late to be current but not late enough to be nostalgia

I can’t play through videogames fast enough to review them in a timely fashion (the same problem I had at my previous gig at Digital Entertainment News), so I do more of a “thoughts on this” rather than a review.

Reviews are only helpful so far as you have a history with that particular reviewer anyway, right? If you know that I like The Hudsucker Proxy, Star Trek Insurrection, and Grosse Pointe Blank the same way you do, you’ll have a better idea of how much you’ll like something I enjoy. Our local paper’s movie reviewer tends to agree with me about 90% of the time, so when he recommends something I give that more weight than @movieDude946 from Twitter’s opinion. (I did not check to see if that’s a real account, nor shall I.) It works in reverse, too. If a reviewer I disagree with most of the time hates something, it actually makes me want to see something more. Most of the time, of course, I don’t keep reading a reviewer I disagree with most of the time. The only exception was Roger Ebert. I enjoyed reading his reviews, but disagreed with him so often that they became worthless as reviews to me, while still being valuable as a thing to read.

I want to thank you for reading!  I know zwolanerd will never be a “big” site and I’m okay with that, but I am very thankful for anyone who chooses to take time out of your day and read. I appreciate that and hope it gives you some enjoyment now and then. If you wanted to tell your friends about us, I would be okay with that.

I want to thank our writers for being a part of the zwolanerd team: Lyn, Meags, Mike, Daniel, and Dave. I enjoy reading their articles and always hope they’ll have more in the future. (And if you’ve got an idea for an article or series you’d like to do, let me know! I’m always looking for more people.)

I am hoping to have a giveaway on Monday to celebrate our two years here, so be sure to come back and see what that’ll be.

In the meantime, take a step back in time and read the very first zwolanerd article (and try not to be as sad as I am that the issue addressed in it still hasn’t happened).

Tags: meta

Written by: Mark