Photo Illustration by Glen Wexler
Rob Walker, author of Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are, and the "Consumed" columnist for The New York Times Magazine, profiled us for a lengthy feature article in the December 2010 issue of Fast Company magazine. Rob really got the story right! Thanks to all of our readers who make it possible for us to keep Boing Boing going!
And what really makes it interesting is that it does this with a mix of material that remains as eclectic, strange, and sometimes nonsensical as the obscure personal blog it started out as. Sure, the site offers its take on big, hot-button topics like WikiLeaks or the latest Apple gadgetry. But just as prominent are headlines such as "And now, an important message regarding elves," or "Heavily stapled phone-pole," or, to cite a recent favorite of mine, "Monkey rides a goat" (an animated GIF of exactly that).
How can this mishmash command an audience of millions? Particularly now, when the "postpersonal" blogosphere offers slick, focused, comprehensive takes on any subject you can imagine? Maybe the founders' insistence on keeping the site weird, loose, personal, and fundamentally unprofessional is exactly what keeps the crowd coming back. Boing Boing's longevity hasn't happened despite its refusal to get serious, but because of it.
Stay tuned for a behind-the-scenes look at how photographer/artist Glen Wexler created that amazing pogo-stick illustration.
Fast Company: Inside the Wild, Wacky, Profitable World of Boing Boing
