1. There are talented writers out there who want to write, but what they want to write about is unpopular, badly researched or irrelevant.
I hold this to be a truism: even the internet (or 'Nerdlocker', see Post #1) has a terrible aptitude for allowing content to become categorized. The Internet is supposed to be a forum for free expression, but blogs, twitters and the like quickly become about one thing, or start off that way. I want Fisto! to be an almanac, which means that it's a collection of non-specific, written pieces that have nothing to do with each other, other than that they are well told, well crafted, occasionally funny and always worth at least a glance. Topics can be as varied as video games, US presidents, languages, climate change, corporate governance, old timey radio shows, electronics, space exploration or whatever happens to be on the mind of the contributor. I only hold that it has to be written in a style that I approve of. Because if not me, who? If not now, when? If not this, why? etc.
2. Footnotes ain't for shit.
Throughout high school, and throughout my stop-start attempts to earn a tertiary education, I always got B's. Every paper I got back had the same general criticism "Well written, but needs more footnotes!" That annoyed me. If it's well-written, give it an A! But of course, I missed the point- they weren't grading me on being a good writer, they were grading me on being a good synthesizer of proven ideas.
That's ok: I like synthesizing ideas. But if the synthesis is my own, why do I need to specify where I got the details from? I went into a screenwriting course, and I was never asked for a single damn reference, footnote or bibliography: I could just come up with stuff. I liked that.
So I want Fisto! to follow a different model. Rather than the thesis-hypothesis-synthesis model, which requires copious fact checking, I want this site to follow the thesis-hypothesis-antithesis-antithesis-antithesis model. The conversation doesn't need to end, the topic can just be argued until each individual works out their own personal synthesis.
BUT- I don't want that sort of thing to be mistaken for journalism- which I believe is the current problem with journalism. Sitting around and discussing the matters of the day, be they important or not, is fun, instructive and helps to make brain-grow. Brain-grow important. Journalism should remain a profession, concerned with verisimilitude, objectivity and ethics. It won't, but it really should.
I only ask that contributors be smart and rational. And by smart I mean curious. No smugness, no pride-in-ignorance, no straw-man arguments. Too many people get by on looking clever by using preposterous rhetoric, and then calmly sitting back while others get outraged, and asking them whether they've maybe 'struck a chord'. Anyone who has ever raised an eyebrow and stated "perhaps the lady doth protest too much!" unironically, are fucks. I mean..."is a fuck". Run-on sentences are bad.
3. Funny good.
I'll only post stuff that's interesting, but between interesting and funny, and interesting and not-funny, I'll post the former over the latter.
So that's it- I want Fisto! to be Good, Varied and Funny. Which is what I want everything to be- even a sandwich! Sandwiches are already funny, but when they have high quality, varied ingredients, they become...Fisto!
*hack sput*
That was the sound of me choking on my own pretentiousness. But for the record, I would like to make Fisto! the adjective for all high quality...things, because then I can just slap it on a T-Shirt and wait for the money to come to me.
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