Not alarming weirdness, mind you. Regular old weirdness. Basically, what happens was as follows: one of my favorite Twitter accounts (@3YearLetterman) finally put his magnum opus Not Some Random Clown: A Youth Football Coaching Legend’s Rise to Glory up on Kindle*. Obviously I had to review it, so I did. Five stars, naturally.
The weird thing was that it took four days for the review to post, while other people’s reviews went up right away. And it’s not because my review was over-the-top, because it was the exact opposite. Some of the reviews that did get posted right away were steeped in what the kids** call ‘the lore.’
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy or anything, but it’s weird.
Moe Lane
*He’s pegged the price of the paperback at a level where he doesn’t get any revenue from it, currently has the Kindle version available for free, and will only sell the Kindle version in the future for 99 cents because Amazon won’t sell it indefinitely for free (because, you know, they’re a business and everything). This isn’t about the money. It’s about the trolling. I’m no slouch at that sort of thing, but this guy is the guy who the trollers follow for sheer aesthetic enjoyment.
**The kids actually do call it ‘the lore.’ Lore is a big thing with them, in fact. If you want to sell stories to the younger generations, make sure to come up with a historical appendix, and put it somewhere where they can find it.
The lore is Tolkien’s greatest innovation.