The Second Annual Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree

OR: the DIY Renaissance

photo cred: my dad

We are currently living through the greatest experiment humankind has ever tried on itself, an experiment called the internet. As a species, we’ve done some wacky things before—domesticating wolves, planting seeds in the ground, having sex with Neanderthals, etc.—but all of those played out over millennia, whereas we’re kinda doing this one in a single lifetime.

So far the results are, I would say, mixed. But the weirdest part is that most people act like they’re spectators to this whole thing, like, “Oh, I have nothing to do with the outcome of this species-wide experiment, that’s up to other people. Hope it turns out good!” That sentiment makes no sense, because the internet is us. There are no sidelines there. Whatever you write, read, like, forward, comment on, subscribe to, pay for—that thing gets bigger. So if this experiment is gonna work, it’s because we make it work.

In her new book, the historian Ada Palmer argues that what made the Renaissance different was that “people said it was different, believed it was different, and claimed and felt that they were part of a project the transform the world on an unprecedented scale.”

Well, I feel that way right now. If you do too, let’s make a Renaissance.

THE BIG BLOG BLOCK PARTY

The blogosphere has a particularly important role to play, because now more than ever, it’s where the ideas come from. Blog posts have launched movements, coined terms, raised millions, and influenced government policy, often without explicitly trying to do any of those things, and often written under goofy pseudonyms. Whatever the next vibe shift is, it’s gonna start right here.

The villains, scammers, and trolls have no compunctions about participating—to them, the internet is just another sandcastle to kick over, another crowded square where they can run a con. But well-meaning folks often hang back, abandoning the discourse to the people most interested in poisoning it. They do this, I think, for three bad reasons.

One: lots of people look at all the blogs out there and go, “Surely, there’s no room for lil ol’ me!” But there is. Blogging isn’t like riding an elevator, where each additional person makes the experience worse. It’s like a block party, where each additional person makes the experience better. As more people join, more sub-parties form—now there are enough vegan dads who want to grill mushrooms together, now there’s sufficient foot traffic to sustain a ring toss and dunk tank, now the menacing grad student next door finally has someone to talk to about Heidegger. The bigger the scene, the more numerous the niches.

Two: people will keep to themselves because they assume that blogging is best left to the professionals, as if you’re only allowed to write text on the internet if it’s your full-time job. The whole point of this gatekeeper-less free-for-all is that you can do whatever you like. Wait ten years between posts, that’s fine! The only way to do this wrong is to worry about doing it wrong.

And three: people don’t want to participate because they’re afraid no one will listen. That’s certainly possible—on the internet, everyone gets a shot, but no one gets a guarantee. Still, I’ve seen first-time blog posts go gangbusters simply because they were good. And besides, the point isn’t to reach everybody; most words are irrelevant to most people. There may be six individuals out there who are waiting for exactly the thing that only you can write, and the internet has a magical way of switchboarding the right posts to the right people.

If that ain’t enough, I’ve seen people land jobs, make friends, and fall in love, simply by posting the right words in the right order. I’ve had key pieces of my cognitive architecture remodeled by strangers on the internet. And the party’s barely gotten started.

But I get it—it takes a little courage to walk out your front door and into the festivities, and it takes some gumption to meet new people there. That’s why I’m running the Second Annual Experimental History Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree.

THE SECOND ANNUAL EXPERIMENTAL HISTORY BLOG POST COMPETITION, EXTRAVAGANZA, AND JAMBOREE

Submit your best unpublished blog post, and if I pick yours, I’ll send you real cash money and I’ll tell everybody I know how great you are.

You can see last year’s winners and honorable mentions here. They included: self-experiments, travelogues, tongue-in-cheek syllabi, reviews of books that don’t exist, literary essays, personal reveries, and one very upsetting post about picking your nose. The authors were sophomores, software engineers, professors, filmmakers, public health workers, affable Midwesterners, and straight up randos and normies. So there’s no one kind of thing I’m looking for, and no one kind of person I’m looking to.

That said, if you’re looking for some inspiration, here are some triumphs of the form:

• Book Reviews: On the Natural Faculties, The Gossip Trap, Progress and Poverty, all of The Psmith’s Bookshelf

• Deep Dives: Dynomight on air quality and air purifiers, Higher than the Shoulders of Giants, or a Scientist’s History of Drugs, How the Rockefeller Foundation Helped Bootstrap the Field of Molecular Biology, all of Age of Invention

• Big Ideas: Ads Don’t Work That Way, On Progress and Historical Change, Meditations on Moloch, Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail, 10 Technologies that Won’t Exist in 5 Years

• Personal Stories/Gonzo Journalism: No Evidence of Disease, It-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named, adventures with the homeless people outside my house, My Recent Divorce and/or Dior Homme Intense, The Potato People

• Scientific Reports/Data Analysis: Lady Tasting Brine, Fahren-height, A Chemical Hunger, The Mind in the Wheel, all of Experimental Fat Loss, all of The Egg and the Rock

• How-to and Exhortation: The Most Precious Resource Is Agency, How To Be More Agentic, Things You’re Allowed to Do, Are You Serious?, 50 Things I Know, On Befriending Kids

• Good Posts Not Otherwise Categorized: The biggest little guy, Baldwin in Brahman, The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel, Bay Area House Parties (1, 2, 3, etc.), Alchemy is ok, Ideas Are Alive and You Are Dead, If You’re So Smart Why Can’t You Die?, A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox

And of course:

• Last year’s winners: We’re not going to run out of new anatomy anytime soon, The Best Antibiotic for Acne is Non-Prescription, and Medieval Basket Weaving

(By the way, if you have some all-time great blog posts, please leave them in the comments! I’d love to expand this list.)

HOW 2 APPLY

• Paste your post into a Google Doc.

• VERY IMPORTANT STEP: Change the sharing setting is “Anyone with the link”. This is not the default setting, and if you don’t change it, I won’t be able to read your post.

• Submit it here.

PRIZES WOW

First place: $500

Second place: $250

Third place: $100

I’ll also post an excerpt of your piece on Experimental History and heap praise upon it, and I’ll add your blog to my list of Substack recommendations for the next year. You’ll retain ownership of your writing, of course.

RULES 2 LIVE BY

• Only unpublished posts are eligible. As fun as it would be to read every blog post ever written, I want to push people to either write something new or finish something they’ve been sitting on for too long. You’re welcome to publish your post after you submit it. If you win, I’ll reach out beforehand and ask you for a direct link to your post so I can include it in mine.

• One entry per person. Multiple authors is fine.

• There’s technically no word limit, but if you send me a 100,000 word treatise I probably won’t finish it.

• You don’t need to have a blog to submit, but if you win and you don’t have one, I will give you a rousing speech about why you should start one.

• Previous top-three winners are not eligible to win again, but honorable mentions are.

• Uhhh otherwise don’t break any laws I guess??

Submissions are due July 1. Submit here.