The Smartest Person I Hate

Sometimes I find it difficult not to despise sheer brilliance. The latest object of my shameful hatred is Frank Warren, the author of PostSecret. He seems like one of those guys who will Google his own name, so Frank, just to be clear, I don't hate you. I just hate the fact that you discovered an innocuous way to get other people to write bestselling books for you.

Mr. Warren's latest PostSecret book, A Lifetime of Secrets, is currently climbing the Amazon Bestseller List. Last time I checked he was #49.

If you are unfamiliar with the business plan at work here, let me run through the genius that is Frank Warren's PostSecret. In exchange for letting you anonymously post secrets on his website (which you do by sending him a regular, snail-mail post card), Frank acquires all the rights to your secrets. His website is completely advertisement-free, and his hit count is over 100,000,000. (My hit count, currently, is at 7). Frank publishes your secrets periodically in bestselling books. Frank is quite wealthy because instead of talking to your pets like most normal people, you went and mailed him a post card with your personal thoughts. Amazing. This is why I hate Frank, although I admire the heck out of him.

Oh, and regarding my hit count, I am fully aware that I get about ten hits a month, and eight of them are me trying to inflate my hit count. But I was always told to write to your intended audience, and I intend that one day people might read this. That is why I ask rhetorical questions in these posts, even though I realize that, for eighty percent of my hits, I am asking myself.