“What? Yes he is!”
“No, he isn’t. For real.”
“He’s still writing blogs!”
“Yeah, but no one reads them.”
“Wait, I read them!”
“None of my customers read him, so he’s not a writer.”
“Just because he doesn’t write for your audience doesn’t mean that he isn’t read, you moron.”
“I’ve never seen any movie he’s written, or any TV shows, or comic books. So he’s not a real writer.”
“Did he ever claim to be a writer of movies or TV?”
“No, but that doesn’t matter. People watch movies and TV and read comic books. If he doesn’t write for those media, he’s not a writer.”
“Wait, just because he doesn’t write for every possible use case doesn’t mean he’s not a writer.”
“It does if he’s not widely adopted.”
“What are you talking about? Lots of people use his stuff.”
“No, they just use his stuff at the first level, and then move on from there. It’s not like they use him, end-to-end, for their complete understanding of their solution.”
“Look, just because he writes in one particular medium doesn’t mean that he’s not extremely useful for what he intended to do.”
“Still doesn’t mean that he’s a writer. It means he’s a niche player and not everyone understands him. He’s too complicated.”
“The people who understand the big picture understand him, and know exactly when to use his talent.”
“Doesn’t matter. There are other ways of getting the same thing done.”
“Not true. If you think that, then you really don’t understand Enrico’s value at all.”
“Not even Enrico’s partners use him. Sure, maybe one or two use him, but others don’t support him at all.”
“Now you’re just talking out your ass.”
“Well, he’s not a successful writer, and therefore he’s not a writer.”
“What criteria are you using for success? You haven’t mentioned any at all.”
“I don’t have to identify criteria. I’m going on my own observations.”
“But it’s so easy to prove you wrong. You have no criteria, you have no usage statistics, you’re wrong in your assumptions, and this comes completely out of the blue. You’ve set up strawman arguments that have nothing to do with anything, and don’t even support the arguments you do make. In short, you’re only trying to get link-bait to rally people who already feel the same way you do. You’re not even trying to pretend to be useful here, are you?”
“No, but at least The Register agrees with me.”
“You must be so proud.”
[written with love and respect to fellow blogger Enrico Signoretti]