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February 5, 2004
Obsession
By QBlog in
Am I obsessed with this "Quixtar" stuff?
That's a question I've been asking myself a lot recently. Over the past year I've been spending progressively more an more time posting to this site, researching Quixtar and talking to people about Quixtar (either on the phone, via email or in the Forum).
When I first began this blog I spent about an hour or two posting and reading messages every week. That couple of hours quickly became 3 or 4 and now I sometimes spend 3 or 4 hours a day dealing with this Quixtar stuff on some level (thinking about it, posting about it, researching, etc.). And I often ask myself, "WHY?" And while there are usually several answers to that question the one response that pops up the most is that nobody did this for me.
No disrespect to Don, Scott, Ruth, Sidney and the rest but when I was searching for Quixtar info I wanted something fresh, something personable and something NOW. I didn't want to read a bunch of old stories about Amway and boring lawsuits. I just wanted to get honest perceptions from a real person about this "mysterious business" that my wife seemed so excited about. I tried some of the "discussion boards" but had trouble sorting through the chaos to find anything worth reading (I didn't know about MLMSC or the Memory Hole Dreambook then). To make a long story short, I felt very alone.
Since I'm not one to sit around feeling mopey and because I had a desire to read a fresh, vibrant and timely perspective on Quixtar I decided to create this blog. Now, there were other reasons for this blog's creation (detailed in the extensive archives) but the primary one is that I wanted to fill a perceived void on the Web.
Since I started this blog and have invested a LOT of time learning about Quixtar I've come to realize and fully appreciate the value of many sites that I originally avoided. Some of that "old" stuff is extremely informative and those "chaotic discussions" contain some genuine truths. I also understand that different people have different needs. Some people need (and even enjoy) relatively static, well-researched sites while others like something a bit more free-flowing and conversational. It is for those people, people like myself, that I continue posting this blog and dealing with Quixtar stuff. At the risk of sounding overly corny (and to borrow from a popular commercial), This Blog's For You!
See, I can be a real dork sometimes.
Oh, and the answer to my initial question is "Yes. I'm obsessed. But so what? Somebody's gotta do it right?"
Comments
Don,
I'm genuinely honored by your comments. I agree that blogs are shaking things up the way basic Web pages did in the "early days" of the Web. I really wish more people would blog about Quixtar and MLM. I think there's real value in just hearing other observations and opinions about this business.
Mentioning my efforts in the same sentence with Sidney Schwartz is... well... kind of scary to be honest. I look up to him as a truly courageous pioneer who really paved the way for all of us to follow. Without him, would any of this be possible? I don't know. But I hope that I can, in some small way, help advance the continuing and evolving discussion about Quixtar and MLM in general.
And Don, at the risk of souding overly sentimental, you'll probably never know how much you've inspired me to do whatever it is I'm doing. Without your kind and encouraging words early on I really would probably have given up this blog when things got extra rough. So to you I say Thanks.
No offense taken.
Fact is, you've done a great service with this blog. It's in a cutting edge format (blogs are to 2004 what Web Pages were to 1998), your impressions have always been fresh and on-the-spot, you've observed what was went on in Quixtar at the time, and you've linked us to many other blog pages on Quixtar.
In many ways, what you've done is akin to Sidney Schwartz's pages were in the early days of the Web, and what Scott Larsen's web pages are today in the Web Side.
Posted by: Don | February 5, 2004 11:51 PM