31 2002 |
A look at his blog today emphasizes this -- there are two little pictures, submitted by readers of his website. At first glance, I thought they were pictures of kottke himself, what with the short hair, sideburns, and the geeky build of a twentysomething dot-com survivor. No: these are the followers of kottke, members of the society which kottke represents. This isn't a random occurance of overlapping style; a goodly sized chunk of users out there are almost indistinguishable from kottke himself. Even those who are unable to achieve a high level of kottkeness still reflect his influence, whether in format, style, or fashion.
So much on the internet is modeled after kottke; writing style, photography style, minimalistic layout of straight lines and solid colors. For whatever reason, he is the alpha and the omega of what a netizen is: a product of what the online society is, and in turn he is copied by those who aspire to be part of this society. In this way, kottke is a meme in and of himself, something that's part of society as a whole. His influence is so ingrained as to become hard to tell where the separation between individual and collective begins.