I made the mistake of buying Anathem, which is way more involved than I have time for at the moment. I need to find a lighter novel of Stephenson so that I can get used to his style first.

Zodiac is very light. Sex, drugs, violence, and environmentalism.

Ha! I knew it! I'd love to see a Venn diagram of PG fans vs Stephenson fans. My guess is that the union is very large indeed...

Funny how your original post points out how the author is creepily following PG's life, and now you implicate that members of the forum are "PG Fans".

I don't understand. I am unabashedly a fan of PG's writings. That makes me a PG fan, I suppose. There is a pretty wide gap, though, between being a PG fan and writing a blog post entitled "My Love, Hate, Love Again, Affair with Paul Graham". You disagree?

I don't disagree that there is a difference in the behavior between you and the author.

This behavior is not different in quality, though, just in quantity. I think that when you call yourself a "fan" and spend your time "wondering about the intersection between PG's fans and Stephenson's fans", you are expressing the same kind of devotion shown by the author.

So yes, there is a gap between you and the author. But it is a relative one. And I happen to think it is funny to see people judging someone else's behavior even when they show the same behavior. It's no different than pill-happy moms worried about their kids using drugs, claiming there is a huge difference between prescription drugs and whatever-kids-take-these-days.

Oh come on. I used the word "fan" once, to make a silly point about crossovers between cultural totem 1 (startup culture/ this place / PG etc) and totem 2 (neal stephenson). I've never said it before, I don't "spend my time" brooding on it, it was just a throwaway line.

I think it's a qualitative difference, but I guess I can't prove it. However, I didn't want to come across as judgemental so I apologise for that.

You mean intersection?

Oops. Yes, I did mean that. Sorry.

Sigh, I never know what to do now. Do I go and correct my original comment, and thus rewrite history, and make you look silly, correcting something that isn't wrong? Or maybe correct it and leave an "update:" notice, which looks presumptive - as if anyone could give a shit about my edits. Or I could just leave it alone, wrong as it is, and take my lumps - I should have been right the first time.

I choose the last option. I wonder how others think about such things.

For a reader, I think the last option makes sense. This is essentially a dialog. When somebody corrects you when you speak you can say "Yes, I take it back" but you can't go back and actually edit the original.

Yeah, I agree 100%.

Correcting typos, refining your point - that's what "edit" is for. But going back and changing things so you were right smacks of rewriting history and, to me, is against the unwritten rules.

Check out the books he co-authored:

Interface

The Cobweb

I actually like these better than all his single-authorships. They do feel lighter.