'Why would you want to write about things that hardly anybody cares about over and over again?'

The Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, a haven for ventriloquist dummies, is one of the countless subject that nobody gives a shit about, at least until I write about them. Then they tend to.

      As a rule, I try to let the commenters on my blog post comment, and not get involved in the discussion unless there is some question I'm in a position to answer. I've had my say; now the readers get theirs.
      But sometimes questions are raised that merit my involvement. Such as this, after Friday's post on museums, from Bill:

Question,

There's two different kinds of people which one are you?

When you go to a place That's open to the public say a restaurant or a museum for instance and there's almost nobody else there do you say to yourself I'm so lucky I'm so smart nobody else came here out of the 7 billion people on earth I'm the only one here lucky me or do you realize that no one else gives a s*** and that's why you're in there alone because it's of no interest to anyone else?

You are a very fine writer most of the time you write about things that a fair number of people care about why on earth would you want to write about things that hardly anybody cares about over and over again?
Are you writing for you or are you writing for us?

I know that's more than one question but I figured you got to write about something

     In another mood, I might not have even posted that — the "I'm so lucky I'm so smart" is nearly an accusation — I'm an arrogant bastard — the standard MAGA mind trick of imagining something stupid and then projecting the thought into the mind of people they hate. "I'm lucky I'm so smart" is not a thought I have often, certainly not compared to, "I'm lucky I blundered here through blind fate, despite the fact that I didn't want to come here because I never want to go anywhere."
    But he said something complimentary. And that "Write about things that hardly anybody cares about over and over again" is fairly accurately. 
     I considered, and answered on the blog this way:

That's a valid question. The short answer is: I'm writing for me, absolutely, 100 percent. The fact that other people who aren't myself want to read it is a continuing marvel. As far as the nobody gives a shit aspect, I would reply with a question: 1) "Who appointed you their spokesman?" and then make an observation: "And yet you're here." But this seems a topic worthy of expansion, so I'll write tomorrow's blog post about it. Thanks for asking.

     The reader preference feedback loop is the bedrock of much social media — you click on a video of a turtle being cut out of a net by a diver, and suddenly your feed is inundated with aquatic animal rescue, Artificial Intelligence thinking, "More animal rescue!" 

      And we worry AI is going to take over the world.

      "Give the lady what she wants," was the slogan for Marshal Field's. Instead, I see myself as a sifter. I go to these very dull and ignored subjects that for some reason catch my attention, dig up handfuls of facts regarding them and toss them onto my fine-mesh sieve of a mind. Then begin to shake. Out drops the parts that not only aren't dull, but interesting. Those, I share.

    I'm the guy who, 30 years ago, wrote a chapter in my book on the National Spelling Bee. This was before all the novels and plays — in fact, I like to think I had a small hand in creating the literary bee genre. The spelling bee was an obscure and strange American institution that got grudgingly reported on and generally ridiculed at the end of May. I followed a girl through a year of the bee, beginning in her middle school, then proceeding to  state, and ending at the national bee in Washington, D.C.

     The chapter, called "Shiver Like Rhesus Monkeys" is one of my favorite pieces. It gives every word my champion, Sruti Nadimpalli, received in a year of the bee, but is never dull, and others joined me in that estimation.  Granta, the esteemed London literary quarterly, republished it on their cover.

    Returning to Bill's question, my writing about things nobody cares about it not an accident. I set out to do that. Because the things people do care about — sports, celebrities, today's political crisis — are already covered like a damp shirt by a thousand other writers. Why join the scrum?    To me, the greatest accolade is to walk an untrodden path. And while people don't care about the topics before I address them, by the time I'm done, they care more than they did before. Sometimes a lot more.

     I loved visiting Neenah Foundry to watch manhole covers being made because it was a dream of mine, and took me about five years of badgering to get them to agree, and because what I found there was gold, well, okay, iron, but you get my point. Before the story ran, I took the time to check the Sun-Times, Tribune and Daily News files, and found that, in the 100 years Neenah has been making manhole covers for the city, nobody from the Chicago press had ever found a way to drive up there and write about the process. Not once. I was the first. That, to me, is something to be proud of, to be that guy, the guy who asked Cologuard, "Who opens the jar?" For many subjects, I'm the only one who wrote a particular story in the Chicago press over the past 40 years — the social lives of transvestites. A factory making table pads. What it's like to visit a dominatrix. The fact that nobody has written before, or since, and no reader was waiting for the answer, isn't a reason to pause. It's a reason to hurry forward. A plaudit. Icing on the cake.

    Does that help, Bill? Because if you don't find this stuff interesting, nobody is putting a gun to your heads. As I tell sometimes tell people who complain: But I don't write this for people who don't like it. There must be stuff you like. Go find that. Because I'm certainly not changing to suit the displeased.