#134) How well do you know social media’s newest whipping boy? Take this quiz and find out!

“He deserves to be beaten up in a strip club parking lot, while Bukowski rolls by in a limo and does not notice.”

So went one of many comments about the poetry of 26-year old Collin Andrew Yost, “the most hated poet in Portland.” Since August, when a Twitter user went viral by shaming Yost (“this guy is a PUBLISHED author”) the poet has become a scapegoat for all things hipster. But is the backlash deserved?

To help answer that question, D-Theory presents this interactive quiz. In the spirit of  “Heavy Metal Lyric or Bible Verse” or “Florida, Not Florida” we ask you: are the following the words of the “laureate of American lowlife” Charles Bukowski or Collin Andrew Yost, the literary Rebecca Black of the PNW?

#1)

I am a broken

banjo

I am a telephone wire

strung up in

Toledo, Ohio

#2)

I remember when

I thought sleeping away

half of the day

was a waste of living.

Now I roll out of bed

at a quarter after one

glad I killed

some time

dying.

#3)

Poetry is decaying.

We have slaughtered it.

You are not poetry.

If more than four lines

Loses your attention

Then you are not deserving

Of these thoughts.

#4)

She gave me a lipstick diary

of all her past lovers and

I can’t seem to shake the taste

from my tongue.

#5)

we are always asked

to understand the other person’s

view point

no matter how

out-dated

foolish or

obnoxious.

#6)

the family stinks of Christ

and the American Stock Exchange.

#7)

She’s the pills you’re not supposed

to mix with alcohol.

I’d dodge a bullet for her.

#8)

Van Gogh cut off his ear

gave it to

a prostitute

who flung it away in

extreme

disgust.

Van, whores don’t want

ears

they want

money.

#9)

Our education system tells us

that we can all be

big-ass winners.

it hasn’t told us

about the gutters

or the suicides.

#10)

She plants lipstick stains on my skin like

C-4 ready to blow open my ribcage and

free my heart.

#71) How do you know?

How do you know?

I mean, seriously, how the fuck do you know?

This simple, timeless question was recently brought home to me by a TV commercial.  Like any good commercial, it failed to actually instill the name of the product in my head, but its message resonated with me nevertheless.  An adult is shown some fancy new product he’s supposed to buy and hesitates.  During his hesitation we see him flash black to junior high, when he dumps a tubby blonde girl: “Sorry, Brooklyn, it’s just not working out.”  In another flashback, now at college age, he declines investing in his friend’s startup: “What can you do with just 140 characters?” Which brings us to the present; the implication being that he doesn’t want to pass on yet another thing that will end up being huge.

Apart from its amusing storyline, the commercial has hit home for me on a personal level.  Since starting my hiking blog, www.nobodyhikesinla.com, I have been fortunate to keep the company of dozens of blogging experts.  Counsel that has been given to me about how to successfully monetize the blog includes T-shirts and other swag; creating a mobile phone application; eBooks about the hikes, branching out to other cities (coming soon: http://www.nobodyhikesinwichita.com).

With demeanor ranging from polite to borderline hostile, depending on the intensity of my expert’s pitch to me, I have invariably rejected most of these ideas, not because I want to be difficult, stubborn or ungrateful, but just because in most cases, I don’t feel that the potential for revenue justifies the effort and expense of, say, hiring an app developer or handling (gulp!) physical inventory, that bane of the existence of anyone who has ever tried to develop an online revenue stream.  My hesitation to endorse these ideas is based on information I’ve gathered about my site traffic, link clicks, etc (I have been known to spend hours a few minutes here and there perusing statistics related to my blogs).  While the revenue the site has earned – mainly through advertising; also through affiliation sales, the Nobody Hikes in LA Guidebook and donations – is a little bit short of Fortune 500 status, by breaking the three-digit income threshold, NHLA stands apart from at least 81% of the blogs out there, according to Infographic.

That being said, a part of me has to ask: what if I am wrong?  Are eBooks based on hike writeups the wave of the future?  By passing on these opportunities, will I become the next Nolan Bushnell?  (In the mid ’70s, after founding Atari, Busnhell had an opportunity to invest in a startup created by one of his employees: a certain Steven Paul Jobs.)

History abounds, of course, with stories like this: numerous record producers rejecting the Beatles; board game makers  passing on Monopoly; the Portland Trailblazers drafting Sam Bowie instead of Michael Jordan.  Hell, there’s even one from my own family: in the mid 1960s in New York, my dad and uncle Joe were involved with the city’s thriving folk music scene.  One of the misfits hanging around the fringes was a scruffy kid from Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman, whose presence was a nuisance to everyone, be they veteran musicians who didn’t want him fucking up the songs or young women whom he was trying to bed.  One of the latter category was waiting for my uncle Joe to meet her at a cafe and when he showed up, she was laughing.  “This homeless looking kid tried to hit on me,” she said.  “When I brushed him off, he said, ‘But I’m Bob Dylan!’  I said, ‘Well, I’m here waiting for Joe Lockeretz.'”

To bring it back to my original question, strictly speaking, no, you DON’T know.  You can, however, make sound decisions based on odds and information.  I consider the fear of passing on a great opportunity to be the converse of fears such as being struck by lightning, being attacked by a shark or being in a plane crash.  Just as plane crashes make the news because of how rare they are, stories such as the Beatles’ early rejections make history because of their infrequency.  Yes, it’s inspirational to hear these kinds of tales and their positive messages shouldn’t just be dismissed.  It should just be noted, however, that these events are the exception and should have limited influence on your decisions, investment and otherwise.  And if you do end up on the wrong side of history?  At least you’ll have some good stories for the grandkids.