Blogging Is Over

If you still don't believe 2005 is just 1995 with suckier amenities and no prospects for getting rich, consider this: Captain Morgan, the never-popular rum mascot and graffiti artist, now has his own blog. More than a decade into this whole web thing, companies are still making ham-handed attempts to get jiggy with online fads that their consultants are no doubt spotting as "emerging trends in the 21-35 demo." It's almost as if years and years of failed attempts to translate corporate logos into exciting digital avatars had been wiped away. I'll bet Diageo North America even had to pay some late-90s-style big bucks to secure thecaptainsblog.com as its URL (in the process referencing a TV show that's almost as forgotten as the phrase "content is king"). Believe it or not, there was a time when making fun of this kind of promotional shovelware seemed like a service to capitalism, an attempt to speed creative destruction along. Now it's just sad.

Still, I was hoping the Captain might actually try and "fit in" with the kids from the blog. I've never had a very clear take on The Captain as a character—does he talk like a pirate? I'd hoped he might bring some salty phraseology to the blogging circlejerk: Aargh! Me hardies at Powerline wield a sharp cutlass at the idiotarians! Avast! The Instapundit makes the Islamofascists walk the plank, and Atrios responds!

But The Captain is too lazy even to do that. You get the same flapdoodle you'd have found back when Bob Dole was running for Prez: Stoopid made-up x-treme sports ("Surfing Detroit-style means pulling your best moves on a boogie board in an inflatable pool, surf music blasting in the background, with the crowd throwing pitchers of water on you (for the sake of realism)"); heterosexual panic ("Many's the time I've been tricked into seeing a chick flick by a macho-sounding title"); drippy drink-responsibly hadiths ("I always make sure I've got the phone number of a cab company when I head out for the evening"), and plenty of shoutouts to Captain Morgan Rum! Come to think of it, The Captain may have distilled blogging to its essence: pure self-promotion.

Sadly, The Captain already appears to have stopped updating, which may be the surest sign of progress yet: In today's free market, a bad idea gets the bum's rush faster than ever.