So, I think this piece I wrote on the Huffington Post (and reprinted below) is fairly important. Or at least, it could end up being important, if other big authors understand what I’m saying and end up doing something similar. This is very much the same thing I talked about on TechCrunch TV last week.

I just posted this piece in the Huffington Post, reprinted here:

I was at dinner the other night, and got a question I get all the time:

“What was it like to play basketball with Obama? What’s he like?”

Here we go again, another Obama basketball question. First, let me explain how I even knew Barack Obama:

Originally posted on Tim Ferriss’s blog:

I first met Tim when he came to my SXSW presentation (about turning a blog into a book) to pick my brain about what had worked for me. I explained to him everything I did, and he loved the advice so much he bought me a coffee. Thanks, big spender.

[Tim: my very first encounter with Tucker is captured here on film. And, Tucker, you’re most welcome.]

We stayed in touch, and Tim called me up the other day and asked me to write a post for his blog that would outline to his readers all the things I explained to him years ago at SXSW. I told Tim that there was no need for a long post; in fact, my success could be explained in a Tweet: “Because Tucker is really fucking awesome.”

Tim politely laughed, took a deep breath, and explained to me–in the least ego-crushing way possible–that that would make a crappy blog post. He asked me to dissect and analyze what I did, and then write about it in a way his readers could utilize for their own writing.

[Forgive the raw and unedited nature of this post, and that it’s a few weeks late, but I’m still on tour for .]

I’ve had a ton of bullshit forwarded to me, but in the eight years my website has been up, there are two things that have been sent to me more than anything else: Maddox’s original “I am better than your kids” post, and Karen Owen’s mock thesis, known as “The Duke Fuck List.”

[If you don’t know what the Duke Fuck List is, stop reading this now, it’ll be pointless. If you want a quick breakdown of the facts, get them here. To see the actual unedited Powerpoint slides, get them here.]

And everyone who sent it to me wanted to know what I thought about it. Not just randoms either; a lot of media came to me for comment. I usually ignore media requests for commentary (much to the frustration of my PR guy, Jeff Chassen), but when Nightline asked me to do an extensive interview about it, I agreed, because I figured this would be a perfect way to get my thoughts on record without having to spend the time writing out something long and exhaustive.