Masonic Traveler, Burning Taper, Chris Hodapp, Tom Accuosti : Can you feel the Power!?

How did we get so much power? And, once we recognize the power, how do we choose to accept the responsibility? Would Benjamin Franklin approve?

What the hell is going on?

I've recently read some biographies of Nicola Tesla. He had many great visions and, one of them, was the idea that once everyone on the entire planet could communicate with each other instantaneously we would be able to achieve universal peace and brotherhood.

A fantastic idea, no doubt, but still we end up here today with the Internet. Is this what he had in mind? Is is something better, or something worse? All I can say for sure is the man is well represented in the medium his visions brought to him.

I have this theory that I write better blog posts after I have had a six-pack then when I have not. I am embarrassed to report that during every blog post I have made in the past week I have been dead sober. Fortunately, for me if not for you, I have enjoyed a delicious six pack of 'Flying Dog Pale Ale' this evening and there are thoughts flitting through my brain.

The source of these thoughts stem from the fact that just this morning I received a comment on my blog from the editor of a magazine that I decided to post a commentary about. What I find interesting is the fact that had I actually bothered to write a letter to the editor of the magazine, first of all he would never have received it in time and, second, even if I had sent it by email, it would have been just one amongst a hundred other letters. Since my commentary was highly sarcastic and generally rude it most likely would not have been printed and almost certainly have never received a personal response from the features editor of the magazine.

But, that is not what I did at all. Instead I made and obnoxious opinionated rant on an obscure pseudo-Freemason themed weblog. This morning I found that this tiny bit of precious troll-bait landed the biggest fish of all, a personal response from the features editor of the magazine. Heck, I even managed to get a rise out of the guy as he used the 'don't blame the messenger' excuse for presenting an article that failed to convince the (paying) reader why it was worth their time and consideration to contemplate.

Yet, I digress. This post is about:

The Burning Taper

The Masonic Traveler

The Tao of Masonry

Freemasons for Dummies

and

King Solomon's Lodge

Now, let's do the math together. Let us say there are roughly four million Freemasons in the world. Considering that, on the Internet, there are only about twenty or so sites which consistently post on the topic on a regular basis, most of which are heavily promoted by the blog aggregator 'King Solomon's Lodge', collectively we each represent a large voice for Freemasonry world-wide.

By this math, on average, each time one of the top twenty blogs makes a post they effectively 'represent' 200,000 Freemasons in the world. Of course, that is not the case at all. We each just represent our own personal opinions, but the way that it reflected across the world wide web creates an impression which is far out of scope of our individual opinions.

Because, in the past, I have written several articles on topics relating to 'why to become a Freemason', 'what kind of people become Freemasons', or even the contrary position 'why not to become a Freemason' I am now generally one of the top hits on any Internet search engine for similar or related search phrases.

Imagine that? Any time someone on the planet earth types in a search phrase along the lines of 'reasons to become a Freemason' they come to my website either as one of the top results?!?

What kind of responsibility do we bear for these impressions?

I have to be frank. I am game designer at heart. When I started writing a blog, a part of me treats the entire thing as a game to 'win'. Over time I realized that one of the biggest things that draws traffic to a site is photographs. As I started posting numerous photographs I eventually started embedding ever more hyperlinks and notations into each one. Today I draw hundreds of hits to my website everyday, the bulk of which are based on image search results. The top keywords for searches are always variations on phrases related to the question of 'why a person should become a Freemason'.

As of this exact moment the top hits to this website come from the following sources.

#1 hit, which is of two lovely guests sitting in my hot tub.

#2 hit, which I am *very* pleased to see is a high resolution image I posted from a work or art by my good friend Curtis Cannell who, sadly, passed away about a year and a half ago.

#3 hit , which I am kind of proud is a work of art I did a long time ago.

I'm not sure what the exact formula is, but if you provide enough active content, and have your blog hosted by the Google owned 'Blogger' you can rise to the top of the search results rankings within days of positing a new topic.

I shot my mouth off on a topic of alleged serious consideration by cosmologists only to be one of the top twenty search results on Google within 24 hours!??

Do we have a responsibility when we shoot our mouths off in public? Does the power of the search engine enter into our thinking as we rant on whatever topic enters our beer addled brains on any given night of the week?

I admit, in large part I have treated this entire thing as a bit of a game. Sure, I want to make sure that when you type 'John Ratcliff' into Google I am the #1 hit result, even though there are probably a hundred people named 'John Ratcliff' in the world; and even more in history. It turns out that I have such a lock on my own name that my current pet peeve is that every time you type 'John Ratcliff' into Google it asks if you actually meant 'John Radcliffe' instead. Eventually, my goal it to cause Google to stop asking that presumptuous question.

All games aside, a serious question remains. If we top twenty Freemason blogs on the Internet somehow 'represent', on average, 200,000 Freeman's apiece in the world simply because we are the only goobers stupid enough to shoot our mouths off, do we hold a responsibility in what we say?

Me, I'm not so sure. I'm thinking about posting some more photographs of scantily clad women so I can earn enough Google Adsense revenue to buy myself another six pack of beer.

What do you think?