8 things about L.A. and the Internet

Web developer-designer Jonathan Grubb moved here from San Francisco eight months ago to work in Hollywood and has some observations about our relationship with the web. Here's a sample, minus any of the picking apart and posturing that Angelenos (especially bloggers) typically do when observed:

1 - Blogging is for nerds. Having a blog is still considered nerdy, which I still think is kinda funny because, you know, 3 billion people have blogs now.

2 - Blogging is different when there are famous people around.
This is probably the main reason I haven’t been blogging. Most of my friends here are in the entertainment business, so any social gathering is attended by a variety of producers, writers, actors, musicians, artists, and the occasional startup CEO. So how do you write a blog post about a typical night out and avoid having it read like a bad tabloid? Saying “I hung out with [actor name]” will pretty much always sound like bragging. Plus nobody else has a website, so if you want to make it clear who you’re talking about you have to link to their IMDB page, which also looks a lot like bragging to everyone outside Los Angeles. I mean, I feel like a douchebag just talking about it.
Then some people actually are famous enough to be watched by tabloids, so anything you say about them or any photo you post of them has the potential to become gossip fodder. All the starlets love having their photo taken, but if hanging out with you feels like work I’m guessing you won’t be invited to the next party.

3 - Everybody in LA wants a website.
It’s fun to be here for this transition, to watch the whole entertainment industry turn toward the internet one person at a time. Even people who we just on strike over internet distribution rights have never heard of Hulu, and when I show it to them they’re blown away. And I’m talking about the people who are actually on the shows on Hulu — they’ve never heard of it. As soon as they see it they understand that the internet is the future (which I also think is funny since the internet is actually the present) and they need a web strategy.

How many cred points does he lose for insisting that 7) There is no free wi-fi and 8) everyone here uses a Mac?