Videogum recently posted the best animal videos of the year. Which was your personal favorite?
Salsa Dog. And my dog.
Your dog has a popular Twitter feed. What makes her so appealing?
I think her appeal is that she is very hilarious.
Speaking of that, how has the ascendancy of Twitter affected your job?
It's just another thing to drain the life force from all of us. That might be a little dramatic. I mean, it's fun and relatively easy, but it is all starting to become a bit much. Admittedly, I'm a bit more "plugged in" than some people because of the nature of my job, but I currently run three Twitter feeds, two Tumblrs, a full-time blog, and am working on setting up a new website for myself. On top of that you have Facebook and email and whatever else. At a certain point I should just chop my head off and sew a computer onto my neck. Save an extra 30-milliseconds a day doing whatever.
Was there an overarching theme to this year's internet offerings? Did it in any way reflect The Way We Live Now, like Great American Novelist Jonathan Franzen's bestselling novelFreedom? Is there one video in particular that encapsulates the year's themes?
I think 2010 was actually kind of a boring year for the Internet. It was in kind of a holding pattern. Blogs are entrenched now. Everyone has a Twitter. And I don't understand why Facebook is getting all this breathless attention. 500,000,000 people were using it BEFORE the movie came out. It's a pretty well-established entity at this point. There really were very few surprises this year. Although, a year is a long time. Like, I already forgot about self-potato? I think "Self-Potato" probably best reflects the way we live now. (Huh?)
What was your favorite Summer Jam this year?
Haha. Yikes. You mean the mixtape of exclusively awful songs? I did genuinely like the mash-up of Lil Wayne and the Office theme music, but that's mostly because Lil Wayne is incredible.
Any predictions for the future?
The Internet is constantly evolving towards the inevitable moment when it is just a Top 10 list of the Top 10 lists of animals wearing casts. Can't wait!
