Him Again

Check out the Wikipedia page for “Eric Ries” and here, in part, is what you’ll read:

“Ries is widely recognized as a ‘Silicon Valley guru,’ and his blog posts, entrepreneurial advice, and books are frequently featured in world news publications such as Reuters, CNBC, MSNBC, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, The New York Times, Inc magazine, Forbes, and Wired. He has also hosted several sold-out conferences, and advises the Lean Startup Machine workshop series, now in over 20 cities.”

If you think that doesn’t sound quite like the obscure, decidedly low-tech blogger whose words you’re reading right now—the guy who’s not once been featured in any “world news publications” and hasn’t even, in fact, gotten around to posting anything in this lonely space in nearly a month—well, kudos on the detective work, Sherlock.

The fact is, while I’m home sick from work today with a cold and am decidedly not taking advantage of this opportunity to tweet my nonexistent entrepreneurial insights or send texts to my nonexistent network of business contacts, the other Eric Ries likely is spending today lecturing to packed halls of rapt acolytes, preparing new bestsellers for publication and patching into conference calls from first class as he jets between major cities.  

Does the description “The Dynamic Doppelganger” ring a bell? Probably not, because even if you’re one of the handful (and I do mean handful) of faithful readers who’s been visiting this site since its inception a few years back, this Eric Ries’s writings clearly haven’t the resonance of the other one’s. But anyway, on September 10, 2010, in a post on this site headlined “The Dynamic Doppelganger,” I wrote about the other Eric Ries’s complete and utter domination of our Web presence. I’d appeared just once in the first 400 Google searches, at number 359, I wrote at the time—and that was for an article I’d written for an employer’s publication way back in 1999.

I shudder to think how far down in a Google search I’d finally appear now, and I’ve no frankly interest in finding out. Silicon Valley Eric Ries's star has only brightened in the nearly two and a half years since my post, while my obscurity has been quite steady. In fact, the younger Ries (born in 1979, according to Wikipedia) even invaded my physical territory not long ago, giving a talk at nearby George Mason University. And apparently he’s intensified his marketing efforts, too, because a couple of different work colleagues of my mine recently received unsolicited mass e-mails from him. In both of those cases, the recipient asked me if I knew that I share a name with a guy who couldn’t be much less like me. I responded by e-mailing them the link to my blog post, which I'd considered to be a minor masterpiece of self-effacing outrage.

Surely, I thought, the response would be, “Entrepreneurial Eric Ries may be rich and famous, but you’re hilarious!” They might also note, I smugly imagined, that I’m a better writer. And, should they be curious enough to watch one of my namesake’s many YouTube videos, they 'd perhaps even opine that I’m better-looking.

What happened, however, was exactly nothing. No response at all. No, “Great post!” Not even, “Ha!” What was I to draw from the silence? Was this an echo of the saying, “Those who can’t do, teach”—only, “Those who have no talent or drive, sadly snark about those who do”? Talk about deflating.

I’ve tried a couple of times to engage the other Eric Ries in dialogue. I found an e-mail address for him and sent him the “Dynamic Doppelganger” post. When I heard nothing, about a year later I tried again. While I don’t remember precisely what I wrote I either case, in my own mind I was so charming that he couldn’t help but respond—whether to thank me for a good chuckle or, more self-importantly, to offer me entrepreneurial tips for raising my Web profile. But I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that he had better things to do. You don’t build a publishing and public-speaking empire, after all, by taking time out to engage every gnat that buzzes by your ear.

I’ll confess, anyway, that the only reason I wanted the other Eric Ries to respond was because I figured that I could readily fashion another blog post from his reply. It’d be easy to simply riff off of his reply. “Easy” being as important a word in my lexicon as “enterprising” no doubt is in his.

See, just because the other Eric Ries’s ubiquitousness gets under my skin doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that he has no doubt worked hard for his success, and that I lack not only his talents, but his interests and motivations, too. That’s why I’m sitting here snuffling and clearing my throat in my smelly pajamas at mid-day, while nevertheless rather enjoying my obscure little life, at the same time that the other Eric Ries is looking all put together and engaging appreciative audiences or sharing his insights on CNBC.

Well, let him go out and beat the world, I say. Right now there’s a couch that’s calling my name.