Dear Vanity Fair...

Blimey!  It's been rather a while since I blogged.  I blame 7 Reasons, which takes up most of my writing time, but is excellent fun.  Anyway, this evening I wrote a letter to the editors of Vanity Fair about something on their website which, as it both amused and flummoxed me, I thought I'd post here.  Perhaps someone out there on the other side of this screen (yes that's you, the reader) will have - or be able to speculate fancifully about - the answer to my question.


Dear Editor(s),

I have a question about your website.  Why does your Follow Us box contain a blank speech bubble?  I have been staring at it for several minutes now and can think of no earthly explanation as to why it's there.  A blank speech bubble has no apparent association with any of the various media mentioned in the box's text (Twitter, Facebook,Tumblr or your podcast via iTunes) so what is its purpose?  Unless it was put there to visually convey a message along the lines of shut up and look at our stuff, its inclusion is perplexing.

I have attached a screen capture of the box so that you too may stare at it in bewilderment.

I would be grateful if you could furnish me with an explanation of its presence as I fear that it may cause me to lose sleep or - even worse - discuss it at length with friends and relations.  Yours sincerely,

Marc Fearns

7 Reasons

If you're getting a sense of deja vu, you read the wrong blog first.  If you're not getting a sense of deja vu and are now a bit confused, allow me to explain.

I'm launching a new blog tomorrow, in collaboration with Jonathan Lee of jollyinterestingstuff.blogspot.com/.  It's called 7 Reasons and is based around a simple concept.  Every day we will provide you with 7 Reasons.  They could be 7 Reasons that all water should be sparkling, 7 Reasons that otters are better than cats, 7 Reasons that women should stay out of the loft (I'm definitely doing that one), the scope of this blog will be almost without limit.

It's a high-concept blog, but one that we think should be consistently entertaining, amusing and occasionally even relevant and topical.

We hope that you come and join us here.  We welcome all suggestions, comments, criticism (of Jon), ideas and contributions.  We can also be found on Twitter.

We start at 11am tomorrow.  If you enjoy it, please publicise it via Facebook, Twitter, word of mouth, or even pushing notes under your neighbours' doors if you're less technically minded, we'd really like to get this out to a large audience.  Obviously, as a reader of my blog you already have special 7 Reasons silver status, you get gold status for contributing and platinum status for contributing and publicising.   Now I'm getting deja vu.