Become a Celebrity! Change Your Life! Regret Your Decision or Let It Launch You Into International Stardom. (And Help Me Out.)

Hello. This is a surprise Friday post. It’s so important and daring, the guy above is stunned into stupefaction.

Six weeks ago, when this venue was born in a swimming pool of urine, I committed myself, in my own mind, to a year. After that, I decided, I would reassess. As it turns out, The Gene Pool (with Invitational) is doing splendidly, significantly better than most new Substacks do: Many readers, many subscribers, many paid subscribers, much participation. The metrics are clear. It’s kind of exciting. Give yourselves a big round of clap.

I am beginning to think this might be far more permanent than I anticipated, and possibly the venue in which I spend a significant part of the rest of my professional life. (I intend to live to 91, though the last couple of years might be spent in benign but unpredictable dementia, which will make The Gene Pool even more interesting.)

To make all of that happen, I need to increase our subscriber base just a bit. Like a Ponzi scheme, this Substack thing thrives on early backers; it has a tessellating effect by creating a vertically expanding, teetering minaret of participation. (Keep that Ponzi comparison to yourself. If asked about it, I will deny having said it and claim I was hacked.)

That means I need to slightly tweak upward the number of paid subscribers. But how? This whole thing seems unseemly to me, begging for bucks. Look at what happens to NPR a few times a year. They abandon their central mission to entertain (I love NPR, which not only has the unfailingly excellent “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” but can make swamp drainage problems in Lesotho sound compelling and yet every so often they spend a week doing unlistenable, boring interviews with themselves about how wonderful they are and what a great bargain they provide, and here’s Megan, our parking lot attendant intern, to explain her gratitude for our professional fabulosity and weekly $350 paycheck.)

How do I beg for money and still entertain? What do I have to offer you in return for new subscriptions? Nothing, I thought initially. My house is not filled with valuable items I could charmingly auction off. (I do have a petrified walrus penis, obtained from Inuits in Alaska, while reporting this story, but it tragically has been gnawed by my dog.) I have a terrible voice; I cannot sing in a benefit concert for The Gene Pool. I’d offer my underpants but there’d be no buyers.

And then I realized I do have something of value to auction off. It’s the only thing I have. I am largely an incompetent at all aspects of life, and not remotely wealthy, but I am an idiot savant at one particular thing. I can write feature stories that explore the meaning of life. I have been doing it for 40 years. I am still the only person who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing (a disgusting boast that will someday end, forcing me to kill the second person who does this. I will then write compellingly about my crime, in a story that will win a third Pulitzer for its stunning honesty and self-awareness, which will put me out of reach, forever. And safely in prison for life, with three hots and a cot. Muhahaha.)

So here’s the deal I am considering.

If you have the will and skill and stamina and contacts and friends and followers and Instagram serfs, or whatever Instagram calls them, enough to exert your influence and nail down 25 new one-year subscriptions to The Gene Pool (50 bucks apiece), I will write a profile of you in The Gene Pool, using all my abilities to make it interesting, revealing, and artistic. Meaning-of-life stuff. Aiming for literature. It could be as short as 150 words, or as long as 2,000. Whatever it takes to reach a truth. I will do it for the first three people who meet the goal.

It will put to a test the central journalistic thesis of my life: that great stories lurk everywhere, in every person, in every place, so long as you have a writer with the skill and persistence to report it and tell it. This was the central thesis of my last book, “One Day,” which Slate called one of the best 50 nonfiction books written in the last quarter century. (If they now say the same thing about someone else’s book, I will kill the author, too. Fourth Pulitzer.)

So, that’s why I’m scared. With this offer, I’m testing my theory of life, and my self-respect and mortal soul are at stake. If I fail, I am Done.

But why should YOU be scared?

Because this has to be beyond ethical reproach. This will not be your profile — it will be about you but by me. You will have no control over it. You will not see it until it is published here. It will not be a hagiography. It will be nuanced. I will interview you at length, but also other people. I will do research. I will treat you as a complex person, like everyone is. My goal, as always, would be to write a story not so much about you but about how you help explain, in large or small measure, some aspect of The Meaning of Life.

Whenever I have embarked on a big complex story that will invade someone’s privacy, I generally tell them the same thing in advance: If I do my job well, you will feel five things. First, that the story is fair. Second, that you will like and be proud of 75 percent of it. Third, that 25 percent of it might make you feel at least a little uncomfortable. Fourth, that you may learn something about yourself you didn’t know. Fifth, you might or might not choose to send it to your ma. There is no predicting.

You would have to agree to that.

So that would be the deal. The logistics are workable — how to verifiably claim credit for new recruits, etc. The three questions I am asking are: Is this a good idea, will anyone be able to do it, and will anyone risk it? Would you? What do you think of it?

I have not yet decided whether to make this offer, though if I do, it will be soon. I want you to help me decide. So I have enabled comments to this post. I will read them all. And maybe comment back.

I have also added this button, just to be a punk:

I hope to hear from you today.