Sunday Letters – New Readers

Dear new readers and Twitter followers,

I emailed a group of my closest friends on Thursday afternoon with a few thoughts. All of them knew I was launching this thing on Friday and had been helping me behind the scenes in various ways. I told them about how scared I was to put myself out there, even if we are just discussing sports and talking about eternally inconsequential things. I told them how much I appreciated their efforts. And I told them about how excited I was to have a forum for intelligent banter and non-sensational ideas about Oklahoma State.

After that email, I stayed up until the wee hours of Friday morning finishing up the “When I Fell In Love with Oklahoma State” post, refining some of the design, and making sure everything was ready to go.

I was blown away for the next 48 hours by how many people visited, emailed, tweeted, and supported the site. It was oddly humiliating and personally satisfying and exciting all at the same time. I didn’t understand it but I did understand it, if that makes any sense at all.

At some point during the Baylor game on Saturday when I was tweeting and getting hilarious @ replies, questions, and comments I thought about how much more fun the last few days have been with actual people – real OSU fans – contributing to what I thought was a pretty lonely project for a while.

It’s a strange thing to build a blog and write 99 posts without anyone knowing about it. Now though, now is when the fun begins. Now is when it becomes our blog and not just this crazy little thing my friends and I talk about.

In 2004 a man named James Surowiecki wrote a book called “The Wisdom of Crowds.” In the book he argues that the intelligence and decisiveness of a group of people is generally more accurate and better than that of any one individual.

That’s kind of how I think about this blog. I’ve already used various insights and comments provided by readers as material for some of my writing. It’s infinitely more fun for me and equivalently more beneficial for you when you feel like your voice is being heard.

So thank you first of all for jumping on board, and thank you too for offering up your thought and feelings about Oklahoma State. I’ve read every single comment posted on the site so far and even though I may not have responded to all of them each is noted with an air of appreciation and thought of gratefulness.

I don’t exactly know where all of this is headed and that’s probably the most exciting part of it all. That we get to create and be a part of something that’s seemingly never been done before

I hope you enjoy wherever it goes though and continue to, as Coach Sutton once said, “always believe in God, yourself, and the Oklahoma State Cowboys.”

Love,
Pistols Guy