ypsi~dixit

Likely fictional self-promotion .

Yeah. I also was very suspicious of the "hipster girl" comment. No one is gonna hear about such an obscure site that fast, and for its creator to conveniently be in the one coffee shop at the precise time to hear this comment strains one's credulity. I call fake, at least for that comment.

I find that entry suspcious too, but at the same time, the creator of the site didn't overhear it, some guy named steve did. But even at that, the odds that 3 people who knew about the site at the same cafe are pretty slim, but not impossible. Let's just hope the creator has better moral judgement than to create fake post.

@ You ain't no damn Ann Arborite, Laura, Steve.

Thanks for your concern about the legitimacy of the post in my blog. As a journalism student, I'm glad to see that there are still people out there who care about the legitimacy and accuracy of journalism, including articles written in blogs. As for the post in question, I can assure everyone that it is 100% real. It actually was a conversation that two of my friends actually had, and must of had been overheard by one of our many readers. Once I posted the quote, the girls quickly informed me that they had been the latest victims of Overheard in Ann Arbor. If Steve would of continued listening and quoting, you all would know that both of the girls (who by the way were flattered by being referred to as hipsters) we're told by myself about the blog and that I ran it.

I created Overheard in Ann Arbor as a fun side project for myself, my friends, and my fellow Ann Arborites to enjoy. I have nothing to gain from the site, as I plan on keeping myself anonymous and the site ad-free. I take journalism very seriously, and even in a fun blog like “overheard” I will never lower myself to the tactics of the likes of Paul Bradley.

Okay, I'll buy that.
Thanks for the explantion, admin_bob.

I look forward visiting your site. The things that come out of people's mouths are sometimes pretty amazing. You just can't make this stuff up...

One question. Would H. L. Mencken take at face value the claims of some anonymous guy hovering in the mists of the Internet?

Let's not be too credulous, please.

And drawing a parallel between a site collecting snippets of overheard conversation and journalism, which encompasses rigorous reporting, clear, interesting writing, and a sixth sense for news, is stretching it thin.

So maybe he's full of it and everything he posts on his site is fake. So what? It's not as if that's a unique situation.
If you're looking for truth and accuracy on the Internets, you'll be palling around with Diogenes eventually...

So what? If fake, that's wrong and misleading is what. Gracious.

I am already palling around with Diogenes, or, a 21st-century equvalent, a/k/a my adventurous friend. But at any rate.

Fair enough.
I guess I just take it for granted that much of the web is, indeed, fake.

And I am surpised that so many people approach the WWW ready to accept what they see and read as accurate and truthful. So many sites purport to tell us "the truth", or insist that they're "fair and balanced", but it's utterly subjective.

And this is why I don't feel that OIAA is worth getting worked up about. The site likely won't be a verbatim transcript of the public conversations of AA residents because verbatim is not always all that interesting. Nor will it be journalism, despite the high aims of its creator. It's simply a web diversion, and reading anything else into it is creating a tempest in a teapot.

Yes, the Web must be approached with skepticism. For example, neither the Wikipedia entry for the Franklin Expedition nor the Greely Expedition mention the well-known cannibalism that took place on each trip. The Franklin Expedition entry even blatantly lies, saying that the reason flesh was carved from some of the dead bodies with surgical precision, presumably by the party's surgeon, was due to Inuit aggression--a ridiculous and completely unproved claim, and one the rest of the surviving party never even mentioned. So I take it all with a grain of salt.

I highly-doubt so-called "hipster girls" would be at an Espresso Royale... especially on South U. I mean, maybe more likely than Starbucks, but really...

Wait, and Overheard in Ann Arbor has been around since last winter... here's the old one. I'm confused. Why is there a 2nd one now?

Hmm. And that one goes back to Sept. 2005.

Here's yet another reason why no one should accept anything on the web at face value.

That article was almost as interesting as the ones I enjoy reading in Salon while relaxing on my Ikea Pouffe POSIG Inflatable Blue Air Element Chair, munching on Haribo gummi bears and drinking a Pepsi Blue.