Catching on, Sumner and his 15 minutes of fame

Getting viral on the internet is still pretty much a black-box enterprise. And of course, luck has something to do with it.

Prior to this over-extended 15 minutes of fame, Bentley economist Scott Sumner toiled in macro obscurity. But a lot of the flash out of the pan starts would with who you know -- or rather -- who knows you.

I am still piecing together how I suddenly went from obscurity to semi-obscurity yesterday. I had sent Brad Delong my piece on Friedman and Schwartz, and he was kind enough to link to it (without comment.) I assume that Tyler Cowen saw that link, and his very kind comments suddenly pushed my blog into the public eye. Then Arnold Kling also had some nice things to say here.

Now that I have readers, I obviously need some new material. Please be patient as my teaching responsibilities (and my cold) will slow things down for a few days. However, this weekend I plan two of what I hope will be my best posts. So please stop back later. I greatly appreciate all those who commented. I will reply to recent comments later today.

Ironically, I had already been planning a post to send to some of my favorite pragmatic libertarians (such as Tyler Cowen, Will Wilkinson, Deirdre McCloskey, Robin Hanson) on a non-monetary topic (my recent research on cultural values and neoliberalism.) I’ll try to have that ready by Sunday. By Saturday you can expect a longer than average post on rational expectations, policy lags, and monetary transmission mechanisms that will give you an idea of how I developed my somewhat unorthodox take on monetary theory. I think you will find it interesting.

DeLong and Cowan, that's pretty much the A-team of econ bloggers projecting their own form of the Oprah effect. Get there and you can get far. Professor Sumner may regret the new workload and the glare but that's the price you pay when you are "Oprahsized."

The against-the-grain theory is explained here.