Thank You, Abu Ayyub Ibrahim

Abu Ayyub Ibrahim is behind Behind the Approval Matrix — that is, New York magazine’s Approval Matrix, which is the first thing I read — if that’s the right word — in every issue. For example:

Ibrahim’s blog or whatever you call it explains the items in the Approval Matrix.

I wonder why Ibrahim and I like it so much. Perhaps 1. We enjoy praise and dispraise. 2. Cute little pictures. 3. Use of pictures as dots. 4. Draws our attention to stuff we may enjoy but otherwise wouldn’t know about (e.g., YouTube clips). 5. Unpompous. 6. Artistic in the Nabokovian sense (i.e., implies a better world — see Afterword to Lolita). 7. Mixes high and low. (My students laughed when I wrote “pimple” on the board.) 8. Sometimes witty.