Coincidence

Some people don't believe in coincidence. For the unbelievers I submit the following.

Last week it appeared that someone had started borrowing creative content from the Colbertocrat Blog and posting it to the Colbert Nation message boards. At the time it seemed impossible that they had come up with their user name "Colbertocrat" as well as some Colbert inspired Haikus without this sites inspiration. Having blessed the Internet with those two ideas well before the postings appeared last week, I was bothered.

After calling the impostor out, both here and at Colbertnation.com, I received the following message.

"I'm afraid it is a horrible coincidence that I posted those haikus a month after you did. I joined the Nation board the night of the Emmys, inspired by my amusement and mock outrage to write haikus, which are the only funny thing I've ever been able to write easily. I didn't see your July post until it was pointed out to me by my girlfriend, who was looking for my haikus and searched the site for the word "haiku" and found yours.

Also, I had no idea you were the same person who started colbertocrat.com, and in fact I thought I had made that name up until I saw your web site. I even thought about writing you to offer you the name "colbertocrat", since I just made it up in my head (really!) because it sounded funny, vaguely political and had "colbert" in it. I was astonished it wasn't taken. So there's actually two horrible coincidences here."

There you have it. Two people, completely independently of each other, managed to coin the term Colbertocrat and express their fanaticism via Haiku. What are the odds?

The whole affair has actually left me feeling less inspired than before. If the Colbert Haiku isn't a genuinely unique idea I guess I'm doomed to be just one in a flock of unoriginal online commentators. I take comfort in the fact that even if I'm not the only one to come up with this stuff, at least I'm first.