These bloggers really have your number
Jeremy Harper sits on his beige couch in Birmingham, Ala., counting out loud to one million while I sit on my beige couch in Liberty Lake watching him make this pointless, yet strangely addictive, bid for online immortality.
It’s Wednesday afternoon and Harper, 31, has just hit 31,000 three days after taking leave from his job as a computer programmer. Time for a bathroom break while a buddy conducts a phone interview with local TV.
As Harper closes the door, viewers see a real-estate company ad drawn on a white dry-erase board. His site, MillionCount.com, also displays sponsor logos for each set of 1,000 numbers Harper counts in his Southern drawl, and ad banners cover the visible living-room wall space.
One sponsor, a Birmingham bar called the Barking Kudu, plays the Jeremy Harper show live for patrons. The Kudu even installed a Web cam so Harper can see fans hold up signs of encouragement.
Half the ad dollars will go to Push America, a charity serving people with disabilities, he promises on the project’s Sanity Blog. The other 50 percent will cover bandwidth costs and other expenses.
Returning to the couch, Harper shares some incoming e-mail messages. One fan has offered to bring by some beer.
“I’ll tell you what,” he replies. “There can never be enough beer.”
Another person checks in to ask how long it will take Harper to reach the one-million mark. “At this rate, I’m looking at between 90 and 100 days,” he says. “This day has kind of smacked me in the face, but I’ll be working just as hard as I can.”
A Texas radio host writes in to request an on-air interview, and Birmingham Weekly already has featured the quest in a cover story. This kind of stunt is media catnip and Harper, who provides a separate e-mail address for press inquiries, knows it.
Barely 3 percent of the way toward his goal, he hops onto a stationary bike and starts pedaling as he picks up the count, “31,001, 31,002, 31,003 …”
At his 32,000 break, Harper reveals he’s about to be on CNN. “That’s going to be huge,” he says. Sure enough, shortly after a “Situation Room” segment on “dangerous new threats” faced by the Secret Service, there he is: a guy in T-shirt, shorts and bare feet stringing numbers together on a couch in his living room.
The spectacle elicits a rare chuckle from Wolf Blitzer. Soon, a representative of “The Tonight Show” calls to discuss featuring Harper on NBC. I’m watching him blow up into a new-media star in real time. (Actually, the feed goes out on a 30-second delay, but who’s counting.)
You can catch Harper’s act 16 hours a day all summer long. And he’s far from the only blogger using the medium to chronicle monotonous mathematical feats.
The Found Money Jar isn’t as famous as MillionCount, for instance, but it’s an obsessive-compulsive’s dream. For more than 450 days, the site’s proprietor has diligently counted every coin he’s found with his family on the streets of Southern California. Sample entry: “An afternoon lazy bike ride around our neighborhood gave us two pennies …”
Other penny-picking sites include Thoughts from the Change Race and New York City Changepot. Meanwhile, entire blog genres have emerged to chronicle in minute detail people’s struggles to lose weight and pay down debt.
Coins, calories and credit-card balances are all there for the blogging. But it took a guy counting out loud like the “Sesame Street” vampire to score instant fame.
Harper stops at 33,300 to tuck into a fish dinner. “Counting makes a person famished, as you can imagine,” he says.
But why imagine it when you can watch?