Good morning, Hank, it's Wednesday, and today we're going to talk about Robert Pattinson, fictionality, and Flava Flav.

(intro music)

Okay, briefly, Hank, since you know nothing about popular culture, there's this guy named Robert Pattinson and he plays Edward Cullen in the Twilight movie and he's beautiful. Also he has a majestic puff and he made puff cool again, so he's kind of my hero. But I've been thinking recently, what is it that we find so beautiful about Robert Pattinson? I mean, aside from his top-notch puff and excellent cheekbones.
And Hank, I would submit to you that while some of Robert Pattinson's beauty is just his pure, natural, God-given good looks, the majority of his beauty is something that we have collectively constructed. I know this because recently I was listening to an interview with Robert Pattinson, and I was like "Dude, shut up, you're ruining it."

So Hank, I'm gonna come back to R-Pattz, but for the last couple weeks, nerdfighters have been playing a lot of 20Q at 20Q.net, which is this website where you answer 20 questions about a person and this artificial intelligence magically thinks of the person you're thinking of, although not always because recently a nerdfighter sent us an email saying that they had been thinking of Holden Caulfield and 20Q had guessed Flava Flav.
Like, what kind of questions did it ask to confuse Flava Flav and Holden Caulfield? Are you male? Yes. Do you wear an accessory that is supposed to be cool but actually just exposes your insecurity? Yes. Do you have any musical talent? Doubtful. Do you have aborted relationships with women who may or may not be prostitutes? Yes. Actually, Hank, the more I think about it, Holden Caulfield and Flava Flav have a lot in common.

Right, so but anyway, there's this website called 20Q.net, and nerdfighters taught the website about you, Hank. And after that a nerdfighter named Paige Harwood emailed us, and she was like "You know what would be cool? If nerdfighters made someone up and then convinced the artificial intelligence at 20Q.net that that person was real." And, Hank, as someone who's read my new book, Paper Towns, you know that I'm a little bit obsessed about how fictional things can become real. So I was very excited about Paige's idea.

So a few hundred nerdfighters and I got together in a blogTV room, and we invented DJ Paige Railstone. And together we invented an identity and a history and a career for DJ Paige Railstone. Alan created a website, Karen Kavett mashed together some photographs so we'd know what she looked like, and then we made a Twitter and a website and Facebook fan pages, and within two days if you typed "Paige" into Google, the first suggestion was Paige Railstone.
Now, Hank, a lot of people have been asking me if Paige Railstone is made up and they've asked whether she's real. We did make her up, but that doesn't mean she's not real. Because we also made up Rob Pattinson. And In fact, insofar as all of our identities are dependent upon the ways other people imagine us, we're all making each other and ourselves up, all the time.
Now, Hank, the 20Q database is still not convinced of Paige Railstone's reality, but at this point I certainly wouldn't put it past the nerdfighters. So Hank, that's the point of Paige Railstone, is to find out how real made-up people can become. And also to remind us that we are not innocent bystanders in the world of celebrity. In the end, Robert Pattinson has us to thank and blame for his beauty.

Anybody interested in Paige Railstone can find out more about her in the sidebar, and feel free to email original music, fan art, album art, whatever, to djrailstone@gmail.com. And then we'll see over time how real she gets. But, Hank, she'll never be as real as you -- or, should I say, the set of associations and constructions that we utilize to form our image of Hank-ness.
You'll see me on Sunday.

Bobby Pattinson, you may be nothing but a series of constructions made up by the people who love you, but you're still real in my heart.