A "Royale with We"

In a recent comment, a friend I know (who does the best Homestar Runner impression I’ve come across) felt inclined to point out something about our writing style here at You’re a Blog, Incorporated. We are glad to see that Matt reads with such a keen eye as it is only through a careful quality control process that any successful blog gets written. In fact, we’ve decided to appoint Mr. Weng to a post of External Auditor, whereby he is issued a tazer and gets to remind Condon of when he’s taking a few too many liberties with the English language. Hopefully, said instances will be few and far between, for the following two reasons:

1. Tazers really hurt.
2. Weng would have more time to spend over at his blog, which is worth the click.

Yes, Weng is absolutely right. YAB often operates in the realm of the royal “we.” At this junction, the easiest thing to do is to come clean and kindly explain to the loyal readers that there is no “we” at YAB, and it’s just Chris Condon over-formalizing his writing style. But that’s about as fun as going for a run outside my office building right now. There are other theories behind the royal “we.” So we lay them out before thee now. We’re not gonna lie to you. We are just deferring truth.

We submit to you the following reasons behind the royal “we.” Pick one and be satisfied. Pick two and be overwhelmed.

1 – Royalty is the annual recipient of some crucial tax breaks that you other working fools don’t get. Thus we employ them. It’s not bad to have the monarchy on your side. The tricky part was actually recruiting some royalty to take entry-level positions on our staff. Since I serve as Editor-in-Awesome-Chief, the only real open positions were for a copyboy and file clerk. And since most members of the crown prefer positions of “ruling over subjects” and “decreeing crazy stuff,” the job applicant pool to create a royal “we” was incredibly thin. I was forced to hire the Burger King and Dairy Queen. I had no idea they were married. What’s more – they live in White Castle.

2 – The royal “we” is actually unbelievably common place usage in the age of the Internet. In fact, all major information websites, from Yahoo! to CNN.com to FoxNews use the royal “we” to disguise the fact that they are simply sole proprietorships. And when you to stop to think about it, it’s really jaw-dropping how much those guys publish on a daily basis. I write one column a day; they write a news story for every flavor. That whole Associated Press thing? They’re just a royal “we” also. In fact, it’s just one guy who is an absolute newsmaking machine. He lives in California and his name is AP Slater.

3 – Yeah, so I use the word “We” a lot. Does that automatically mean that you can assume that I’ve got a multiple personality disorder? We’ll have you know that Chris and Condon write as one mind and one voice. No we don’t, you goofball. Without a sense of unity, Chris cannot do his job of bringing the funny on a daily basis. Chris doesn’t do the work, I, Condon, am the funny one. Shut it up, you. I have the first name for a reason and I’m running this show. The only reason you’re in charge is because you slipped the dude at the hospital twenty bucks when he was typing out the birth certificate. Right, because babies how so much discretionary spending cash. I have 6 letters. You have 5. Deal with it. Size matters not, ponce.

Maybe I should stick to the first person.