"blog"

During an interview for an article I was writing, my source off-handedly told me that he hiked the Appalachian Trail for five months, and along the way met some interesting people. Most notably, he met a man who called himself Machete Mitch, a frequent hiker on the trail, who many avid hikers mentioned in their online and social media documentation of their travels. I decided to research it myself, and found a truly ‘internet ugly aesthetic’ travel blog, digitally spiral-bound and all, written by Machete Mitch himself in defense of his reputation, which he claims has been defamed through various retellings of encounters with him on the trail in which fellow hikers accuse him of doing things he claims to have not done, such as committing crimes. How I stumbled upon this blog is strange, and an example of the post-digital network being performed. I am planning on producing a book that is framed with the article I will publish about the source that originally told me about Machete Mitch, and perform a post-digital network by aggregating a form of unhindered research of topics that intersect with the Appalachian Trail. Through this aggregation, I will bring in discussions of network ambivalence, and attempt to develop a narrative from various geographic and digital networks related to this geographic space.