VIRGINIA — Recently, as Dan Cox, 27, was sitting in his office and glancing at the latest on Twitter, he was stuck by an idea. “Everybody is doing these fake-real news stories lately, right? I want to do something different and give it a twist. Add to the meta. I’ve done the fake new story bit. What I want now is the really-fake-probably-real post.”

His whole plan, as he outlined it in the post he was writing, would be centered on writing himself into the story and making it about him writing the post as he was writing the post — as he is doing right now. He would, as he started this post doing, write about himself and use quotation marks around words he might (but probably did not actually) speak out loud. “It’s all about the illusion and making it seem like a post. I’m not actually adding anything of substance here, you know?”

When asked about how others might feel about this admittedly masturbatory writing exercise, he replied, “Yeah, well, I can’t be expected to have interesting content every single day, right? It’s not like I get paid for any of this work. Or even that people talk to me about it at all. It’s often just whatever occurs to me.”

He also reminded his readers that new programming and tool guides would be coming soon. “I’m going to get to them. I know that’s why people read my stuff. As soon as I have some free time and can clear out what I have as top-priority for my work, I’ll get to them. They take several hours to do and I just don’t have that time right now.”

He closed the post in retrospection and with frequent looks out of his window. “I really don’t know where I found the time to write thousands of words per day like I did years ago. Now — now, heh, I like to look out of my window at that tree over there. Yeah. Right there.

“It’s been shedding leaves for weeks now and, with the gentlest of breezes, it looks really cool. Like it’s a bunch of colors floating together. Organic and unity — togetherness. That’s rather corny, though, yeah?

“I don’t know,” he concluded, “That’s probably not a good way to end a blog post either. It really should be something uplifting.”