Lodwick's potential swan song goes like this:

1. I'm okay.
2. Sometimes, being made fun of stings.
3. I acknowledge being stung, and move forward emotionally.
4. I compensate for being stung intellecually by writing off the stingers as perpetually unhappy downers.
5. Tone it down, prominent online gossip publications. You're fucking with the potentially advantageous harmony of the universe.
6. You make fun of weird people, but weird people are special, and you are mean.

Or to quote Lodwick:

Most people do not have my resilience. Eccentrics are delicate and need room to grow. Perhaps a gentler or more balanced approach to telling stories of our lives is in order. An attitude of "these guys are crazy but we love ‘em anyway" might be better for everyone than today's apparent mission: "destroy the weirdos".

Maybe he's correct! There's nothing wrong with eccentrics. They're enjoyable. And so are Lodwick's ridiculous exploits: in the same way a newscaster needs news to thrive, Lodwick's been giving us - spoon-feeding us - solid material for two years strong, now. In fact, one week ago was the two year anniversary of our first "Jakob Lodwick" tagged post!

It all started wayback in August of 2007, when the O.G. of Fameballing started dating Julia Allison, who, over the course of her career, has had few reservations about sacrificing herself on the altar of dignity in older to get a little publicity. She's now on MTV, so you can't say she didn't get the job done. Around that time:

"I believe I am an early-stage Fameball, and nothing I do or say will change my trajectory. I will attempt to use this to my advantage," Vimeo founder and Star Editor At Large Julia Allison doinker Jakob Lodwick has been quoted as saying.

And so it was. Lodwick was ousted from the company he started and hit the bong for us all to see. He claimed he was going to act like a normal human being. And then, after trying to start his own record label, is now aiming for New Museum-esque fame with videos like these:

Jealousy from Odwick.com on Vimeo.

And proclamations about how "cool" he is, like these:

I thought I was joking when I said I was so cool for being oblivious to the Super Bowl. But last night after dinner and a dance [sic] performace, quietly walking through the [sic] streetes of Manhattan and fearing for my safety in light of hundreds of screaming, drunken brutes, the joke became real. I do think I'm cool for being totally unaware of this moronic celebration of big men, big crowds, big bowls of dip, big commercials, and little brains.

Mind you, this is a guy who once had a pretty hot tech startup that perpetual money-spender Barry Diller - currently hosing down The Daily Beast with his cash, sans promised Amazing Ad-Model - had invested in. Nobody's denying the guy might have an idea or two about how to get a startup off the ground. Unfortunately, his ego and need for performance - well-documented in his latest video - might be getting in the way.

Either way, if Lodwick wants to avoid the pitfalls of being poked fun at altogether - as opposed to just having to cope with it - he might want to employ the strategy/sage advice devised by our own burgeoning entrepreneur, Richard Blakeley:

Then again, he does work for us. So, there is that. Meanwhile: pretty sure the symbiosis of the universe is gonna be fine. So long as Lodwick keeps feeding us good material, we'll keep reporting on it. Isn't that how it works?

Maybe it's all just performance art, the half-naked party appearances, brandishing that knife and going all Taxi Driver at a diner. But that doesn't really make it any less sad, the notion of a hipster millionaire fameball still clawing hungrily, strategically for attention. It would be more impressive if this were all some guerilla marketing campaign for a new class of hallucinogens. See excerpts from the latest installment above.

Lodwick has been as conflicted about his oversharing as any other internet fameball; he recently left the internet entirely, only to return. But his emotional volatility has seemed especially pronounced of late.

Earlier this year, Lodwick showed up half naked to a Web networking event and appeared in a variety of strange poses in pictures from the event. He later posted some sex pics, apparently of himself, to his blog.

Then in April he made an insane lipdub video in which he was swinging a knife and punching at the camera.

Now he's looking like a mohawked Robert DeNiro.

Lodwick, who invests in tech startups, says he "makes projects" for a living. Here's to hoping his strange antics just part of yet another "project" by the attention seeker, rather than a genuine indication of his state of mind.

The fired Vimeo founder's latest posting to his video-sharing site is, frankly, frightening. It's also his first in three months.

The comeback, a lipdub of Little Boots' "Meddle," seems innocent enough if you don't watch it closely and completely. "Yay!" wrote one commenter. "You're back"

But about halfway into the video, Lodwick inexplicably swings a knife, which he keeps somewhere off camera. It's only later that Lodwick starts making angry punching motions and using psycho eyes to underline the lyric "you don't know what she hides."

This outburst comes from an on-again-off-again blogger as famous for his emotional volatility as for his prolific oversharing. Lately, his behavior has turned disconcertingly bizarre.

Last summer Lodwick produced a creepy psychedelic video, looking high and nearly catatonic. In January, he turned up at a Web industry networking event shirtless, sweating and flailing his arms. March's internet sex picture seemed an almost pedestrian way of acting out in comparison.

But now there's the knife video. The blade comes out quickly in the excerpt above. A frenetic, apparently naked Lodwick ducks in and out of an enveloping darkness. He's a tortured internet pioneer looking like he's ventured all the way into a new jungle, straight to the heart of dot-com celebrity darkness. He's Colonel Kurtz, and he's seen horrors.

Or maybe Colonel Kurtz was nuts to begin with and just found a way to make us all watch. We probably won't know whether there's anything to learn from the manifest pain of the world's most tortured millionaire until it's too late.

After a fameballing bender that included (naturally) a dalliance with fellow attention crackhead Julia Allison, Lodwick tried to go cold turkey and quit the internet forever.

Fat chance. The budding young Objectivist now has his own record company, with its own precious blog.

And though Lodwick still abstains from personal blogging, he knows how to get a contact high. Instead of posting videos of himself all tripped out, as he might have done in the past, the former College Humor collaborator showed up to a New York Web networking event with his shirt off and his serial-killer glasses on. Lodwick was, we are told by an attendee, the only half-naked person there. As former Gawker video whiz-kid Nick McGlynn's photoset shows, some other attendees went with blazers and buttoned-down shirts.

Lodwick had to know his pictures would make their way to the Web and, sure enough  (via McGlynn), they have. See shots above and below. Lodwick's unquenchable thirst for attention is starting to worry us slightly. Is he getting desperate? But at least it helps maybe solve a riddle:

We've been trying to figure out the point of protocelebrity at a time of scant reality-TV payoffs and declining Web advertising. Maybe the answer is simpler than we thought: For some addicts, fameballing just feels really, really good.

(Photos by McGlynn)

If you think the left, gays included, were pissed off with Obama shutting them out of power before, oh man, just wait until the Wall Street Journal's report about Obama's Labor Secretary (who was supposed to maybe be gay) comes true:

Harley Shaiken, a prominent expert on unions, Detroit and the U.S.-Mexican border, has emerged as a top candidate for the post of secretary of labor, officials familiar with the vetting process say....
[Former Congressman David] Bonior has championed labor activist Mary Beth Maxwell, who would be the first openly gay cabinet member in history. But Shaiken has emerged as a candidate with strong backing from unions and high praise from corporate officials, according to people familiar with the selection process.

Labor was one of two cabinet posts considered within plausible reach of openly gay candidates.

The other? Interior, where on the shortlist was John Berry, director of the National Zoo and former Assistant Interior Secretary. And Obama Wednesday gave that job to Ken Salazar, a straight male senator, from Colorado, who wears a cowboy hat, unironically. He's just taunting gay men at this point.

In all seriousness, the past 24 hours has brought terrible news from the Obama administration in terms of relations with the gay community and advancement on gay rights issues. (And lifelong bachelorette and homeland security secretary nominee Janet Napolitano doesn't count, because if she's gay, she isn't talking about it.)