This A-Profiler we bring you Ernie Hsiung. Ernie Hsiung knows how to get his name out there and he has the awards and nominations to prove it. Little.yellow.different, a personal blog about being gay and Asian, has received numerous Bloggies awards for Best Gay Blog. Recently, 8asians.com, the webzine Hsiung founded, was nominated for Bloggie's Best Group Weblog.

Born in Fremont, CA and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Hsiung attended U.C. Davis where he majored in Computer Science and was president of a community service fraternity called Alpha Phi Omega. Today he lives in San Francisco's Mission District where he is launching a freelance business to design and create web sites.

Although AArising.com had an interview with Hsiung years ago with regards to little.yellow.different, we decided to catch up with him again to learn more about 8asians and some more of the background behind the postings on little.yellow.different. With an easy-going and jovial demeanor, Hsiung talks about himself and his work openly.

ABOUT 8ASIANS.COM
How did you come up with the idea to do 8asians.com?
The idea of 8Asians came up at an interesting time for me. I was working full time as a web developer at Yahoo!, and I recently stopped writing on my personal blog (little.yellow.different) due to the wrong people reading super personal things- think family members and bosses of bosses. The trend at the time for bloggers was to start writing about stuff instead of about themselves. At the same time, I had recently come across a situation where I wasn't allowed access to an online gay personals site because I didn't fit in, and race played a big factor out of that. Angry Asian Man was a big Asian American blog, but there weren't many blogs beyond that. I thought a multi-person blog could be an interesting idea. And let's be honest, it was also an attempt to see if I could get paid to blog.

How do you recruit your writers? Is this a volunteer effort?
It's a completely volunteer effort. Initially four of the eight Asians were people I worked with at Yahoo! Others came from blogger friends I have known for years.

What's the mission of the web blog or goal?
To blog about a wide range of topics affecting the Asian American community, whether it's community-based, activism-related, or pop cultural.

Are there ever any conflicts among writers, since there's such diversity in interests and opinions within the group?
Every so often, but not as often as you think. My MO is kind of "you do not like each other, but you have to respect each other." There's been one case where a blogger quit because of that, but what can you do? You move on. What management skills come into play since you're the creator/manager? Editing. Web Development. Community management and content management. Conflict management, to a lesser degree. A good sense of humor helps.

Where does the ad money go? Have you ever refused to let a group advertise because what they're selling contradicts with the values of your site?
Ha, great question. When I first turned on Google Adsense, I got nothing but ads like "Looking for a wife in Thailand? Click here!" Which I guess makes sense if you're on a search engine and typing in the phrase "asian american girls," not so much for regular 8asians readers. I have to remove those sites out by hand. There was also a period when we were served "Yes on Prop 8" banner ads, which has nothing to do with being Asian, but as a gay man - and as editor-in-chief - that's totally not going to fly on my website.

As far as where the ad money goes- it goes to server costs and dinners for my writers, when they are in town. Some money is used for giveaways as well; not enough money comes in at this point to pay the bloggers on 8asians, much less make a living for myself. A tip to bloggers: if you want to get paid blogging, it's better to write about things rather than about issues.

How often do you get creepy commentators on 8asians.com? Why do you think there are creepy commentators?
We haven't gotten creepy commentators, but we have gotten angry commentators. Angry, anonymous commentators. A lot of the commentators react from any post about interracial relationships- there is definitely some anger from the perception that the Asian male is emasculated. In regards to comments like that, we do have a comment policy that prevents hate speech. I'm open to a free discussion on the blog so long as it doesn't go on personal attacks, which happens a lot when people feel anonymous sitting behind a computer.

Any creepy fan stories?
Thankfully, as it's a group blog I personally haven't seen anything too crazy. A couple of visitors have visited the weblog of a female blogger writing uncomfortable e-mails, so we simply removed the link to her blog from her author's page.

Have you ever had to fire any of your writers or bloggers?
Thankfully, no. There have been a couple of writers that have been more... difficult than others, but nothing where I've had to do the dramatic "please never come back" thing. Civility-I know, right?

Would you take on a writer who has extremely different political views than yours?
Yes.

What are your goals for 8asians.com?
I mean, ideally, I'd like 8asians to be profitable, but I'm learning that it's pretty difficult - for me at least - to be able to pull a living wage about a blog that doesn't revolve around selling objects.

ABOUT ERNIE AND LITTLE.YELLOW.DIFFERENT
Where do you live now?
San Francisco.

Who would play you in the movie about your life?
The snarky bastard in me would say any chubby Asian guy like the Whitney Houston sing-a-long guy from Taiwan but I'd settle for Bobby Lee.

Soundtrack for a day in your life?
Any one of those angsty teen rock bands. I live my life. I'm a stresser. I'm an anxious person. But at the end of the day, those teen bands aren't to be taken seriously and neither is anything I go through. In my 20s, everything was kind of a bigger deal and I'm trying to put more of everything into perspective. That comes with being older and not being carded at clubs.

What do you like the most about yourself?
I'm pretty quick with the wit.

What quality do you wish you could change about yourself?
I could lose, like, 20 pounds. I'd also have a better sense of style as well. I get called out on the whole "can't dress" thing too much.

I really like the honesty in your personal writing and am wondering why put little.yellow.different on hiatus.
There was a time when my dad was reading every single blog entry I had. He always thought I put too much of myself in my blog. It got to the point where he would go into every blog and write a long response in MS word and send it to me in an attachment. Remember that show Roseanne where it started off funny, and then towards the end of the series, it just got really moody. Towards the end of the blog, it just took a lot of energy to make it funny. Then bosses and co-workers found out about the stuff I wrote. And they'd talk to me about stuff they read. I wrote about wanting to build a porn site and my boss's boss's boss at Yahoo! came into my cubicle to talk to me about it.

In little.yellow.different, you talk about feeling out of place in the gay community. Where do you find your community now?
It has gotten better. Age matures you a bit. A few years ago, I had to realize that it doesn't matter if my friends were gay or straight or as long as I have a strong network of friends. It also helps when you have a relationship. My best friend won tickets to the Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and his bf at the time was 20 years old so he couldn't get into the clubs or bars. So my best friend asked me to come to the festival with him instead and I flew to Miami and became friends with the director of the film festival. We were friends at that point, but didn't start dating until two years after we met. [We've been together] technically for 9 months or so.

Has anyone ever copied/plagiarized from your sites?
For my personal site, little.yellow.different, I've seen one instance where a girl from Singapore took my story and adapted it to her site. So she took my posting as hers. People were commenting on my blog and they gave me a link to her web site and I took a look. People on her blog were calling her out and she ended up deleting her post. 8asians is more informational so people haven't plagiarized from it. All our posts are based on a link. So we just share our opinions behind it. So we haven't had issues with plagiarism here.

What are/were your religious beliefs?
I grew up Presbyterian. I was heavily involved in a church- I played piano for the church choir. But the church thing conflicted with the gay thing a lot. I still have some friends from church that I keep in touch with, and they're cool with [me being gay]. I consider myself agnostic. Because of the things that happened to my sister, who's bipolar schizophrenic, we're not devout Christians anymore.

You talk a bit about your sister in little.yellow.different. How has having a sibling who is bipolar schizophrenic affected you?
Growing up, my sister, who was so much older than me, was almost like a mother. She had her first mental breakdown when she was 15 and I was five. She got better, but she had her final breakdown when I was 20 and she was 30. It was role reversal. I became the older sibling. I guess I'm much more sensitive to people who are depressed or have mental issues. Growing up with a mentally ill sibling is difficult, especially in Chinese culture, you feel as if it's something to be embarrassed about. It affected me and I had to figure out a lot of things on my own.

What is the biggest misconception people who don't know you well have about you?
Some people call me on being the sad clown, like I'm being funny to hide something. But it's gotten better. I'm not as emo as I previously was. My blog posts on 8asians, I'd bring myself into it, but the posts aren't about me. But my personal blog, the posts are about me, and as a result, people will think that I'm just trying to be really funny or really depressing. But I have a middle point. I'd use levity to try to help a situation. At the end of the day, the things you see about me on the internet (little yellow different) are almost exaggerations. My blog was my whole life, and then gradually, it wasn't.

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This issue of A-Profiler is brought to you by Cynthia Cheng.
Special thanks to Ernie Hsiung.

Photos used with permission.
Copyright retained by original copyright holder(s).