‘Carr is funny enough that you can almost forgive him.’ - Mil Millington
Paul Carr is, by process of elimination, a writer.
For the first part of what he laughingly calls his ‘career’, he edited various publications and founded numerous businesses with varying degrees of abysmal failure. After getting fired from every job he’d ever had - including at least two where he was his own boss - he realised it was easier to write about other people’s success than to have any of his own.
That realisation lead him to write Bringing Nothing To The Party: True Confessions Of A New Media Whore, the bizarre story of his not-entirely-successful attempt to become a famous Internet billionaire, which was published in 2008 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
For reasons beyond his comprehension, people seemed to like the book, with the Spectator choosing it as one of their Business Reads of 2008 and various other reviewers around the world saying ridiculously nice things. Next thing he knew, Weidenfeld & Nicolson had signed him up to write another one - The Kings Of The Road Club - which will be published in 2010.
He writes a weekly column for TechCrunch, loosely focussing on media and technology. Before moving to TechCrunch, the column appeared in the Guardian under the heading ‘Not Safe For Work‘. Which proved to be very apt.
Paul has been described as ‘a latter-day Jonathan Swift’ by the Christian Science Monitor, ‘Hilariously cynical’ by the Observer, ‘Brilliant’ by i-D magazine and ‘capable of inciting violence’ by the Obscene Publications Squad (really). Belle de Jour once wrote a haiku comparing him unfavourably to Po Bronson.
His drink of choice is still dark rum (even though he can’t drink it any more) and Diet Coke, he worked as a magician for four years, has a degree in law, is a sucker for a heist movie, writes on a Mac, knows the lyrics to every Barenaked Ladies song and every novelty rap from the early-to-mid 90s - and owns one pair of shoes.
He lives permanently in an upscale hotel in San Francisco - which makes him technically homeless - but also frequently spends time in London, New York and parts of mainland Europe.
He is 30-years-old and resolutely NSFW. Under no circumstances should you employ him or date him. He can’t emphasise this enough.
Or for more objective profile, see his Wikipedia page or read this profile by Danuta Kean for Orion.