Nine Things That Won’t Make You A Better Blogger
I rarely read the WP Front Page Posts. Not because I’m too cool to like Front Page Posts, but when was the last time you saw somebody be like “Motherfucker. My dog died yesterday, I hate my shit job, some crackhead tried to break into my car and I got two views on this blog yesterday but I write because it keeps me from fucking killing everyone.”. Y’know, some real shit.
The kind of stuff you find only by digging through the morass of “I love him/her but my undying affections are unrequited” and “I have an AWESOME personal relationship with my Lord and Savior” posts under the personal tag.
That said, I did read a post from Front Page earlier today. It was pretty good actually, it was about blogging rules. Being that most of my ideas are either spun off or outright stolen from things that I think are pretty good, I want to give you my blogging rules.
1) Set and setting is everything. Just like when eating profuse amounts of hallucinogens. But don’t go trip your face off and then blog about it, because that’s fucking stupid as fuck. Nobody cares about that shit, except maybe Vice and other people who want to find out what happens when you eat a sheet of Dramamine and lick a toads ass or beat yourself in the head with a mallet or whatever. But you want to be in a good head space and a swell environment before you start abusing the shit out of your keyboard and the English language. Drink some coffee, dim the lights, put on some favorite music you stole off the internet, and get to crackin’. Eventually you’ll find that album, that one that always spurs you to write. For me it’s Detestation by G.I.S.M., but maybe it’s Beiber or some Hip Indie Band from Brooklyn or something for you. This shit is important. It will save you much agonizing over the blinking cursor in oppressive silence.
2) Just write. Bash that shit out. Fuck the spelling and gramar and everything. You can always go back and fix it if yo want when you’re done. Or not.
3) Do not be afraid to explicate. Go shit bats nuts with it if you want. Take a simple idea and expand that shit to 1200 plus words. Do not worry about somebody leaving a “tl;dr”. If they didn’t want to read some shit they should have gone on Tumblr anyways. Every time I have posted some sort of inane rambling nonsense that ran over 900 words I always looked back on it a day or two later and wished I had detailed it out and gone longer into developing the full on stream of yammersome blathering even further. Cause it’s lame to post the same shit twice. You have a story, get that shit right the first time you puke it out into the internet and make that bitch count.
4) Photos are like that second song on side two of Led Zepplin IV. They’re there, but they aint Stairway to Heaven. Unless you are an amazing photographer with great stuff to say about the photographic method and who posts eye popping images, or unless you have a separate page on your blog devoted to your kick ass photos, nobody is going to remember your pictures more than your words. If you want them to, by all means photoblog away.
5) Dont go crazy with hyperlinks. Chances are no one will click on them anyways, so try to say what you have to say without overburdening your reader with external references. The big exception to this is with music. Bands should generally be linked unless you want to seem like a hipster who only writes for a select audience of audiophiles who will automatically know who Jandek is. And it kind of goes without saying that you should go out of your way to link to your favorite blogs by your peers on WP.
6) Don’t rely on the WP proofreader. It only suggests. And besides, that fucking passive voice error will drive you bugshit.
7) Never mind your stats. Really. I know, as Americans we are attention starved. And I’m guessing it’s like that all over the place since we’re a big “Global Community” of popularity barometers on the internoodle. But it doesn’t mean anything, the whole “I JUST GOT 8,000 HITS! SOMEBODY GIVE ME A HUG!” phenomena. Unless of course you’re into monetezation of your blog or whatever. If thats the case you should be on Blogger, they make it easy. I just run adsense ads on my Blogger to make money and save it up so I can buy a premium theme here on WordPress anyway. I’m shitting you. Blogger sucks. But really, would you still write if nobody was looking? If not, go home poseur.
8) If you have to be a troll, only be a troll in your original posts. For serious, this is the most important rule. If you’re a miserable bastard from the door in your post you’ll generally be roundly ignored anyways. Always be cool to people who spend the time to comment on your posts. They could be commenting on cat pictures but they’re not. However, turning the other cheek to dickhead commenters is up to you. Chances are, unless you write about politics you wont get too many of those anyways.
9) Supplemental most important rule: Don’t ever follow blogging rules.
Ok, I did not say, “I just got 8,000 hits! Somebody give me a hug!” I said, “I just got 8,000 hits!” then I went over to my girlfriend and hugged her. I’m trying to figure out how that makes me less pathetic. Can’t really see it right now, but I’ll spin it, somehow. Yeah, so except for the part that made me feel deeply ashamed of myself, I enjoyed this piece. Fucking Dave…
I had no idea you got 8000 hits, and the last thing I was trying to do was make anybody feel ashamed for having a popular blog. I just meant it like, as in ones motivation for writing or anything else for that matter…the difference between doing it because you have a mild, or not so mild, obsession to indulge-or doing it to be seen doing it. I’ve actually been kind of fucked off that my stats near quadrupled this past month because I get that Dennis-Hopper-in-Blue-Velvet-inhaling-nitrous thing going where I want to be all “DONT FUCKING LOOK AT ME!!” action. So it’s my neuroses, not yours…heh heh..and don’t feel ashamed for having hug ammo. I guess heavy traffic can be a side effect of good writing, which in your case would be true. I think my busiest day was 32 hits, so I don’t even use stats as any kind of barometer anyways.
Nah Dave, I knew you weren’t gunning for me, per se. It’s just if I see an opportunity to stick The Shiv of Shame deep into my guts, I take it. (especially when I don’t have to pay some hooker to do it) As per your quadrupling stats, I imagine they are going to rip it up this next month or so. Congrats on that whole thang, hard bang. Send me the link when they reprint.
Awesome rules.