Shut up

This evening I got very annoyed reading a blog. Some stuff I read but don’t talk about or link to just because it doesn’t fit here. But I had been reading this one for a while now. In the beginning it was nice. They talked about stuff they did. Some serious, some funny. Very genuine. A real blog.

Then today they had this post that was just waaaay off base somehow. It was trite and cutesy and show-offy. Full of slang and hip phrases and crap that I see 10000 times on 100000 other blogs. I was really disappointed.

To make matters worse, it made me think back about that blog and realize it had gradually become like that. It wasn’t just one post. They slowly started posting anything (and I mean anything) that would grab the reader’s attention. And in a crazy arrogant sort of way too. They were all like “Hey! Look at me! Guess what crazy thing I’ll do next! Are you with me? I saaaaiiid ARE YOU WITH ME?! Of COURSE you are!” The blog equivalent of “Hey, watch this.”

It was sad. I really, really liked reading them. And suddenly they got stupid. They went from being a cool person who has a blog, to an idiot who wants to be an idiot on TV. That’s why I don’t have a TV, too many idiots.

As I was reading Chris Brogan tonight, he talked about networking.  This is really big with me because I’m trying to learn how to do this.  The one point that really drove it home for me was his point “Its all about THEM.”  What I took away from this is that a big part about having a conversation and being a conversationalist is letting the other person talk.  I think the other blogger I read today, lost that.  They started out having a conversation with other bloggers, but somewhere along the line it became a one sided conversation.  Do you read Chris’s blog?  With Chris, somewhere along the line it became about everyone except him.  That’s why his blog is great, and the other one now sucks.

I know, My-blog-My-blog-Shut-up-My-blog.  I’ve said that myself 1000 times.  Nothing wrong with it.   But that only holds true when you blog for yourself.  The minute you blog for the attention of the rest of the world, your blog is no longer your own, and the rest of the world drives what you put in it.  Think about that.

If the audience encourages a blogger to post certain topics based on praise, how easy is it to fall down that slippery slope?  Very easy, I think.  Easy to the point that eventually a blogger would base their content solely on the entertainment value to the readers.  At that point, they aren’t a blogger.  They are an actor with their own private TV show.  And the “blog community” where they may have had online friends, becomes an audience, nothing more.  How attached personally is a TV actor to his audience?  Not very, with the exception to how it affects revenue.  Meg Ryan never calls me on Christmas.

Ranting garbage here, I know.  I was just annoyed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Childish Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.