Have you hit the best before date on your BLOG?
According to THIS examination of why people blog, John M. Grohol, Psy.D., summises that "most weblogs are drivel, banal shit written by angst-ridden teenagers and adults sharing feelings, thoughts, and mind-numbing details about their daily lives that provide little insight into anything or anyone."
yeah, SO!?
He goes on to say that,
"The most popular weblogs are those spearheaded by strong personalities, by dynamic individuals who have something to say."and that "the best online journals and weblogs keep moving, growing, and changing directions, mirroring the author’s own life. They are constantly there, being added to, but if a day or two goes by without an entry, the reader doesn’t feel disappointed."
"The best weblogs and online journals, however, are not always the most popular. The most popular fall into the same trap as nearly anything driven by popularity – the need to outdo oneself, to remain on top. That pressure affects the writing, and it affects the mission of the person’s site"
"People tune in to a weblog or journal to be entertained and informed. To find new information or to find something interesting to act as a diversion to their day."
"Even the best books and stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A lot of authors don’t realize this and continue the story long after the interesting part of it is over. The climax has passed, the readers move on, but the author still toils because nobody told her/him the story has ended."
"After all, when it’s a person’s life, and it’s still continuing, how can it have ended? That’s the paradox that most journalers don’t resolve very well. Most just end their journal before the readers abandon them. And that is as it should be. Nothing should continue indefinitely if it has long lost the creativity and imagination that fueled it to begin with."
Hey Grohol...
Yay! I'm first!
ReplyDeleteYou can print out my blog and use it as toilet paper!
ReplyDeleteIt's useful, dammit.
Yeah yeah. My best posts are really just rehashes of earlier posts. I knows it. I accepts it. I keeps bloggin'.
ReplyDeleteBlogging is rather like life - it has a beginning, a middle and an end. Using Mr Grohol's logic, we should perhaps kill ourselves once our bodies start to fail (er, when we start to notice the first grey hairs, for instance).
ReplyDeleteWell, my blog is less interesting or creative than it was when I started and it's full of the same old crap repeated again and again. I intend to carry on in the same vein.
I also intend to keep repeating myself all the time when I'm very old, too ...
I'll stick to the "drivel, banal shit ... that provide little insight into anything or anyone", thank you, if that is OK. Ain't changing my style for anyone, even if he was in Nirvana.
ReplyDeleteWho's that Mr. Grohol?
ReplyDeleteThe new Blogger guru? I couldn't disagree more with him! >:[
Well, Donnnn, you certainly haven't lost the creativity and imagination thing yet, so just keep on blogging!!!
ReplyDeleteIt's just a JOURNAL, fer crissakes! Get OVER yourself!
ReplyDelete(I take it he doesn't blog. I wonder why......)
It's just a JOURNAL, fer crissakes! Get OVER yourself!
ReplyDelete(I take it he doesn't blog. I wonder why......)
I began blogging as a memory aid. I don't have a very good memory in general, so I like to be able to look back at something I've written as a reminder of what I was doing at a certain point, or how I was feeling... I still do it for that reason, but now there's the added bonus of the people I've "met", the little communities that build up between bloggers. And the opportunity of free accommodation if I ever visit your area :)
ReplyDeleteI read my first blog by accident a few years ago; I was looking for mp3s of Fleetwood Mac and I stumbled on a blog; since then, I've been hooked on reading some of the funniest and most interesting thoughts out there...
ReplyDeleteI blog because it's fun; and it's another part of my life that I keep secret from the people I see daily and know quite well. It's kind of nice. Also, it's been great meeting other bloggers and reading their thoughts!
MJ
ReplyDeleteI tried your suggestion but the printer paper has REALLY sharp edges..
O U C H!!
ANDREA
That's not true because you're always presenting new pieces and you uncover tonnes of interesting links...
and Me luvs ur Lolcat reply btw.
BETTY
I concur it's an excellent way to practice for doddering. In the rw I talk about the same bloody things and tell the same bloody stories over and over so why should this be any bloody different?
VICUS
HAHA! Very good...and don't change a thing, you're my highwater benchmark.
LENI
He wrote that piece ten years ago and prolly thought that it was just going to be a fad.
I don't think that he knew or could have guessed, that the relationship aspect would be as powerful as it is.
That is a very frowny >:< face.
PONYGIRL
Yeah right? Not only do I rehash themes and repackage crap, I actually stoop to posting re-runs! guilty but WhatEV?
I would love to change my template every day and atleast once a week, I want to hit the Delete button and start over..or not.
THE MICHAEL
I thought that rebuke was directed at me (HE) and I was going to congratulate you for being so brutally f*cking honest. HA!
Is it gettin' pretty wild down there? Are you safe?
STACE
Ditto. I also used it as a self discovery aid and soon realised that I had never actually formulated and articulated a lot of the fanciful notions that I embrace...now that my encyclopedic ignorance of the universe has been exposed I can enter my shame spiral with a clean conscience.
I don't know whether originality's
ReplyDeletesomething that's necessarily turned
on and off, at will. Some blogsters
have a marvelous capacity for pacing their contributions, others
do repeat postings, while the muse
is out, on a holiday, or they're just toying with incomplete, new ideas. The wait's usually worth
enduring, if you remember that it's
not simply another pound of pig's
tongue being sliced - thoughts take
time.
EROSWINGS
ReplyDeleteI admire your strategy of not telling people in the rw about your blog.
I recently had someone tell me that bloggers love talking (ad infinitum) about their blogs at cocktail parties and dentist's waiting rooms and it really annoys and bores the sh*t out of the great unwashed.
Hmm.
GRUMBLOID
Ha! I do repeats because I am curious to see what if anything more recent cyberfriends have to say about my old posts..when I still had a set of balls!
I get about 5 ideas a day, which would be great if I was getting paid to do this, but I also need to balance that by visiting other blogs.
I love your soothing message that thoughts take time...deep thoughts maybe, but not mine. I wish that mine did, but my rudimentary conjecture and postulates are compacted and clogging my mental passages.
So, I'm guessing this means you have another 13 years at least, eh?
ReplyDeleteGILLETTE
ReplyDeleteThe article is right that the old Warholian measure of 15 minutes of Fame has truly come to pass...and prolly been shortened!
Out here you have about 15 seconds to grab someone's attention.. no..maybe 5...but that's a gross generalisation of the cyber skimmers looking for the next NEW thing to 'see and be seen'.
The inordinately nice people in my part of the blogosphere are so generous..but that's because we become cyberbuds.
AAAAAAAAAAAA!
ReplyDeleteWhat the what the what fck!!! Im gonna teach him a lesson...
//"Even the best books and stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A lot of authors don’t realize this and continue the story long after the interesting part of it is over. The climax has passed, the readers move on, but the author still toils because nobody told her/him the story has ended." //
What crap is this?! when readers leave, u get new readers. when one part of life ends, u start a new part. when u cant write, u post pics. when u have no interesting pics u post videos, sing, dance. ur moose and its kids. goddamit there is so much to write...jst that there arent enough intelligent readers. (well ofcourse we have to note that Donn hordes the bulk of the good smart ones....bt thats a diff story).
i think its time to start the blogger directive...time to search n destroy lame social scientists who dont have cool blogs. dam dam dum...dam dam dum...dam dam dummm....
To borrow a phrase from my eastern
ReplyDeletebuddies:
"Donn, are you focking kiddin' me
here, Bro' ?"
Seriously, you're tickling the
Amygdalas of roughly 54.09545453%
of the northern hemisphere, plus
substantial numbers of them thar
Sutheners. I'm surprised that some
Hollywood Rocket Scientist hasn't
built a reality show around the Homo Escapeons site, by now.
That's got to be an oversight by Stanfords (and USCs) Biznits Skules...
Jesus, you're funny. And Bobby Von Disertation (real author's name deleted) isn't.
ReplyDeleteCase closed.
i kill my blog by writing paid posts.
ReplyDeletepersonally I like a bit of mind numbing. You carry on Donnnnnn I like your drivel.
ReplyDeleteit takes guts to blog... so yes, take that back you wanker blog hater! see right there, where in the world can you just call somebody a wanker and get away with it? :)
ReplyDeleteBlogworld is a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteIt is incredible what I'm learning at my own pace...there are the serious bloggers, the notsoserious funny buggars, the poetic, the insightful, the everyday folk, I love people and enjoy reading about what they put in print and pics...a little voyueristic maybe eh, but overall it connects worlds and people and ideas and just stuff. One big party line.
It's fun.
In that picture you remind me of what's-his-face on Trailer Park Boys - always with a rum and coke in his hands.
ReplyDeleteGHOSTAY PARTICULATES
ReplyDeleteGo get 'em Laddy! Those poor social scientists..while Engineers and others have improved machines these poor bastards have done nothing to improve Humans Beings!
OIDSTER
HA! While I am deeply appreciative of the 46 viewers that I get every week I would have given up years ago if I thought that I was doing this to change the world. I just like the peeps out here who take the time to discuss some of the crap that is going on in the world.
I was almost certain that there had to be a few others.
MUTHA
As I was telling Ghosty, there has been incredible advances made in the technological sector but humans just seem to be getting worse. There seems to be huge resistance by the great unwashed to accept their (our) shortcomings and make the world a better place.
I find this incredibly tedious and the social scientists must feel insanely depressed about it because nobody is listening..so guys like Von Disertation lash out to try to justify themselves.
MISTI
HA! How much do they pay? I would sell out (in a heartbeat) for the right amount..and for a lifetime supply of a product that I use, or would use, or could give away for Birthdays and Christmas presents.
ZIGGI
I like to think of my Blog as e-Novocane..and you also reminded me of the old Dentist joke where he tells his patient that she'll need a little numbing..
num
num
num
num
HA! Timeless.
SWEETS
YEAH! Every once and a while one of you will rip out my heart with an intimate confession and I think GOOD FOR YOU, Man that was brave.
None of us get through this world without getting banged up and we need to know that we're not alone.
SIENNA
I love your attitude and it always comes through..and it's contagious.
It does connect us and that is diametrically opposed to what the Media and Governments are trying to accomplish.
They want us all huddled in a fetal position in the corner of our homes..except to go out and be spoonfed Consumers...but out here we can roam and get away from their propaganda and ads.
It is fun and we need to make sure that it stays that way. The 'MAN' is trying to find a way to take over this free-for-all and fill it with COMMERCIALS and CENSORS!
ANNA
I have been favorably compared to Julian before and I should have put my Trailor Park Boys Cap on..
HA I saw him get arrested once and he still had his hand on his R&C in the back of the squad car..HA!
Thank God I read this post to the end.
ReplyDeleteI thought you were saying tara.
Welcome back!
KAZ
ReplyDeleteIt won't be that easy to get rid of moi!
I fully intend to 'go out' in a glorious malstrĆøm of verbosity and indiscretion!
Blogging is fun, and cathertic, and enlightening, and silly, and expressive and... and... whatever you want it to be.
ReplyDeleteWe each do it for our own reasons. And those reasons are good enough. What some social scientist twerp had to say about it a decade ago no longer applies.
So, each of us.... GO FOR IT AND ENJOY!!!!!
wankers, yes they are all desk wankers. they need to get out and see the world.
ReplyDeletePONYGIRL
ReplyDeleteBravo. I for one am extremely proud of my angst-ridden drivel.
I shall drink my fill from the sacred grail of the Cult of Banality.
GHOSTAY
Desk Wankers is my new favorite term. I shall use it at every opportunity.
:)
ReplyDeleteCreativity does not die Donn!
ReplyDeleteUnless ofcourse it relied upon plagiarism? :):)
now come and collect ur award!
Keshi.
Grohol does not sound like a happy man. I don't take criticisms from irritable people - thy bore me.
ReplyDeleteI love you and would be lost without your comments. My blog will end at the big sleep and not before then. I say your name with three times the n's.... donnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
ReplyDeletetake that back grohol!
Obviously the man has never actually read a bog and probaly came to his conclusions by sitting on the toilet whilst reading a womans magazine.
ReplyDeleteOh and probaly forgot to wipe his ass!
PARTCULATES
ReplyDelete:)!
KESHTAR
You are very generous and on behalf of all of us up here in my head I accept these awards.
CITIZEN MONDO
You certainly maintain your boundaries...you adhere to a very strict coda of who gets to rattle your chain..and I loveth thy King James Anglysche.
KINNNNNNNNDNNNNNNESSSSS
Aw shucks
*shuffles feet and stares at the ground
I don't know if I'd be able to stand myself to blog until the bitter end...prolly not.
WHITESNAKE
Another with the KJ Inglash..bravo!
I lovest the wyrde whilst.
Don't ever underestimate the power and influence (and tips for having Organisms) that you can find in Cosmo!
Guilty as charged here! I have abandoned my blog a many of times. I just call it burn out. Although, my creativity is starting to come back...slowly but surely. Just like me.
ReplyDeleteWhew! I thought you was quittin'...wish I had time to be properly banal.
ReplyDeleteThy cristicisms of my typos borest me as well. (I don't actually - I have only deleted one particular set of vile comments, otherwise they stay.)
ReplyDelete