sick by cutglassdecanter
posted 30 Nov ’05, 2.56am MST PST on flickr
oh man did I find this here? I dont remember been there. bwwwwaaaap.
There are googles of sites telling you how to blog, but I’ve not come across a secret strategy I have been hesitant to share, and I was actually mostly unaware of it until recently.
This tip will not make you rich or famous, but maybe it will keep you in focus- read a blog you can’t stand.
I keep tabs on (via RSS) of one or two blogs that just reading them can make me sick.
Please do not ask me to reveal my sources, as (a) I won’t and (b) I won’t. That is not the point.
But one of these blogs is by someone that has some prominence in the social media field, perhaps even makes a living from sharing their wisdom, and every time I read this person’s blog I am looking for my ticket on the porcelain bus.
This person gets 19 times the comments I can ever dream of, but every post I read just see as so self serving, vapid, transparent, and Homer “Doh” head slapping obvious, but really it is the subtext of “Hmmm, I AM pretty cool” that goads me.
I put myself in the path of nausea as a self-check of my own writing, so that if ever I feel I am writing in this person’s style, I stop, delete, and go outside for a breath of fresh air. It has come into play a few times.
It does not take daily doses; every few weeks is enough to keep the gag reflex in check.
There it is, I have let my (barfing) cat out of the bag.
Heck, for all I know, I may serve the same purpose for others!
My theory is that you find an unbelievable image like this one, and then dream up a post you can wrap around it. What a crazy cool image, and the fact that it’s a dog with his head in the bowl brings me to another point, part of your blogging is weaving a kind of crazy identity through dogs and cogs and other blogs, it’s a mashed up space for re-imagining interactions, and the fact that you can blog the dog is what keeps it fun for me.
Jim’s last blog post..Of Punks, Pimps and C.H.U.D.s: Gentrification in NYC as told by 1980s film
Good to know I have at least one reader left. Glad to help.
D’Arcy Norman’s last blog post..RiP: A remix manifesto
@Jim: Dude, the post came first after reading my feeds. Image was lucky; first compfight search on “vomit” was a human on the bus; the dog came lucky on a search on “sick”
@D’Arcy you are no where near the sick blog!
Great idea Alan, I need to do this more often.
If you’ll indulge a thought on Connectivism for a moment, they say that a core part of a “good” network lay in its diversity. One of the key ways of ensuring the presence of diversity then is exposing yourself to opinions or concepts that you completely disagree with.
This might very well force us to reaffirm or disprove your own opinions as well. You never know where learning opportunities may emerge, so if we can look at the message instead of the messenger we’re that much closer to objectivity – though that’s easier said than done.
Now I have to find a blog I can’t stand. I wonder where to look…
Cheers,
Mike
Mike Bogle’s last blog post..Lessig on Free Culture & Creative Commons
It would be cool to share these blogs though wouldn’t it? I have one that gets me twitching like Herbert Lom in Pink Panther films (for much the same reasons you state, it could be the same one), but yet I get a kind of perverse joy in reading.
Martin’s last blog post..Blogging impacts on formal academic output
I’ve seen advice like this, but not put quite that directly nor shown graphically.
Thank God I’m no longer blogging or I’d be convinced that my blog was one of the unmentionables. That’s just part of my particular sickness!
@Chris L: I am not naming the vomit induding blog, but just for clarification, it is not from anyone I have met in person nor is it someone I can say I really have had much interaction with online. @Martin- I think this is best left a secret; there is nothing to be gained or proven by putting this in public. I mean not to belittle.
Where’s the educational content?
Not here; it is just over the next ridge.
I so know what you mean about the social media blogs. There’s one I read out of pure fascination with the pablum and self-absorption. I wonder if we’re thinking about the same person! (But who knows–there are so many!)
Leslie M-B’s latest blog post…Eleventh hour