Paul O'Flaherty

Lets Call A Spade A Spade: It’s Influence Media

Spade or shovel?

I woke up Saturday morning with a number of things floating around my mind, such as the amount of time until I next see Sara, how I was going to get all my work done before the Ireland Vs England rugby match and a nagging, scraping feeling in the back of my mind about relationships.

As the caffeine from my first cup of coffee began to work it’s way into my system it hit me that relationships are about 1:1 communication.

Okay, admittedly that’s a fairly obvious to most people and not exactly a revelation. It’s something that we all know and many of us have been advocating online for years. If you want to grow your brand or blog you have to foster 1:1 relationships with your readers/followers/fans in order to develop loyalty.

I’ve always thought that social media was about developing and nurturing those relationships. I thought it was about communicating with your fans and followers, about growing that 1:1 connection that would allow organic growth as those you’ve developed relationships with will feel comfortable enough with you or your brand to recommend you to their peers, thus introducing you to a new social circle where you can again begin to develop the 1:1 relationships.

That, in a nutshell is what social media is to me.

What I see happening online today, being pimped and pushed by “those in the know” is not social media, it’s influence media.

In order to get ahead today we are still being told to foster relationships but not with our followers (or at least not so much).  The prevailing school of thought, at least to my cynical eyes, is that in order to grow you must foster relationships with just a handful of influencers and allow them do the work of communicating your message or spreading the word.

That’s a smart marketing tactic (to some degree, it still lacks 1:1 familiarity with the people you want to reach) but it’s by no means social media. It’s influence media.

It’s a numbers game where we use services or look at the follower numbers in order to find people like Scoble or Chris Brogan, suck up to them and hope that they will spread your word to the people you want to reach. Obviously the more of these influencers you can grease up then then the more people you can reach and the quicker you can reach them.

Which leads me to ask why are people promoting this process of finding these influencers and soliciting them to spread the word rather than fostering the actual relationship/social media approach?

The answer oddly enough is that these influencers are actually good at the social media side of things (that’s how they became influencers) but they are also very smart people. They know that by promoting the “influnce media” model they are setting themselves up as hubs.

Promoting social media as being the practice of finding influencers to spread the word for you actually encourages others not to become influencers, which removes competition and removing the competition is key when being an influence hub is a lucrative business.

The Blogosphere Is Dead And Its Your Fault

Killing ourselves off!

Warning: ** If you’re easily offended I suggest you click off to another blog this instant because I will offend your delicate sensibilities. This post is about the blogosphere in its entirety and not about any one particular individual or their actions. **

I am sick to death of the blogsphere. It’s weak, it’s spineless and has about as much veracity as a neutered, toothless, three legged Chihuahua.

It’s dying.

I’d love to know what the root cause of the blogospheres apathetic decline into little more than a circle-jerk for various communities is, but I’m betting that from here on in we’re pretty much screwed.

We’ve descended into a mob of self serving, self centered sheeple that act with about as much individuality a a shoal of fish. One of us reacts and we all react, we all panic. We all cling to each other like sprat on the shores of community while the mackerel devour us.

We secretly despise each others success and revel in others failure, all the while acting like we’re all the best of buddies and that everything everybody writes is amazing and smells like roses.

Well it does smell like roses, until you realize it’s the smell of the bullshit you’ve thrown on the roses to fertilize them.

This weekend I’ve been deeply disturbed by the wishy washy, head stuck in the sand, lets avoid reality when it’s spitting down our throats,  nature of a fairly substantial number of my fellow bloggers.

The entire @MyBottlesUp story just sums it all up for me. Here you have a woman who blatantly fabricated a story that a goverment agency took her child from her. Tweeted about it wrote about it, tried to cash in on her “story” and then when faced with undeniable video evidence that it had never happened, accused the TSA of doctoring the video.

No remorse, no guilt, just more accusations.

So the TSA released more video. 9 videos in fact, showing her entire journey through airport security, sometimes from various angles.

The response of some of the people: “The TSA are faking it” or worse (because I can actually understand that there are a lot of wing-nut conspiracy freaks out there donning  their silver foil hats) the response of those who think we should let it be because she’s “not well”. She suffers from anxiety and substance abuse.

She was well enough to make this shit up. She was well enough to write about it. To tweet about lining up publishers. Well enough to try to pretend her site was down and to write a long response refuting the undeniable evidence.

Yet people want to protect her. They want to make excuses. They would much rather we all look like one big idiot community than do what is needed.

Take a stand. Say what she did was wrong and unfollow her. Unfollow her and unsubscribe from her everywhere. If she wants back make her earn it. Make her apologize.

A prime example of this spineless behavior is Blog with Integrity. You may have seen it, it’s a square blue badge which adorns some bloggers sites stating that they have basically signed a pledge to be goodie goodies… It’s noble. Naive, but noble.

@MyBottleUp proudly displays the “blog with integrity” badge on her sidebar. When the people behind the “I’m holier than thou emblem” were asked what their stance was on all the goings on, they responded by scurrying into the corner like mice afraid of their own shadow. They chose to stay out of it because you know, a blogger sporting their badge should never have to be talked to or asked to have it removed when they violate the principles it is supposed to represent.

Over the weekend, a blogger wrote a negative post about her experiences with the TSA during an airport security screening. The TSA refuted her claims in a post that included video of the incident. The inevitable blogstorm ensued.

The blogger displays the Blog with Integrity badge on her blog, and we have been asked in email, in posts and on Twitter about the matter. Some have called for us to ask her to remove the badge. Others merely wonder what we will do.

Here is our position:

Disputes and disagreements are between the parties involved. There are two sides to every story. It’s only fair to let a story play out before anyone makes up their mind.

Blog with Integrity is a voluntary community effort. Not a regulatory body. We don’t make decisions about your integrity. You do. Your readers do. The badge is a symbol of a blogger’s personal commitment to the principles of the pledge; only he or she can decide whether or not to display it.

In this case, we hope that everyone who has blogged, commented or tweeted about the incident will take the opportunity to re-examine his or her own words, and act accordingly.

Remember the final line of the pledge: “I own my words. Even if I occasionally have to eat them.”

Up Yours!

Bullshit! Your badge either means something or it doesn’t. You are either serious about what it represents or you’re not.

If you’re going to shy away at the first point of contention then why even bother in the first place. Good intentions have never gotten anybody anywhere.

What exactly does the badge stand for if any unscrupulous twat can just slap it on the side of his or her blog and claim they’ve got integrity as if some mighty Monty Python finger descended from the heavens and shoved integrity up their backside?

I’m not one for regulating the blogosphere. But you know what? If it was my badge I would do some of the following in order to make it mean something:

• Have a registry of sites that are displaying the badge.
• Use some kind of script to track the distribution of the badge so it is tied to each website and if they violate the pledge turn off the badge.
• Make community regulation an integral part of the system. After all it’s so much easier to stick to the rules when you have people supporting you and possibly snitching on you if you cheat…
• Act like I give a shit when stuff like this goes down.

Don’t get me wrong I don’t really want to regulate the blogosphere, in fact I’ve lambasted Tim O’Reilly and others for suggesting such silliness in the past. But that said, if you’re going to try to do it, dear “Blog with Integrity” people, then for feck sake at least do it right!

I’m truly sick of todays blogosphere, where the ultra polite and light on brainwave activity have massive zombie hordes follower numbers while those who dare to express an actual opinion are ostracized to the edges of mediocrity. I honestly believe that John C Dovark is the only person to have crossed that divide, but that still plays out as a poor reflection on that esteemed section of the blogging community that act like everything is one great big group hug with Barney the purple pedophile.

Heaven forbid that someone be different. That someone suggest we don’t all have to brown nose each other all the time.

When the hell is the blogosphere going to finally grow up and stop moaning about what it doesn’t have, what bloggers believe (naively) they are entitled to and act like adults.

Adults can have opinions. We don’t have to go along with the crowd. We can do something different and be part of the community.We don’t have to think that every god damn post by every idiot we just happen to know is praiseworthy to the point of gushing…

We can call a spade a spade. We can call people out for what they’ve done wrong and praise them for what they’ve achieved. We can regulate ourselves without a laid out set of rules or crappy badges in our sidebars. I mean seriously who besides those that display them know what they’re for anyway?

All we have to do is accept that we are adults and that we have a community to protect and build if we ever want to get taken seriously.

Treat the community as a plant with each one of us acting as a gardener. I know that sounds daft but stick with me.

If a bit is rotten, does wrong, then don’t just ignore it. Cut it off. Each of us, one at a time. If that part heals, grows strong again, then let it back in for another chance.

If we all act like little gardeners and follow our own individual moral compass and just decide to unsubscribe, unfollow and not visit the blogs of people who we feel are not in the best interest of the community we will eventually find a natural middle ground where everyone is comfortable.

Yes the community will split. Probably into a number of parts. The marketers and spammers will find themselves marketing and spamming each other. The trolls will have nobody to play with etc… But the core will remain and just like cutting the dead branches off a tree in order to save it, the community will begin to grow and flourish again.

If we can just drop this, everybody be nice to everybody about everything no matter what attitude, the blogosphere will be a far better place and may actually start to earn some respect.

We need to drop the “He’s local so I’ll follow his blog or on twitter even though he’s a dick” bullshit. The same within communities such as mommybloggers. You can’t protect the idiots from themselves so let them go, let them die off.

Darwin called it natural selection. Survival of the fittest. The weak, infirm and just plain stupid die off so as not to pollute the gene pool and damage the entire species.

We’ve been protecting and making excuses for far too long. They’re like a cancer and our acceptance and encouragement is only weakening the entire body and eating us up from the inside while we trot around like idiots with our rose tinted glassed on pretending that everything is fine.

Very soon the only bloggers remaining will be barely capable of thought in more the 140 character bursts and only capable of that if they are participating in a community reach around scheme.

Culling the herd is a common practice to stop the spread of disease so that all the animals aren’t lost. If we don’t cull some of our herds, and soon, there won’t be any blogosphere left worth protecting.

How Do You Gauge Credibility?

Trust me!

An interesting question was inadvertently raised by @SabrinaDent (Sabrinas blog) earlier when responding on Twitter to my post “The FCC, TSA, @MyBottlesUp And Why Bloggers Can’t Be Trusted”.

How do you judge credibility online?

Credible bloggers are taken plenty seriously – TheStory.ie is an example. This woman has no credibility and never built any.

How do you judge the credibility of someone you’ve never heard of?

It’s relatively easy to judge the credibility of someone you’ve been following online for a long time. You get to know them, get a feel for them and you usually can see them being mentioned by other people who you also associate with online.

If you’re part of the same community you’ll see their name appear in the same forums, see other people linking to them and mentioning them and generally they become known to you by word of mouth.

The more you see someone mentioned (in a positive light) and the more you see people you know interacting with them the more likely you are to take them as a credible source.

The best gauge of credibility for me is the interaction of my peers. I tend to give a lot of weight to the those who have the ear and attention of my peers.

It’s a very different story when you don’t know the person and don’t move in the same circles. So how do we judge?

Well, you could do a search on the person and see what other people are saying or read through multiple posts on their blog and try and get a feel for them, but seriously who ever does that. Most of us are just clicking through to something that caught our eye and moving on, with perhaps a quick press of the retweet button.

The sad fact of the matter is that the internet has a sheep mentality. People will follow you just because other people are. It has a knock on effect and is something that bloggers (as one example) have been using for the longest time to get you to subscribe to them.

Almost every blogger proudly displays their RSS subscriber count and sometimes their email subscriber count. The reason for doing this is simple. It’s like saying : “Hey look at me, I have 2000 followers, you should follow me too” and sadly enough, for a lot of people that is enough.

Sometimes you will have more information to go on. A good design helps to put us at ease as it makes us feel like someone is at least being diligent and doing their housework with regards to their blog!

On Twitter a high follower to following ratio gives a good impression as it eases suspicion that the user may be a spammer and that other people are paying attention to them.

A good Pagerank and a good Alexa rank are indicators that people may be linking to them and that their traffic is descent which reinforces the idea that they are credible, but at the end of the day they are all only indicators in a situation where most of us make a snap decision about credibility.

I’ve met some high profile bloggers in my time who appear to be very credible but in real life I don’t think I would trust them to organize dinner never mind consult or run a business. There are others like Steven Hodson, who could blog that the moon had been stolen by little green men and I probably wouldn’t go to the window to look out and check, I’d just take him at his word because since I’ve known him he’s proven to be sincere, trustworthy, cranky and credible.

So how do we judge if someone is credible or not! Most of us have neither the desire nor time to really dig into the details of someone online before deciding to retweet their post. Most of us make this snap decision many times a day?

What indicators do you use to judge if a post or blogger is credible in what they say? Or how about a twitter user, especially one with a blog?

The FCC, TSA, @MyBottlesUp And Why Bloggers Can’t Be Trusted

Nic from MyBottlesUp - Lying for attention?

Bloggers can’t be trusted!

Mainstream media knows it! The FCC knows it! We know it ourselves yet refuse to admit it.

You know it and “Nic” from My Bottles Up (site has a black splash screen thrown up at time of posting)  has just proved it beyond question.

Bloggers seek attention. That’s why we blog. I’ve said it many times before, the only reason people blog is because they are attention whores. You can give all the excuses you want, or even throw out the oldest defence, that you blog for yourself. It’s therapeutic.

Well, if it’s therapy you need, or therapy you’re looking for, then buy a diary or share your woes with Microsoft Word and leave them off the internet.

We are attention seekers.

In a spark of what I will kindly assume what psychotic behavior, either that or her bottle really had been upended and emptied (repeatedly) one mommy blogger has proven why bloggers are not to be taken seriously, let alone be trusted.

She wrote a long and impassioned post decrying and vilifying the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) claiming that they had taken and separated her from her son, among many other spurious allegations.

My son was taken from me.

Taken.

My son was taken from me by the TSA agents at Atlanta Harstfield-Jackson airport yesterday.

As usual twitter was in uproar. As expected the support rolled in, generating over 300+ comments on the post.

But then the truth came out. The TSA decided that enough was enough and released the actual security footage of her trip through airport security. All time stamped. An act of complete transparency which demonstrates beyond a doubt that she was lying.

She was lying. The story was fabricated. She is now in virtual hiding.

You know what the problem with attention seekers is? They desire attention. They’re always looking for new ways to get it.

Bloggers call that building an audience. There are many ways to go about this. You can work your ass off and write daily. You can run competitions and you can write about stuff sent to you for review. Stuff which other folks may not have. Objects that they want. Objects that they desire and will visit your blog to read about.

The FCC knows this. That’s why they implemented the guidelines that they have. They know that there are very few incorruptible people out there. Most people have their price.

Sure you may say that you would never compromise the integrity of your blog (or yourself) but who are you to speak for the millions of other people that call themselves bloggers?

Sure you may claim that your readers are smart enough to know the difference if you’ve suddenly turned into a shill or are lying or even just padding the facts a little. Well, if that’s the case why was everybody in uproar and support of “My Bottles Up Nic” until the TSA released the video?

You may still be angry that we are not treated the same as our traditional media brethren. You know, the media which has an editorial process and a visible entity to challenge (legally or otherwise) if information is false, misleading or just blatant advertising.

We are, for the most part, a pack of attention seeking wannabes. We have proven ourselves time and again to be willing to post information that is unresearched and uncorroborated. We’ve proven that we are willing to be shills for as little as $5. We’ve proven that we act as mob with knee jerk reactions. As of today we’ve also proven, not for the first or sadly the last time, that we are willing to lie just to get a bit of attention.

We can’t be trusted! Until we prove that we can be then we have no business claiming we should be taken seriously and treated the same.

The Social Media Guru (Video)

Trust me!

Social media experts, gurus and witchdoctors! You can’t turn a corner on the internet without running into 10 of them. Each and every one of them pimping their own regurgitated brand of “unique” insight that will do everything from save your business to turn you into a superstar with all of the perks and track marks as proof!

They’re like pigeons around old people at the park -- annoying, everywhere and covering the place in shit.

Have you ever wondered what it is most of these so called “social media experts” actually do for companies? This video tells all…

Hat tip to “New Pair Of Goggles“

Friendship Is More Than 140 Characters

9 days after I posted about reducing the number of shared links I was posting to Twitter, I received this from a friend via a series of direct messages:

Hey Paul, I just wanted to let you know why I am unfollowing before I do so. I followed you to follow *You* not your blog, and it seems that is all you do on Twitter (for the most part), now. I’d recommend going back to this being your personal Twitter and having a separate account for your blog posts, especially since you post so often. Let me know when you’ve reduced the linkspam in your Twitter stream as Twitter doesn’t give me the ability to filter your many links out like Facebook does.

While keeping my friends name private, I wanted to respond to this publicly as it is very much an important matter to me and I believe, something which faces everyone who runs their own site and builds their brand around themselves rather than a domain or company name.

First let me point out that I am my blog and for all intents and purposes, my blog is me.

PaulOFlaherty.com contains content covering my blogging on several different domains going back to the beginning of 2004. Prior to that I blogged on a number of proprietary platforms from which I could not export my content.

I have always promoted by blogs, vidcasts and podcasts through my social media accounts. I actively encourage readers of this blog to follow my blog and personal updates by subscribing to my Twitter account.

You say that you signed up to follow me, well I am what I write. I am what I produce. My posts and netcasts are as much a part of me, hell more a part of me, than a lot of the inane chatter and babble I engage in on Twitter.

In other words, when people followed me on Twitter they were following my blog. It has never been any different.

I converse with my friends and audience on Twitter but my blog is where you will find the real me and I use tools such as Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to draw people in to where I can actually express my opinions. To draw people into my blog where I can vocalize (yeah I know it’s written) my opinions without the restrictions of 140 characters that reduce even the most simple of ideas to little more than monosyllabic grunts.

I guess some people are more involved with the day to day minutiae of my life but I am not my Twitter messages. No more than I am my SMS messages and following my Twitter account will never give you an accurate picture of me.

If you’re interested in “following me” then links to my blog posts, the things which truly demonstrate my opinion and how I think, should not be a problem going through my twitter stream.

With regards to the statement of linkspam. How do my own links, to my own content on my account qualify as spam? I post 7 (sometimes 8 ) links a day on my account, to my own content. 6 links to Daily Shite content which go out approximately 1 every 2 and a half to 3 hours (although sometimes they get clumped together depending on how Twitterfeed is feeling) and 1 (2 if it’s a day like today) to my personal blog.

Quite frankly I find having my content, in my stream called “linkspam” offensive. I am not selling anything, pitching anything, trying to get you on a pyramid scheme or any such crap. Yet you call my content linkspam?

Take a look at other peoples twitter streams. Take a look at your own stream. The average stream consists of hundreds of posts which are little more than nonsensical babble describing what they’re having for breakfast, where they are, who they’re meeting and weighing in on exactly what type of douchebag Kanye West is.  Hundreds of posts, every single day, but no content. No substance.

I talk with people on Twitter most days. Some days I don’t. Some days I’m just not in the mood. But not being in the mood doesn’t stop me producing content. It doesn’t preclude me from being me and it doesn’t preclude me from wanting to share what I have created, my opinions and what I feel passionate about, with the rest of the world.

If you don’t want to see my content, then quite frankly, tough. Unsubscribe or unfollow. For everyone person that unfollows because I post my own content to my stream, there will be others who are looking for intelligent discussion and are actually interested in what I have to say rather than just where I am going or what I had for dinner tonight.

It’s times like this that make me realize the fallacy of the term “friend” in social media circles. It is something so shallow as to be discarded because your “friend” has thoughts that require more than 140 characters to express?

Why Ask A Question If People Can’t Answer?

I’ve always believed that blogs were about conversation.

You put your ideas out there and people give you feedback. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they disagree, sometimes they end up ranting like a loon but you always have conversation.

Needless to say I’m one of those people who believe that a blog without the ability to comment, isn’t!

Sara posted a link to Psychology Today, where Satoshi Kanazawa was spouting conspiracy theories about the Joe “You Lie!” Wilson photograph published after he embarrassed himself during Obama’s recent speech.

The title of Kanazawas post was “Who took the picture of Joe Wilson? And how?” and the final sentence of the post was also a question. Yet for all their questioning, they don’t have anywhere for readers to respond. They don’t have a comment form.

My question is simple: Why ask people a question if you’re not going to give them the opportunity to respond?

Is it that they are:

• Afraid of being wrong?
• Afraid that someone will question their assumptions?
• Too lazy to engage readers in conversation?
• Pretending to be involved in social media while simply talking at, instead of to people?

Am I missing some other possible reasons?

Scoble Admits Incompetence Yet Blames WordPress

I thought I was done making fun of the naive yesterday, who couldn’t understand the simple premise of “Upgrade Now” to protect their self hosted WordPress install, but it would appear that the weekend is not yet over in that respect.

Robert Scoble should know better than most the necessity for security updates. He was Microsofts blogger evangelist for long enough, yet now that he’s self hosting his own blog he’s apparently forgotten what he once used to preach.

At some point in the last few weeks (not months, weeks) Scobles WordPress install was hacked and now that there is a big hullabaloo about making sure people update to 2.8.4. He’s decided to jump on the bandwagon and tell his story.

Normally I would have no problem with A-list bloggers like Scoble sharing their story and promoting the need to keep your installs up-to-date, but if I were working or developing for/at/on WordPress I would be incredibly pissed off at Scoble right now.

Not only should people directly involved with WordPress be annoyed at Scoble right now, but anybody who develops for clients and promotes the WordPress platform.

In a post titled “I don’t feel safe with WordPress, hackers broke in and took things” Scoble tells the story about how the blog he neglected to upgrade from 2.7.X (despite all the security updates released between 2.7 and 2.8.4, the notifications of new releases in the dashboard, internet wide talk every time a new release gets pushed etc…) and how he got hacked as a consequence.

Do you see now why Matt Mullenweg and all WordPress developers should be up in arms against Scoble?

In his post and the comments, Scoble repeatedly states that he neglected to upgrade, (despite that fact that it’s a one click process) yet the title of his post, which is what most people pay attention to and probably the only thing that people skimming their RSS readers or Twitter will see, clearly lays the blame at the feet of WordPress.

Scoble just took a big swipe at the perceived security of WordPress. A big unjustified swipe, that serves only to bring him traffic as he jumps on the bandwagon of the push to get people to update to the current version on WordPress, while deflecting attention away from the fact that the only reason it happened to him was because he failed to update.

That’s very much like complaining that you’ve been hacked because you failed to install all the critical updates on your operating system.

Bad form Robert.

As a tech blogger and a geek Robert should know better, on all accounts.

Quality Versus Quantity in Twitter Shares

I’ve been looking at my Twitter feed lately and have noticed that it is becoming rather crowded. There is a heck of a lot of “noise” on my stream.

With all the links that I share on a daily basis, coupled with content from my Google Reader share and our humor site Daily Shite, I can see why some of my followers would be starting to feel a little overwhelmed with the sheer volume of links that go through my stream

That’s not even mentioning my ordinary day to day tweets with all you fine people.

With that in mind I’ve decided to experiment for a bit and stop automatically feeding my GReader share into my twitter stream and be a bit more picky about what I share. (Btw, if you want to get everything I share on Google Reader you can always subscribe to my shares directly).

What it means for my dear twitter followers is that instead of being flooded with 100+ shares a day you should now be down to between 6 and 20 shares a day which have been more carefully considered. Less quantity but more quality if you will.

I’ll still be putting the Daily Shite feed through my twitter stream, it’s only 6 posts a day after all, but over all, share activity will drop dramatically on my feed in favor of quality.

The signal to noise ratio is going to considerably improve.

You may finally be able to see my own tweets in amongst all the other content

This is where I turn to you guys. Do you prefer I send all my shares out, or do you think things will be better with more considered sharing?

You’re An Attention Whore And You Know It

Svetlana Gladkova from Profy posted about “Blog Day” and some of the dirty little secrets bloggers hide/neglect/refuse to share with members of the non-blogging world.

One point that stuck with me was Svetlana’s reasoning behind why people blog:

Bloggers will usually claim that they blog for all kinds of reasons, including willingness to share their unique knowledge and experience with the world or hoping to make the world a better place. But I’ve been working in the blogosphere long enough to know that only a very small percentage of bloggers actually have some big reasons for blogging while the vast majority only blog hoping to get money, fame or some professional recognition – and more money eventually. I don’t like the fact that I’ve lost my idealism months ago and I’d really want to believe all the bloggers that claim they only want to do good but my experience shows I only know a couple of people who actually want to do good and do something good instead of only claiming so – out of hundreds of bloggers I’ve met.

Svetlana has it almost right. I’m going to go one step further and say that the real reason we blog, twitter, podcast and vidcast is because we are all narcissistic egomaniacs / attention whores / desperately seeking recognition.

Yes some of us are driven to make money but the medium through which we do it belies our need to have our ego’s stroked and inflated.

If you tell me that you write for yourself and don’t care who reads it, I’m going to tell that I can smell what you’re shoveling from 10 miles away. If you don’t want it to be read, or have a desire for it to be read, why put it online? Why not just type in a word document or makes use of dead trees and graphite and get it on paper?

If you’re telling me you’re doing it just to make money, I’m still going to tell you that what you’re shoveling isn’t smelling any sweeter as we all know that blogging is not the right racket to truly make money off. A side income perhaps, but a true income, well that’s beyond the capabilities, writing skill and personalities (face it most of us are just boring) to achieve.

Tell me that you’re sharing you’re experience and knowledge to help others and I’ll agree that it’s noble, while flipping you off and telling you that you’ve gone beyond offending my nasal passages at this point.

If you want to help others get involved with an after-schools program, get off your fat arse and go out and help the needy, teach, do youth work, but don’t try to tell me that your 2 hits a day site (you and your mom) is a selfless attempt to help people. You’re just boring, not worth of traffic and are trying to justify the existence of your pinprick of cyberspace.

So what does that leave? Fame, recognition, boasting rites among our peers? Can’t think of many other reasons myself. Attention Whore!

Where’s The Damn Subscribe Button?

Really I don’t care if you’re not concerned about how many people read your blog. I couldn’t give a monkeys arse about your super minimalist design. I fart in the face of your need for the ultimate in minimalist aesthetics.

If you don’t have a clear and easily located RSS or subscribe button on your blog I won’t be subscribing anytime soon.

I’ve run into this “little issue” twice in the past 24 hours and as a result, two blogs which I feel I really could get to like are each a subscriber short.

Lets be honest here, we all blog because some part of us is an exhibitionist at heart, we want people to read what we write or we wouldn’t go to the trouble of posting it to the internet in the first place. So with that in mind, why make it difficult for people to subscribe?