Friday, October 14, 2011

Why most Bloggers are anti-social nervous wrecks and plain cardboard crazy

It’s because we lead highly strenuous nerve-wracking lives, that’s why. Don’t believe me? Let me walk you through it, my little naïve one.

To begin with, we end up looking at this whole world as a blogging opportunity. Are you talking to me, and did you say something really stupid? Blog post. Did my shoe heel just break on the most important day of my life? Blog post. Did I just drop ketchup all over myself but can pass it off as a story about my annoying colleague? Blog post. Did I just have a dream that progressed in bullet points? Hell ya, blog post! It sounds dreamy, but somewhere along the line, it can get a little tiring. Specially when you start leading a life that is either so boring, or so amazing, that you have nothing to write about anymore. Nothing that you can make fun of, share with the world, laugh about, or even worse, crib about wittily. The amount of pressure that your blog puts on the life you lead, sheesh, don’t even get me started on it.

And then there’s the constant need to be funny. You know, because no one wants to read a depressing blog. Or even a happy blog. So if you cry, cry in a funny way, and if you’re happy, make sure you’re clutzy-happy, or your readers just won’t like you. Especially when there are a gazillion funnier blogs out there in the world. And crazier. Let’s not forget crazier.

And the next point will be best understood by people working in Sales. Not just any people, but those crazy ones, you know? The ones who check up on their regional teams every hour to find out the number of special anti-pimple soaps sold in the last sixty minutes, and have a n ongoing trend analysis in their heads. That’s what Blogger Stats does to you every time you put a post up. It drives you just that crazy. Where you wonder where each hit on your blog came from, whether the person actually read the post, whether it’s been shared on Stumble Upon or Digg, whether it was the correct time of the day to post, and whether they actually liked it enough to follow you or even better, comment. And just like it takes all the willpower in the world to not just go ahead and buy out the whole stock of anti-pimple soaps yourself just to make your numbers look good, well, we have to go through the will power test of not tracking your own page views, and commenting on your own blog anonymously. It’s pure torture I tell you. Of course all bloggers will also tell you that they write for themselves, and it doesn't really matter whether people read and whether they like you. You know, just like the sales numbers on the anti-pimple soap don't really matter. The soap was actually introduced to help mankind and its skin issues. Because it makes the FMCG company feel good about itself, and sleep peacefully at the end of the day.

And as if all this was not enough, blogging can be rather taxing on your personal life. To begin with, people actually pester you to feature in your posts at most times, as had happened with my old blog here. But then it turns out, they’re not very happy when you actually do write about them, because you by chance ended up mentioning the stitches they got on their bum recently. Hey, I tell it like I see it! Well not literally, I didn’t actually see the stitched up bum. Oh well. And then sometimes, to escape from public scrutiny, you blog anonymously…which gives you an initial high, knowing you can write whatever you want without it getting traced back to you…but eventually switching in and out of the gazillion different profiles just drives you crazy enough to end up in a mental asylum with a Multiple Personality Disorder. And when that happens, the friend with the bum-stitches will not really volunteer to help.

So you see, it really is difficult to be a blogger, and it’s a hobby that requires grit, determination and will power.
Oh, and someone just pointed out that you need to be a talented writer to blog.
Hmmm.
Nah!

12 comments:

  1. ...just go ahead and buy out the whole stock of anti-pimple soaps yourself just to make your numbers look good...

    Don't tell me THAT is the story behind the 19 Su's! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can very proudly, thankfully and with a clear heart say that is NOT the story behind the 19 Su's :D :D :D

    ReplyDelete
  3. the points u said r justified enough...& everyone hankers fr publicity & its obvious...who to blame

    http://ideas-forum.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Soumyadeep - Ah well..it's the curse of being a blogger :P

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hmmmmm.. :-)Wasn't blogging just supposed to be all about unclogging ourselves????Worrying about comments,traffic,stats-that just makes all the fun jump off from a 10-storey building of frustration and kill itself..:-D

    ReplyDelete
  6. well the point is valid! blogging is somehting which needs determination and most importantly passion.

    Cheers!
    http://vj-menon.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  7. @Rahul - That's ideally what blogging is supposed to be...but since when is this world ideal?? Sigh.

    @Vijay- Hai na?

    ReplyDelete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "...it really is difficult to be a blogger, and it’s a hobby that requires grit, determination and will power.
    "Oh, and someone just pointed out that you need to be a talented writer to blog."

    Cheer up, young lady. Take blogging like your most engrossing, relaxing and enjoyable hobby - painting? photography? cricket? listening to music? chatting with friends? - and you will find that it doesn't need any special effort.
    We think, you are already doing that.

    [Came here while checking your blog for showcasing it today.]

    ReplyDelete
  10. @IndianTopBlogs - Yes, well, at the end of the day it really is the one place where you can relax and be yourself and let out all your steam, as I do pretty often. Thanks a ton for stopping by!!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. LOL, why did that just sound like me on one of my sprees:D

    And why did you abandon Gift of the Gab? You have like archives going back to '05 there na..

    And you need writing talent to be a Blogger? Who said that? *snort* That is one illusion Blogger stripped me of within a month of becoming one.

    ReplyDelete
  12. @PeeVee - Hai na? I thought so too when I read your blog!! :D

    Oh well, the Curse of Gab needed some much deserved rest. Though am struggling starting all anew and all!!!

    ReplyDelete

Do let me know what you think!!!!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...