You Are What You Say

I follow a few blogs, and obviously there are some people who follow me. I only have time to read a few because, work, writing, gardening, cleaning up cat barfs (kittens, please can we stop now), and did I say working? So my blog consumption is limited to a few spots that I can squeeze into my day. And when you follow someone for a period of time, you get a feel for who they are as a person. It's a process that can't be stopped. Most blogs have a theme or the point, but even in blogs where the point is front and center, the most successful blogs, the ones I return to again and again, are the ones where I like the "point" and the person writing the blog.

Cooking blogs are great for this (the Smitten Kitchen blog is amazing and if you aren't following Deb, you should go there right now). Also, I find Joe Scalzi's blog a wealth of information about the publishing industry, even though I'm not a big sci-fi fan and I don't own a single one of his books. Part of the success of both blogs is that we like them as people. At least I do. It's what keeps me clicking again and again. There are a zillion cooking blogs out there so why follow Deb? Because I like her. It doesn't hurt that her recipes are also dynamite.

A blog becomes personal, even if we don't want it to. If you write on a consistent basis, you can't help but "reveal" yourself. I find myself culling out blogs over time because I'm just not sure about the person writing it anymore. I dropped a blog from my feed at one point because the blogger (who is extremely successful at pretty much everything she touches) defended her husband smacking her around. If you're at all into blog culture, you will know who I'm talking about. I found that attitude unacceptable, and I dropped the feed from my list. I doubt it mattered one iota to her because I'm one of a zillion followers, but I couldn't support her blog anymore because the message she was sending out (in addition to a whole bunch of otherwise very worthwhile messages) was that sometimes you deserve to be beaten up. Does not work for me. Delete.

You read someone every day or twice a week or every now and then, and they begin to inhabit a piece of you. You don't know them, but if you met them for coffee, you would have a wealth of things to discuss because they have shared with you a bunch of their personal stuff. I've used the metaphor of "baggage" a lot in writing about writing. How when the writer shares her/his baggage and the reader discovers that he/she has the same baggage or is interested in helping the writing carry that baggage through the "end," and voila, you have a successful novel. Well, it's the same with blogs. A blogger shares a certain amount of stuff and it's often personal, and then you can't help but make a personal judgment on who they are. Because it's become a two-way personal street.

This morning I read the blog of someone I've been following for a number of years. And I have issues with her post. Naturally, being the bossy pants that I am, I was tempted to write a personal email and say, hey, you're veering into the land of the vapid and this is why. But I didn't. No, I came over here to write a piece about how this has all become so personal. As bloggers our luggage is open for the viewing whether we like it or not. Over time certain compartments are unzipped, whether we like it or not. Oh my, look at all those socks with holes in them. Wow, that leopard print bra is sexy. Not much of a compliment to the white Hanes briefs next to them. Perhaps TMI?

I don't know if this inevitable personalization is good or bad. I just know that if you read a piece here in this blog that you find offensive or irritating and you just don't want to follow me anymore, I understand.

Blog Stuff

So. I have feeds for several blogs and the majority of them are food-centered blogs. (There is one that I absolutely adore, even if it's primarily about men's shoes. It's at times totally irreverent and a tad aging frat boyish and bone-deep charming and sometimes achingly sweet and touching. I'm grateful I don't live in the south because I have a feeling there are tons of men with exactly this swoon-inducing combination of traits--not the aging frat boy part but even in him it has a boyish come hither about it).

And you know what kills me? They can use wonderful pictures of lemons and strawberries and cool plates and wonderful champagne flutes and I write mostly about ideas and it's really hard to find pictures about ideas. You know? So this blog is visually flat--although I'd like to think intellectually as sassy as a lemon. Yet we are a visual culture these days, and I'd like to give this space more punch and I'm stymied;

Stymied, I tell you!

Shall We Blog?

As I've mentioned in the past, I have a toe in the Harry Potter fandom (and, yes, we are talking about a Galaxy Quest type of fascination and wackiness), and part of being in fandom these days is interacting with other fans. And while it can be a fantastic place to meet other like nut cases, there are hierarchies--who is more popular than whom; fandom is a lot like being back in sixth grade. Unfortunately. Just when I'm at the point when I think, oh, this is really beyond the pale, I am done, something happens, some remarkable act of kindness, and I stay. The hierarchy nonsense does bother me to no end, and what is so insidious about it is that the rules are different for different fandoms and even within subsets of cliques the rules are different. Naturally, these are unspoken rules because then it wouldn't be as much fun to exclude people when they make unintentional mistakes.

Digressing, we are. So we come to the issue of blogging. I don't get that many comments from what I write down here, and actually I'm good with that because I loathe, LOATHE, the interface here on blogger. There is no easy way to respond to people, and if Google were listening I would say to you, THIS SUCKS! I'd like more readers, naturally, but you get what you get and if I posted more and had pretty pictures, I'd have more readers. So I tell myself.

Anyway, what this post is truly about (finally, she gets to the point) is that I have stumbled across a blog of a person with whom I don't have much in common, however, said blog is well written and amusing with very pretty pictures, and while our life experiences are polar opposites, from what I can gather we are about the same age, and that often creates a type of bond that transcends a lot of the differences. And this person culls out their responses. Said person only wants responses from certain elite types from a certain strata of life. Because of trolls, all we bloggers have the option of editing which comments appear, and said blogger wants a certain look to said comments. If I were being catty I would say that said blogger cares as much about who comments and what they say as the blog itself, but let's not go there. Whatever the motivation, clearly, my comments don't rate. I find this highly amusing. Not that they aren't germane to the subject of the day, just that I'm a nobody and I have no "currency." It's just like fandom.

Of course, being the sort of pugnacious person that I am, I'm debating whether to comment on every single solitary post said blogger makes, but then that will only cause said blogger to block me. So, I'm going to be stealthy about it and only comment once in a blue moon. Keep said blogger on said toes and wondering. Should I block her or not? Is she a crank? Does she really think that I care about what she thinks? Because then you see I've won. Because then said blogger will devote much more time to thinking about the "unworthiness" of my comments than the more "worthy" comments.

Hmmm, does this sound like a sixth-grade girl? Nah. Machiavelli, perhaps.