Ugh. This has not been a great week. If you want to blog, know this: the more successful you become, the more people are going to hate you. I am unfortunately an Oscar blogger, an invented genre, an invented profession and one no one respects. It is like uttering a dirty word in a crowded room of nuns when someone asks you what you do. I usually just say “I run a movie site,” or “I run an awards site.” It almost always requires further explanation.
The great thing about the internet is that people don’t often rely upon one site or one voice. They can hop around from site to site getting their daily fix. There is competition, always. And there is usually a winner. Everyone else scrambles to either top the winner or eke out a little piece of the pie on their own. I’ll let you in on a secret: it all kind of makes me sick and any day now I’m ready to jump ship and go teach elementary kids.
If you write for your own purposes, or for fun, and you don’t care much about traffic or about making money, this won’t apply to you. But in the blogging world, niche to niche, there is always sniping, fighting and competition – blog eat blog.
This piece was a drag because it was the usual old school style of old school reporters/journalists trying to make the bloggers look like fools. There have been several of these hit pieces written over the years. Had I known that’s what it was going to be I never would have agreed to talk. I felt like Jane Alexander in All the President’s Men. Stupid to fall for it. I should have known better. This is the thing about journalism that I have always had a problem with – their lying and pretending in order to get a story. Okay fine if the story is about a corrupt President. It’s a whole other thing if it is just yet another “the bloggers are so silly, useless and stupid.”
We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to us. Queer in the traditional sense as in “weird.” Or queer in the gay sense. Either one works.
I don’t think I came off that badly. Supposedly there is a Part Two coming and god only knows what tiny bits of shit that came out of my mouth will end up in it. From now on I am taking a vow never ever to agree to interviews about bloggers. Good idea, right? One is always hoping to be better known to drive up traffic, to make more money.
I support my family (my daughter and me) on what I make so I am motivated to work hard. And I am motivated to continue working as long as it is profitable. When it stops being profitable I will likely pack up my suitcase and leave the circus.
So just know that you will be hated and you will have to deal with that hate. How do you deal with it? I’ve seen bloggers turn off comments altogether. If you have a lot of mean commenters you could turn off the comments. But community building is apparently how it’s done nowadays so if you can at all help it, don’t turn them off. You can deal with it by walking away from it on a daily basis and doing something that makes you feel better about your own life, and the world at large. Yoga, for instance. A hike in the mountains. A trip to a museum.
Or you can just ignore it. For me, being vanilla doesn’t work. I am too opinionated. So I guess I have to ignore it. Until I can’t stand it anymore.
I spend way too much thinking about me.
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