How to Write Blogs and Influence People

In order to fully understand the nature of this curious beast we call the "weblogger" or ("blogger" for short) I decided to explore the World Wide Information Superweb for other blogs of note, hoping to garner or "steal" ideas from them. What follows is a report on my forays into enemy territory.

Blog 1 - The Vacationist

My first port of call was a blog called "The Vacationist" by a pleasant sounding individual called Adam Sachs. I thought to myself "Hey I like vacations....and I love sacks....this is the blog for me!" My initial enthusiasm was quickly dampened as the site immediately crashed Firefox when I opened it. So far, not so good. Terrified of invoking the fury of the internet gods by reopening the page, I decided to chalk it down to experience and move on. Picture me with two fingers crossed and a look of intense apprehension as I opened:

Blog 2 - Ashley Wood

"Hm", I thought as I viddied the title of this blog, "This sounds like it could be the random musings of an attractive American schoolgirl - perhaps with sexy pictures!" As you can imagine, I was quite excited (no not in my pantal region, you sick freak). Imagine then my disappointment when Ashley Wood turned out to be an aging comic book artist. With a wife no less, if he was single I could have perhaps drummed up some excitement in my loins. As it happened, however, the blog proved quite enjoyable mainly because of the art work Ash had on display - some very good stuff. His actual prose was disappointing as it just described the art. "Some art form the upcoming WWR History book due in July" he might say or "A painting of a dragon." I felt I wasn't getting to know the REAL Ashley Wood. The closest he came to revealing anything of his personality was his giddy exclamation that "...ID Software is gearing up for Doom 4, which to me is super cool". Super cool indeed. Unlike you, my geekoid friend. Just kidding Ash, you got moxy and the art was cool so overall I was quite pleased. I decided that putting up pictures and stuff would be my next step on my path to blog domination. Buoyed by the strength of this decision, I moved with some eagerness to blog numero 3.

Blog 3 - Boing Boing

I said to myself at this point "Joseph, you devilishly handsome fiend, you're approaching this in the wrong way - it's time to go straight to the top!" And straight to the top is where I did go, my friends. Boing Boing is, according to technorati.com (no idea), THE number one blog on the internet BAR NONE! This would surely give me some ideas to help my blog become super ultra popular with the kidz. And man oh man, did my foray into Boing Boing begin with promise. The first headline proclaimed dizzily "Two FBI agents just showed up at my door for taking photos of Los Angeles!" WOW, I thought! So many interesting avenues of bloggery that one could pursue! The devolution of the Land of the Free into a right wing police state, abuse of power by those meant to protect us, the persistent buzz of fear that surrounds us in this post 9/11 world - all fascinating areas of discussion. However, the blog entry ended thusly
"The agents that showed up at my door were at first intimidating, but after they realized I wasn't a threat, we had an interesting conversation about the balance between me doing my job, and them being required to follow up on leads in their job."
Hmph. Not quite the global conspiracy theory I was hoping for.

In all honesty though, this was a very good blog. It had a good mixture of entries on a wide variety of subjects. Indeed, Boing Boing calls itself "A Directory of Wonderful Things" and it's not far wrong. Amusing video clips, funny pictures and interesting articles on any number of subjects make this a blog worth checking out. However, it's mainly based around other people's work - the author(s) of the blog seem to contribute very little of their own thoughts. 99% of the independent thought on the blog is from the commenters at the end of each article. As I started this blog solely as a vehicle for my idiotic ramblings, I left Boing Boing having garnered relatively few useful ideas - beyond stealing video clips from Youtube in an effort to make my blog more popular. Nothing wrong with that, onwards on upwards!

Blog 4 - Kahlee's Blog: Never Give a Cheerleader a Keyboard

After my last entertaining but largely fruitless venture into blogland I decided I needed to find a blog that was popular but that also had a more personal touch. And so I stumbled upon Kahlee's blog. I will not lie to you; the word cheerleader leaped from my computer screen with the intensity of a lonely farmer on a warm sheep - and with similar levels of excitement. Could this atone for the disappointment felt on entering Blog 2? However, my interest was also piqued by the blurb which stated:
"Observations and commentary by a modern libertarian cyberpunk on society, culture, politics and whatever."
Hm, could she be beautiful AND intelligent? A dangerous combination in any woman. The first entry visible on her blog was a poem. A very poor poem at that. However, it was a tongue in cheek affair and not meant to be taken seriously so I glossed over it in search of some delicious morsels of fascimation (fascinating information, that's copyrighted).

Honest opinion: it blew hot and cold. Her approach to bloggery was generally the same as I intended mine to be (random musings on a variety of topics) but, dagnabit, I just didn't find it very INTERESTING. This in turn raised a number of fears in my gulliver, namely that no one would find me interesting. I quickly realised that this certainly would not be the case as I am such a great and wonderful character (I'm only joking, I'm not arrogant, I'm actually humourously self-effacing ALL the time). It was comments like:
"Last thing I’ve noticed…. Everyone’s a hipocrit. Everyone’s a judge. Everyone hates. Everyone hates a hipocrit. Eveyone hates a judge. Everyone hates themself. They just don’t realize it."
...that put me off a little. A) Because I'm a pedant and it's HYPOCRITE YOU IDIOT and b) because I don't fancy that kind of self conscious analysis of other people. Overall though, it was pretty good. She talks a bit about music, she talks about politics, she talks a bit about sport and is, in fairness, for the most part reasonably interesting. And, perhaps most importantly, she says what she feels without worrying that anyone can read it. But the icing on the proverbial cake is that not only does she post hot pictures of herself she posts hot pictures of naked female celebrities. My friends, we have a winner.


So ends my research for today at least. I think some of the ingredients required for a successful blog are as follows:

A) Steal other people's funny jokes and videos
B) Be diverse in your selection of topics
C) Try not to think about people actually reading your WEBLOG
D) Post pictures of hot celebrities
E) Be a hot teenage American cheerleader

Achieving E might be difficult but I'm willing to learn. Anyway, time to implement these commandments. It's Adam and Joe with their insanely catchy Tokyo song - I recommend everyone download their BBC 6 Music podcasts! It's all good stuff.