I know, I know. This
blog post is supposed to be about tangents, but, well, I thought I'd
slide off into a tangent and deliver another rant about hubris,
over-confidence and self-delusion instead of tackling the thorny
issue of tangents.
Last night I was reworking
my blog, and, truthfully, trying to stumble through the technology
required was as difficult for me as learning to read a map is for
those embedded in seeking technological solutions like Google Earth
to non-technological problems. I had to fight the urge to simply
close the thing up and go do something I am good at – like stare at
maps and dream up routes.
Sunrise above our house-sit this morning No epic involved.
Anyway, that's all a bit
tangential in itself. As I was fiddling with gadgets, profiles and
headers, I was switching between my blog and some other, much more
popular blogs by people with similar (outdoor basically) interests
whose blogs are worlds away more popular than mine. Yes, I was
seeing if there was anything I could copy to my blog to increase its
popularity – which could – and probably will be – another blog
post right there (i.e. why we are compelled to seek acclamation).
Do I look good in this photo or what?
Start of a 7 day ski traverse in the Sierra Mountains
I could not help but
notice that the really popular blogs all had a few things in common.
Firstly, they pictured young, fit people who look good all the time.
Well, that's clearly not something I can copy as I am neither young
nor good looking. I am fit and not completely devoid of muscles but
I lack the necessary instinct at blatant self-promotion to take
random pictures of my guns and casually slip the photos into
unrelated blog posts while pretending they are mostly the product of
anything other than random inheritance.
Secondly, popular blogs
are all linked to various social media accounts (Snapchat, Instagram,
Twitter) that appear to be populated by people whose entire day
revolves around following social media accounts and endorsing the
most vacuous posts. I have neither the time nor the inclination to
join that particular tribe.
If you could see my guns, you'd be totally impressed
Prophesy Wall, Utah
Thirdly, a necessary
contingent to a successful blog seems to be some Pollyannaish view of
the world where everything is sweetness, light, and you never post
anything that isn't so full of positive rhetoric that it just about
makes a regular person, living in the real world and struggling with
the day to day issues of life, want to vomit. Sadly, yet another
tribe which I could not, in all honesty, fathom joining.
Fourthly, in order for
your blog to be popular you have to be an “athlete.” Suddenly,
it seems everyone is an athlete. The fact that 99.9% of these
“athletes” actually make their living in an office, a shop, a
factory possibly even outdoors (tree-planting, fire-fighting, etc.)
and do what we've all been doing for the last forty years - train
somewhere so we can go out and do our sport with some reasonable
degree of fitness on our days off – without calling ourselves
athletes. I'm not an athlete any more than my interest in
star-gazing makes me an astronaut.
Really, I love that Barney world view
Fifth, it seemed to me
that in order to boost the readership of my blog I had to write up
every trip as if it was a desperate epic from beginning to end, no
matter how mundane it actually was. Social media has spawned a
strange phenomena where we are more aware than ever before of what
the real “badasses” are doing, but strangely unable to place our
own puny adventures in an appropriate scale. Such is the nature of
hubris.
Cranking a boulder problem a foot off the ground, Badass!
And, finally, but most
importantly, the purpose of your blog has to be to “inspire,”
“motivate,” “create”, “adventure,” “dream,”
“experience”, insert any other high-falutin, Barney world view
word here that actually disguises the true intention of your blog, my
blog, everyone's blog, which is to spray about what we are doing in
order to garner admiration, approbation, and, if we are really lucky
and manage to generate a horde of gullible follows to whom we can
pimp anything that costs money no matter how useless, free stuff.
So, as you can probably
tell, the big rebranding of the blog didn't actually go that well.
In fact, if you are reading this blog, you can't have missed my new
slogan “motivation, it's your responsibility.” It took a while,
but I think I've finally found my tribe. Strangely, there aren't all
that many members.
You have such an interesting blog. Thanks for sharing. Reading blogs is my hobby and I randomly found your blog. I enjoyed reading your posts. All the best for your future blogging journey. Please keep in touch with me in Twitter, @ipersuade.
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