Blog off

The blogging world is all a-twitter over John Dvorak ponderously turning his heavy rhetorical guns our way again. He’s established, tongue in jowelly cheek, Eight Rules for Blogs. Hmmmm. Let’s see …

1. The right attitude. Make it clear that you spend the day, week, or month sitting on your rump reading other blogs instead of looking for work. Or if you actually work, make it clear that you are writing the blog at work, because you hate your job.

I agree with Dvorak that blogs that whine “Work sux!” are, by and large, a lot more difficult to find entertaining than others. (Indeed, it’s similar to, say, a magazine column or TV spot that exists solely to complain, unentertainingly, about anything. “Andy Rooney,” anyone?)

But in this — indeed, in all his critiques — he absolutely misses the point.

If there’s a column in a magazine that you don’t enjoy, you still have to pay for it. You have to flip past it every week. If the magazine uses mug shots of its columnists, you have to see that hateful visage every week — perhaps more than once. And, again, you’re paying for it. Every. Week.

With blogs — hey, there are lots of blogs I’ve visited that left me stone cold bored, or mildly irked, or just confused. Y’know what? All I’ve done is invest between 15 seconds and a few minutes reading through them. After that, poof, I never return. No cost to me. No reminders. I’ve trimmed them off my list of things to read. I don’t care (or have to care) if they get one reader per week, of 50,000 hits a day. It’s not for me.

Isn’t the web wonderful? Isn’t that just one hell of a threat to the publishing industry?

2. Community. Prove that you’re a dedicated blogger by citing at least five other blogs that you just read. Praise them ad nauseum. Then comment on links that their authors discovered and cut and paste these links to your blog.

Yeah, because professional writers never cite their sources, or suggest other writers who might be of interest. They usually just sit there, Great Blubbery Fonts of Wisdom, alone and independent, information simply absorbed from the Ether.

If you’re trying to jazz up your blog, italicize the text that you cut from the other blog.

Some folks have a poor grasp of typography and proper rules for setting things off. For example, the previous block quote by me was too short for a proper block quote. It ought to have been included in-stream. If you don’t like it, don’t read here any more. What a concept.

Add a sentence or two as to why each link is so cool. Teasers work well too. “Can you believe this?” or “What is he thinking?” or “How can anyone be so wrong?”

Yeah, because critiques of what other people think are so unlike traditional print columnists.

3. Humility. Blog daily. If you miss a day, use the next day’s entire blog entry to apologize profusely. Explain in detail the fascinating adventure you had that caused you to miss a day of blogging.

I see. Dvorak’s bored with details of others’ lives. That there are plenty of blogs out there that have nothing to do with that seem to have escaped him. That there are plenty of blogs that seem to have plenty of readers interested in reading about the writer’s personal life also seems to have escaped him. Indeed, any relationship between writer and reader besides Font of Wisdom and Knowledge seems to have escaped him.

Make sure to rave about how great blogging is and why everyone should blog and how blogging will change the world.

As opposed to raving about how awful blogging is and how nobody should blog and how blogging is making the world a silly place.

4. Rich language. Show that you’re an independent free spirit by adding a lot of profanity to your text. Profane headlines and general cussing show people that you are an autonomous thinker not bound by the silly conventions of society—those lousy rules that make you have to work for a living when you should be getting a check from the government just for being alive!

I agree that there are plenty of people who rely excessively on profanity as a crutch for inability to engage in spirited wordplay. That’s why I don’t read them.

5. Jargon. Pepper your text with words like screed, grok, gonzo, meme, and other bloggerisms to show that you are a hip and with-it blogger.

Yeah, because none of those words actually could be found in a dictionary or something. And certainly a professional journalist, particularly one in a tech magazine, would never use forum-appropriate jargon.

Do some people overuse jargon to the point of incomprehensibility? Sure. Do some people overuse jargon in order to show they are part of the “in” crowd? Certainly. Is this a blog phenominon? It is to laugh.

Women bloggers should use the word sister a lot.

Because women columnists, especially ones writing on feminist (or evangelical) topics never do that.

6. Controversy. Make sure your blog page has a list of your favorite bloggers, and hound them to put your blog on their lists. If you get removed from someone’s list, make a public outcry and demand to be returned to the place of honor, or threaten to take the other blogger’s name off your list. Go through this routine weekly with someone.

The sort of cliquish, who’s-on-the-A-list sort of thing Dvorak complains about here is certainly annoying. That’s why I don’t read blogs that do it.

On the other hand, providing a list of blogs that you do read has the advantage of (a) being a convenient way to go through the list, and (b) sharing with the reader another place they might want to try. Sort of like, say, “Here’s a list of books I’ve read. You might enjoy them, too.” Of course, a professional columnist would never do something like that.

7. Humor. Give your blog a cute name, perhaps even using a pun. “Blog on the Run.” “Blogday Afternoon.” “Bloggin’ Fool.” “Hot Blog and Relish.” Or name the blog after a title of a great novel: “The Sound and the Fury,” “The Naked and the Dead.” In a pinch, use “My Blog.”

As opposed to, say, naming your column, “Inside Track.” Or, if you have wangled two columns out of your publisher, simply naming the other column after yourself.

8. Specialize. If you want to trumpet the fact that you’re a rockin’ techie, constantly harp on Linux, and link to the cool scripts you’ve written. Link to a lot of anti-Microsoft diatribes.

Yes, because someone who wants to write about technical matters would never obsess about certain topics.

Use 6-point type and no page breaks, so the blog looks like source code when it’s displayed on the screen. Add color to make it even more unreadable. Use the word warez now and again.

I suppose that’s why professionals have, ah, editors.

To promote the idea that you’re an artiste, use dark gray sans serif type on a black background. Put the links in red.

To promote the idea that you’re special, make sure that your one page is printed with a grey screen behind the black print. Put all the key words in bold.

Put a lot of poetry in the blog. In fact, write the whole blog in poetry. Tell others to contribute. Run everything you get.

And if someone finds that interesting, they’ll read it. And if someone doesn’t, they won’t. And nobody will be the richer or poorer for it.

If you’re a woman who hates men, make sure to use a lot of odd misspellings, such as womyn and grrls to let men know that you hate them. Make lame comments about how all men are pigs in case they still don’t get it. Moan about your life and blame it on men. Reference your miserable high-school years. Name names.

Because that’s certainly only found in blogs.

If you are a lunatic fan who has fallen in love with a rock singer, actress, or actor without ever meeting him or her, then your blog should contain a lot of pictures of the target of your affection—possibly nothing but pictures. Go on and on about how hot the person is. Do yourself a favor and avoid showing pictures of the secret hidden-in-the-closet shrine you made.

If you’re a lunatic fan who has fallen in love with a given technology (or a particular tech firm), then your column should contain a lot of references to the latest instances of that technology — possibly nothing but text quoted out of press releases. Go on and on about how hot the technology is. Rant and rave about how it has personally changed your life. Do yourself a favor, though, and don’t mention that you didn’t have to actually buy the technology, but that it was comped to you by the manufacturer.

But that only happens in blogs.

Finally, for all bloggers, consider using a cat name—Snowball, perhaps—as your own.

Yes, because that’s much more dignified than spattering your real name and your picture over everything that you produce.

Dvorak is, of course, entitled to his opinion. I think he’s blind to the sins of his own profession in much of his lampooning of blogs. I think he’s also blind to non-transactional nature of the blogosphere (to use one of those cute jargon terms): both the writer and the reader have full control over what they do. The reader is not stuck with whatever a publisher thinks is “good stuff” (reads: sells well). The writer is not stuck with having to shape his or her writing to what s/he thinks the readership (or, more directly, the publisher) wants. It’s a free exchange of ideas, and either side can ignore the other as they choose.

Are there crappy, boring, poorly-crafted blogs out there? Absolutely. Would Dvorak and I agree on which ones they are? In some cases, yes, in some cases, no. But the beauty of the system is that we don’t have to agree. We’ll find (the theory goes) the stuff we like (via those hated references and citations that Dvorak critiques), and ignore the stuff we don’t.

The resource (the Net) is, relatively speaking, unlimited. There may be only Nx1000 column-inches of columnist space in professional tech journals. For Dvorak to get two pages of content in PC Magazine, there are plenty of other aspirants who don’t get any. But on the Net, Dvorak can rant and rave for pages and pages, for pennies on the megabyte. So can I. So can you.

And maybe that’s what’s really behind his (if you will pardon the term) screed.

Because when everybody can publish, being published does not convey automatic authority. And for some folks … that’s kind of scary.

(Via Doyce, who had a few good comments of his own. As does Sekimori)