I love to blog. Having my own blog feels like my sanctuary on the Internet; the only place where I can be the most honest. Every once in a while I often write about the challenges I face such as using a platform that isn’t as fancy, blogging about a great number of topics, dealing with other bloggers, and more.
However, what I do not particularly like is the community, and here are 5 reasons why:
1. Spammers, spammers everywhere
It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you will get spammed in the blogging community. We all hate spammers, and we wouldn’t dream of becoming one. Some writers I’ve seen them spam links to their blogs on other people’s blogs because they are so desperate for traffic.
It gets annoying. There are some groups I am a member of where I have to disable comments because there’s a certain chance if I get one comment, it’s someone who just wants to spam to get me to check out their blog. If they cannot do that, they go directly to the article’s page to do so. You can try and try, but I will always delete them.
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| A warning all of you must heed. |
However, if you’ve read one of my articles, have put your thoughts in a comment about what you liked/disliked, but still would like me to return the favor…. by all means, send me the link to your site along with your comment and I will gladly check out your work. I never spam the link to my blog or any new posts to anyone else randomly.
I’ll admit sometimes if I read someone’s blog, like their post and plan to write something similar that they might like, I will share the link with them. That’s not spamming. Spamming is when you just want to shove your blog in people’s faces
It’s true. I get people adding me to their circles on G+ almost daily since it is the account I use linked to this blog. You know what the sad truth is? Most of those people are just promoters who either hope to help me promote my blog, or they want to promote their own content which is entirely different from mine. Why are they here reading my stuff in the first place? I don’t see anything on your profile that indicates you listen to heavy metal, or love to play Gears of War. All I see is you’re writing about poems and are sharing it everywhere because you want more traffic.
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It’s an extremely rare event when someone follows my blog because they are genuinely interested in the content within my writing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you have to be a fan of the stuff I love to read my blog, and not a promoter. I don’t have a magic scanner that looks into your brain to check if we have mutual tastes. One of my long time followers who writes about writing hobbies, quotes, etc., does not express the mutual interests we have on his blog, but has reached out to me that he enjoys what I write and gives his opinion. We have things in common, but he chooses to write about something else, which is fine by me.
I truly believe there are people out there on the Internet who would really enjoy the stuff I write. Whether it’s heavy metal, video games, or movies. I guarantee you there is something here for any nerd. Sadly, those people either lurk or prefer to watch YouTube instead. Could it be because I don’t have a strong visual presence to make this place attract readers with mutual tastes? I have made a solemn decision to not use YouTube to express myself because of the frequently toxic community/inability to handle negative comments maturely, I do not express myself as well in front of a camera as I do when I write, and finally it is that people have high expectations of you if you’re going to do YouTube and if it’s not perfect get ready to be hated.
I don’t make my Instagram account public because I’m tired of reporting 3 – 5 spam bots a day and getting tons of followers who just want to boost their numbers before people who actually want to get to know me start to come along. Oh, and let us not forget about a certain impersonation incident last year.
Those are two platforms where I could be certain the people who would actually engage with me based on mutual likes are found, but due to personal reasons, I won’t be able to reach many of them. Nobody reads anymore and the only thing I can really do is just focus on writing for myself and pray that someday the lurkers who enjoy my work make themselves known. It’s a plus if they do and always will be, but I’m getting sick and tired of only getting followers that just want to boost their own content or think I desire to do so myself.
That’s right, it’s all about business, because nowadays, the most blogs you will run into are run by people who wish to make a profit. I tried that once, but it wasn’t going anywhere, so I decided that I was just going to write things here for my own pleasure. I left some of the blogging community groups here when I saw I was surrounded by bloggers that didn’t write anything similar to me, and most of them were just people who either wrote about stuff I wasn’t interested in, or they were constantly sharing tips and tricks to promote yourself.
I was also getting followers who clearly had themselves branded as teachers who could help you get more traffic and make money. How many times must you be told? I don’t want to, I’m doing this for my own pleasure, for FUN.
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When I published my article of Skyrim’s Dragonborn DLC and posted it to a few blogging groups, some guy re-shared it and captioned it with a poem that had literally nothing to do with the game. Were they trying to promote their poem or did they figure I was trying to get a traffic boost? That is a ridiculous stereotype right there, also you don’t look like an Elder Scrolls fan to me.
Look, if you’re going to comment, I strongly advise you to read the article before you do so. Call it a pet peeve, I do not like it when people comment and there is clearly a sign that they did not actually read what I posted.
I’m not saying you need to write a whole fucking paragraph of what you thought about what I posted. But please, for the love of Primus, read before you comment!
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| I’m with you Hermione |
I know this from my personal experience. When I was starting out for the first two years of this blog, I noticed I didn’t get a lot of traffic. Sometimes with luck, one of my very in-depth posts about a certain topic would reach 100 views. The very first article that got that far, was where I wrote about the challenges of being a Lordi fan in my early years of being one.
The more subjects I added, the less it seemed like my blog was getting attention. It seems that the blogging community is fixated on: you start a blog, you pick one subject or a few, and write about them only so your readers know what to expect. Where’s the fun in that? I like being unpredictable! Sometimes, you will get to know me well enough to know what to expect, but still.
I think the problem is that some people don’t like it when I change focus per article. People with autism can easily fixate on a single subject and know so much about it. There are plenty of moments where I can be like that, but there’s more than one subject that I am smart with. Plus, what if my interests shifted? What if I got bored about writing about the same thing all the time? I love posting here, writing is one of my biggest hobbies, and if I only wrote about one thing, I wouldn’t get to write about it very often. This blog is about me and the things I love, not one thing. In fact, writing about one or three things only feels too restraining, it’s be like “Nope, you can’t write about monkeys because this is a blog about elephants.” It’s not for me.
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| Fat Amy and I have something in common |
Be honest with yourself when you write, that’s what I do. I know that if I reduced the amount of topics I wrote about and stuck to the most common, it would certainly be better for gaining traffic and even financially, but it wouldn’t be real.
A blog doesn’t have to be just say, a blog about inspirational quotes of life. A blog can also be like an online diary (without sharing anything too personal) where you say whatever pops into your head, share your life experiences, passions, etc. and that is technically what this blog is. I feel like there aren’t enough blogs like mine out there.
There you have it, 5 reasons why I…well maybe not hate, but just am not fond of the community in blogging.
Who else feels this way?
👽Emily
Monsterlady's Diary 