Maybe this explains why my blog is not more popular, and does not have more readers and commenters:
"We read blogs in order to be slightly irritated".
That seems so...odd....to me. I read blogs because I like the writer's ideas, I want to see how he or she views the world...or, with knitting or quilting blogs, to see what other people are making and maybe look for inspiration.
There's enough - more than enough - in my daily life that irritates me. Blogs and internet time is largely my escape.
Do you think that's true? That there is a segment of the population who enjoys the sort of "righteous indignation" over reading opinions they disagree with and calling them stupid, or snarking on the blog-author for any errors of grammar or content? (No, wait. Don't tell me. I've seen enough of politics in this country to know the answer).
And actually, that probably explains the burgeoning number of reality shows about people that I'd really rather not know: people watch them because the people's behavior annoys them. It's like picking at a scab, really: it hurts, it's not good for you and you probably shouldn't do it, and yet some people WILL.
I know I've said many times I wished I had wider readership and more commentary, but now I realize - not if it means I have to do things to rub people the wrong way or cause people to respond to me in irritated ways. I don't like irritating people (I like hurting people's feelings even less, but I don't like irritating people either).
What a strange species we are. Taking pleasure out of something that's fundamentally painful.
5 comments:
Whoa. Not what I do at all. I read people I like. And people I admire. And people who have similar interests. I don't tend to read people who say upsetting things or provoke people into saying upsetting things. It isn't my style.
Always glad to read you. And Always so pleased that you write every day. I wish I had the stamina. I tend to blog weekly.
I don't want to be irritated by blogs--life is irritating enough.
But some like to get worked up and into kerfuffles because they want to feel smarter than someone else.
That's.....ridiculous. I read people I find interesting, creative or just... simpatico.
It does explain Fox News still being on the air though.
I read a blog once that irritated me. It was the blog of a teacher with a very different style and outlook (and who was smug about his way being the right and only way); I kept telling myself that I needed to read it because I shouldn't only read things that agreed with my world view.
One of the few good things about that year of unemployment I had was the moment where I decided, since I wasn't teaching, I could stop reading his blog. Oh, that felt good.
I don't get the irritation thing. I'm now on an e-mail list with people who teach differently than I do, but who are nice about it.
I have discovered that the stuff I mean to be irritating glides softly over the readership, while material I think innocuous rubs them the wrong way.
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