And Here I Thought It Was Just Because I’m an Asshole

I think I now know why nobody reads my blog:

Online traffic is one of those things you’re not supposed to talk about.

But anyone who writes online and proclaims, “I don’t care if anyone reads me,” is a liar.

If you didn’t care if anyone read you, you wouldn’t write online. In fact, you wouldn’t write at all.

As I always say this sit is here to amuse me although I’m glad others find my self-amusement entertaining enough to read. I will agree though that anybody who blogs and says they seriously don’t care if anybody reads what they post is likely lying of delusional. The people who don’t care if others read their material are usually in their bunker writing out a manifesto. Those of us who enjoy having an audience write blogs. But let’s see why nobody reads my blog:

1. You’re boring.

Damn… got me there. It’s hard being exciting when you’re a computer programmer who spends his off time reading or at the firing range. Then again that’s why I usually don’t write about myself.

If your idea of being interesting is writing about complex tax codes, what your cat ate for breakfast (unless it’s Maru), or how much you bench pressed, you may be boring. It all depends. The fact of the matter is that it’s not the thing, it’s the relationship to the thing, and when it comes to writing, it’s not the subject, it’s your relationship to it.

I believe this is something many new bloggers should take note of. For every topic out there you can expect about ten thousand bloggers are already covering it. You need to give people a reason to read your blog. Some people derive their traffic from being content curators while others try to get traffic by writing opinion pieces (which is what this site does). Neither method works though if you don’t actually care about the subject you’re writing about. For example if I were to start writing about horseback riding this site would become even shittier than it already is because I’ve never ridden a horse before. On the other hand I have a deep pasion for personal rights and the philosophy behind those rights so I can write about the topic all day (as evident by the existence of this blog). So what other reasons are there explaining why nobody reads my blog?

I could make a list of all the various personality characteristics of which I am not a fan, but waffler is really up there at the top. Sometimes women are wafflers, even more so than men, because it’s easier to be nice. Actually, it’s not easier to be nice. It’s easier for everyone else for you to be nice, but it’s harder for you, because you never say what you really think, and nobody ever knows, and then you want to go home and saw at your wrists with a dull bread knife.

I have may problems but not saying what I think isn’t one of them. Next:

Sure, you can think of women who are controversialists, but I suspect it’s easier to be a controversialist if you are a man than if you are a woman. To be a controversialist on the internet, you have to deal with writing things that other people don’t want you to say, and you have to deal with all the criticism that gets launched at you, and, after all that, you have to do it again, and again, and again. It’s like pissing in the wind, and there’s a hurricane.

I also have no problem writing things that other people don’t want to say. So over all I guess the only reason nobody reads my blog is because I’m boring.

Seriously though if you’re a blogger read that article. It’s short and offers a good deal of incite for writing a blog that people may actually chose to read.

3 thoughts on “And Here I Thought It Was Just Because I’m an Asshole”

  1. @Tango – It is nice to know. If nobody read anything I posted it would be the same as talking to myself and that’s just crazy.

    @Paul – RSS is the excuse I use to artificially inflate my numbers when the non-existent advertisers come knocking. “Yeah I know the numbers don’t actually show 100,000 uniques a day but I have a lot of people who just read via RSS.”

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