Blogs: Don't Jump On The Bandwagon Just Yet

So, I was at my grandparents' for the weekend, with absolutely nothing to do aside from eating pie. A lot of pie. But not enough to keep me occupied all the time while I was down there. Which means I had enough time to probably write five or six blog entries so I'd have a good buffer.

Naturally, I didn't write a single one and wasted all the time lying around doing nothing. I'm so lazy, it's pathetic at times.

You're pathetic all the time.

Shut up. Who's the one who spent the weekend doing nothing but napping and eating ice cream?

Anyway, I hope you all had a happy Easter and all that. Mine sucked. But really, the real holiday is the week after Easter, because then all the chocolate is on sale. And that cash-to-chocolate ratio is important. You know, we should make chocolate the global currency...

Speaking of Easter, we didn't get anything special on W-H for it. I mean, I know Karl's coding 1.2, but it's kind of tradition for sites to celebrate holidays and stuff. It'd have been fun, even if he only gave us a quick quest. I mean, honestly, adding a quest would take like 30 minutes, absolute most... But then again, I guess getting nothing fits with what we've seen before.

On a completely unrelated note, you should read this blog entry from the Heroes of Lesser Earth webcomic. Because we all need to be aware of how deadly bad interior designing is.

Anyway... This entry is going to concern the latest trend on W-H. Namely, starting a blog. Yes, I'm writing a blog entry about blogs. Deal with it.

It seems like nearly everyone has gone and started their own blog recently. This is an obvious sign that we're bored out of our wits and have nothing to do. But we already knew that part.

I'm not against blogging, or anything of the sort. I mean, I'm doing it right now. But for those people who have started their own blogs, or are considering it... You need to think about whether you're doing it just because it's the latest trend or not. Because if you are, that's as stupid as 'firsts'.

So you're objecting to people making blogs like yours?

Not exactly. But sort of. I mean, I'm probably the worst role model for anything. Doing something the way I did it is usually a stupid idea.

Anyway, if you're actually going to start a blog, there are things you need to consider.

The first is update schedule. Nobody will read something if you don't update regularly. But can you update regularly? Making three posts a week might seem easy... until you realize you only have about five topics in mind. Then what? I mean, coming up with enough topics to meet my update schedule is a problem even for me.

Speaking of topics, consider your content. Do you really have anything to say that hasn't been said before? Not that you can't cover a topic a different blog already covered, but you have to have something to add to it. Do you really think people want to read anything twice? Besides, it'll make you look like a parrot.

And nobody wants to read about how everything is fine and there are no problems. Because we all know that there are problems. Unless you want to ignore the hacked accounts. I mean, even if you want to classify me as one of those problems, I still exist. I think.

If you don't exist, where would that put me?

Dammit, now I'm going to be thinking about that for the rest of the day...

Also consider your audience. Unless you have a good bit of publicity on W-H, it's unlikely you're going to get very many people to read your blog. I mean, I had a sizable advantage when I started mine - I was both an infamous player on W-H, and also a guide owner. Plus I placed backup guide info on here, which basically guaranteed views.

Most players don't have those advantages to get them views. Does that matter to you? Do you care how many people are reading your blog? Because, honestly, if you're doing it just for views, you should probably stop now. Or insult someone or something in every sentence. As Sesh mentioned last entry, the more controversial your blog, the more views you will get. Nobody is going to argue with facts, like an entry on how to use HTML. Of course, a lot of that attention you get may be negative. Your decision.

Realize that you will immediately have a good number of players who hate your guts. Because either you made a controversial topic that everyone doesn't agree upon, or you went out of your way to avoid controversial topics in an attempt to make everyone happy, in which case people hate you because it looks like you wimped out. It's a lose-lose-lose scenario. If you actually care about that, then you probably shouldn't start a blog.

You will be flamed. Period. It will happen. Unless you're so totally ignored that nobody cares about you. Name your poison. People who are flaming you will ignore facts, reason, and any sort of logic. Then again, your entries probably ignored those as well.

Speaking of flaming, you should probably adjust the settings on blogger. For example, you might want to disable anonymous comments. People can still make them, of course, but they have to create a new account to do so. And it's not too hard to figure out who's who if you know a few tricks.

Also, you can't block people from flaming you. You can delete their comments if necessary, but you can't stop them from posting again with the default comment system. There are some extra comment systems you can install that will have block features, though. Still, it's a bit of a hassle.

And don't pull any alternate personality crap. Yes, I have Sesh. Whether or not she exists, well, I don't know. But if you really think claiming an alternate personality is typing your entries or anything is going to get you off the hook, you're an idiot. You're responsible for whatever content appears on your blog, regardless of whether aliens were mind-controlling you at the time.

Which is why Storm lets me eat so much ice cream and snacks. If he didn't, I could post all kinds of things and get him in a ton of trouble.

Don't remind me.

Also worth mentioning is color scheme. Please at least try to pick something tasteful. Without a black background. Especially without purple text on that background (I'm looking at you, Burn). Heck, maybe you should skip the purple entirely.

And finally, don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever try to be a bigger asshole than Band. Seriously. You can't do it. It's not physically possible. You'll just fail miserably.

Not to mention her hats will have you killed.

Don't you have something better to do than comment on everything I say?

Not really.

Ugh... Anyway, I think I'll wrap this up. Consider these things before starting a blog, and if you don't like them, you should probably not have one. I understand you're doing it to be 'cool', but, really, you'll look like a moron if you don't know what you're doing.