A blogger on his blogging

If you’re like me then you’re curious to hear writers/bloggers comment on their own writing/blogging, and in particular how they perceive their stuff versus how they suspect others perceive their stuff. That’s what I’m going to do today with my most recent posts.

If you’re not like me, then you would find this terribly boring, so you are dismissed from clicking to read the rest of this post. You’re welcome.

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Life-hacking, economics-style

Me: I think this is a rather good description of how I feel about behavioral economics and “self-improvement” more generally. I think it’s unusually coherent (for me).

Other peeps: A number of people will probably find the topic interesting as a number of this blog’s readers seem to be the personal development-types, but I’m not sure whether they will “get” it, and if they do, I’m not sure whether it will ring any psychic cherries.


Primates in an Incidental Universe

Me: Very incoherent. It could almost be better presented as bullet points. But I think there are some good points embedded, particularly about absorbing the implications of Evolution being a very personal battle that probably cannot be resolved by injecting knowledge into students’ heads by discipline pump.

Other peeps: It was pretty outwardly atheistic-seeming and dismissive of divinity as a soothing fairytale, so I don’t imagine that part pleased religious readers. On the other hand, people with atheistic leanings tend to do a Ra Ra! cheer whenever they see someone so dismissive of religious beliefs. That is exactly why I don’t like to write (≈ think) about religion (or politics) very often.


The “I’m outta here” guy returns, dispassionately

Me: Gave me a good chuckle. I thought it was a clever way to respond to a hater by exaggerating his statements and then “defending” myself with unserious statements about how awesome I am.

Other peeps: This was probably the most polarizing thing I’ve ever written. On the one hand, some people seemed to love it. I got an unusual number of emails praising it, and I.even.made.Jonathan.Vaudreuil.smile.y’all. (I will make you laugh one day, Jonathan.) On the other hand, for those who couldn’t tell I wasn’t being completely serious (which admittedly probably wasn’t easy to do), they probably despised my seeming show of arrogance. I got two email notifications that people had unsubscribed from their email subscription because of that post, and there aren’t many people subscribing by email, so there were probably at least as many who unsubscribed from their feed reader without my knowing it. I don’t believe I’ve ever offended so many people. It makes sense, though, I suppose. People tend to get pissy when they perceive that someone is trying to put themselves above others. We are primates, after all, and we’ve got to maintain the social equilibrium.


The Internet’s mysteries, explained

Me: I think it’s pretty amusing. I particularly liked my remarks under the first two.

Other peeps: I imagine this was pleasant for most people. If my goal was to please as many readers as possible, most of my posts would be like this. People tend to like their blog posts low on words and high on images, with a couple of giggle-inducing and thought-provoking statements interspersed.


Who I Am

Me: It’s okay. The quotes from Demetri are awesome. Mine are less so. The 701 word sentence is… something.

Other peeps: This was another post with interesting reactions. At least two people thought it was terribly boring and maybe even showy. On the other hand, at least two people used words like “phenomenal” to describe it. I love it when a post has such divergent opinions.


Your weekly existential rant

Me: It’s pretty terrible. I probably should not have clicked the publish button. I can’t imagine many people would get what I was saying, and I’m not even sure I get what I was saying. But it was a lot of fun to write, as all of the ridiculously long sentence posts were. (That just doesn’t make them deserving of being published.)

Other peeps: “Huh?” and/or “You jerk.”


Going downtown with a girl like Rihanna

Me: Typically I will read a post once or twice the next day, but this one, for some mysterious reason, I kept reading and re-reading, like maybe 20-30 times. Some of those times I found it rather amusing and interesting and then there were a couple of times when I hated it so much that I had to grab a pant leg to prevent myself from going and deleting it. The only difference in how I perceived it, as far as I can tell, is how I imagined other people were perceiving it.

The last bit in the footnote hit me pretty hard. There is some metaphor in Nickelback that really affects me on a primal level.

Other peeps: No clue, which probably partially explains my excessive re-reading. Pavs chuckled, so that’s cool.


Writing and pooping and compliments

Me: I consider this to be one of the best things I’ve written. It’s incoherent in places but on the whole I think it stands up surprisingly well. Analogies always make me nervous, but there is something that feels very true to me about comparing verbal excretion to pooping. It felt really good to get this one out because I felt like it emptied a lot of things that had been stuck in my psychospiritual colon for a while.

Other peeps: If not “That’s too long; I’m not reading that,” then probably “Huh?” and/or “Gross.” Hopefully there were a few people who read it and got it and liked it, but I’m pessimistic that I convinced anyone to take up writing more regularly. People don’t work that way.


Understand women at your own risk

Me: It’s interesting logic, but it doesn’t really feel true to me, so I don’t particularly like this post.

Other peeps: I imagine it’s probably the same—“nice try, but that doesn’t feel true.”


Condescending horsetwaddle

Me: This is the kind of thing that is too important and too difficult to be articulated by an amateur, so on the one hand I’m glad I let DFW do most of the talking, but on the other hand, a blog should know its role. Moreover, I didn’t find the overall post to be very well presented or very insightful.

Other peeps: Three people told me that this was one of the best and/or most memorable posts I’ve written, which really surprised me. This might be a situation where I’ve thought about or heard about this particular thing enough that it’s no longer very interesting to me, but to someone with less exposure to these ideas, it can hit them pretty hard.

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If history is a guide, then in three months I will look back on all of these posts and change my perception to “Oh my Gaga that sucked balls.” I’m okay with that, because that’s partially why I keep writing.

Also, this was by no means intentional but there has been a recent, creepy string of posts that are sex-themed. Eesh, that’s awkward, especially since this blog is read by my mom. (Hi Mom. I promise to stop talking about vaginas soon.) But also there have been a lot of posts mentioning pooping or masturbation or some other topic that is uncomfortable for most people, including me. Maybe I’m just trying to get a rise out of people, but I like to think that what attracts me to these topics is something a little more meaningful. I am struggling to absorb and be comfortable with the fact that I am a primate in an incidental universe, and topics like sex and pooping and masturbation are kind of ground zero for addressing the discomfort.