In Which I Give Blogger Advice

Over at Snipe.net, Alison Gianotto (a.k.a. @snipeyhead ) thinks she's all that and a bag of chips on the shoulder. She went a long rant about bloggers giving advice about blogging. Clearly Alison has some kind of bone to pick with douchebaggers everywhere. She might as well have dropped an anvil on my head personally. Now I realize her article is a few weeks old, but she apparently is asking to be taken to blogging school.

I will not enjoy this, but somebody has to manage the woodshed.

Metameta

First and foremost, blogging is all about the meta. Bloggers must talk about blogging. How else would anybody else know how to blog? Let's say, for example, James Joyce didn't deliver the goods in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man? Would anyone know the depths of self loathing and misery novelists must endure before crapping out their own works of metafiction? I think not.

Metablogging is where the real modern writers are. They are the success stories. Like Tony Robbins is to real world business,  the metabloggers of our time are here to inspire wannabes everywhere to write about writing. If you cannot blog about blogging then you can't report about reporting or sing about singing. It's all the same really. Writers who don't blog about blogging are lost and don't deserve the revered title of "blogger". There are only a few blogs out there and they must count for something.

Marketing Is the Cornerstone of Civilization

The next thing Alison rants about in her "article" is some nonsense about marketing people needing to get a clue. In today's society, marketing is what holds us all together. Obviously she doesn't appreciate the way commercialism and marketing have rooted themselves into our culture to such a point people wear tattoos of logos of their favorite companies. She must have something against scripted phone calls during dinner time. What kind of communist would post such drivel? The next thing you know, she'll want the Pentagon to hand Wall Street's keys over to the Kaiser. Makes me want to puke.

Blogging Is the New Blogging

Finally, I say all bloggers out there must blog about blogging. Nobody cares about your cats or your kids or your stupid charities. Book reviews? What a joke. Nobody reads anymore; ask Steve Jobs. No one asked for regular people to become journalists and write stories that lazy, stupid reporters can't copy and paste from press releases. Bloggers who blog about blogging write those damn press releases for a reason. It's just the way things are. We didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning.

I hope this clears things up. Coming soon, my listicle on blogging about bloggers who blog from a blogging conference. I'm thinking a good 75 tips should do it.

Alison's Real Spelling

Update: Apologies (in all seriousness) to Alison for originally misspelling her name. I went with the spelling in this graphic from her website and without my glasses, the letters blurred together. Where oh where did my 20/20 go? Pretty soon I'll be one of those people who use their 24" monitors to display 640 x 480 and view it through a magnifying glass.

And no, the irony is not lost on me.