Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Don't be so optimistic

You say you will not die, I think you're kidding yourself.



Our most recent volunteer writes, about himself, and his blog:
I haven’t summoned the guts to write with my full intellect...but instead, I often succumb to the subtle fear of marginalizing my audience by saying things that I know aren’t popularly read enough to support my own blogging ambitions.

Tell the truth: you hate him already, don't you?

This blog is an excruciating read, exacerbated by advertisements imbedded in every post, and in both sidebars. Jesus Christ on a buttermilk biscuit, I hate this blog. It's smarmy. That's the word for it. Clearly, this dude thinks he's Dave Eggers. And, maybe he is.

But I already struggled through Dave's book, and hence, I'm not at all inclined to brave the blinky ads and self-congratulatory prose you've thrown online like feces on a wall.

So, let's see:

Growing up sucked for you. Join the club. I bet if you put 50 bloggers in a room, you'd find that 40 of them dealt with major shit growing up, and we're still working out our issues online, or we're still in the midst of dealing with serious life issues. You aren't doing anything that other writers haven't done more of, and better.

You have a high IQ. Wow. Color me impressed. If mine weren't similarly high, and if so many of my blogging peers weren't of the same caliber, I'd perhaps think you were something. But, high IQs on the blogosphere are like Abercrombie attire in your local high school...they're everywhere. And, frankly, they don't impress me much.

So, here are some of your issues:

1. You have a fucked up self-perception. You write:
Even so, there is, as there is with many men, a second me. There is a me who wants to run off and conquer lands and pretend I’m king, even if for just a day or two. In other words, I want to make something of myself. I want be somebody. For a long time now, I have been a nobody.

This week though, I am somebody again.

Wrong, Einstein. You were ALWAYS somebody, and you always will be somebody, even if your self-loathing for that person you once were poisons everything you write insidiously. And until you OWN that person you were, and are, and always will be, your blog will always suck. In fact, I bet you were a better person in elementary school than you are today.

Education and a job title don't make you somebody. They are simply what the shallow people use to quantify folks into little boxes of worthy and not worthy.

But, viewing life in that way is inherently wrong. And, if you do become a teacher, you will be an utter dickhead if you continue to hold to that perspective, and you will seriously mind-fuck your students. Frankly, I've read blogs of homeless people that were more substantive and interesting than yours.

2. You need therapy. BADLY. And in your case, no, your blog is NOT enough to compensate for your major issues. You're carrying around your past like a huge trainload of baggage. Guess what? Your life at this point should not be defined by the taped up glasses you wore in elementary school or how much weight you could lift in college. The fact that these things play such a major role in the person you are today is not only uninteresting to read, it's actually disturbing. Your autobiography makes my skin crawl. You remind me of a guy I once dated that had serious mental health issues, verging on narcissistic psychosis.

3. You're still really pissed at your dad, and wow...how long has it been since he died? Ten years or more? When do you think you might, I dunno, make an attempt at getting the fuck over it?

4. We aren't here for self-promoters who don't give us anything. Your "blog" is about getting a book deal or feeding your tremendously hungry ego, but it sure does nothing for me. So, I'd like to tell you as politely as possible to fuck off, because I really am peevish that you submitted this to us.

I like a train wreck as much as the next girl, but I do not like your blog. Maybe some folks will, more power to them. But for me, I find it disturbing, and uncomfortable, and fucking sad as hell. You define yourself by what other people have done to you, and the size of your intellect, and papers you can put in frames on a wall.

I define people by the size of their hearts. The end. And yours, in spite of your determination not to "settle," is strangely shrunken and broken and twisted and dark.

And seriously, fucked up.

I give you this:



If only you had a heart...then you might have a real blog. Also, for being an ad whore who is using our blog for your own filthy lucre without delivering up some substantive goods:

15 comments:

  1. I couldn't get past the ads. Or the About page. Someone likes the sound of his own voice.

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  2. I have the autobiography a shot and now I might give my head a shot.

    What a self-loving sucker fish.

    I feel dirty.

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  3. I don't think there's anything going on in this fella's head that some prozac couldn't fix.
    Lb: I think all the kids are wearing Hollister these days. You may need to update your icon. That little tidbit can serve as a gift inlieu of the traditional spankings that I can't give you.

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  4. I don't think there's anything going on in this fella's head that some prozac couldn't fix.
    Lb: I think all the kids are wearing Hollister these days. You may need to update your icon. That little tidbit can serve as a gift inlieu of the traditional spankings that I can't give you.

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  5. It always makes me wonder how much these people really make off of the blog ads. The blog sucks big hairy monkey balls.

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  6. "As of now, this blog is just a few months old, and so far it’s been extremely successful. It’s now receiving more than 50,000 pageviews every month. I’d like to invite you to be a part of its success and come back often."

    Did I just buy some Amway?

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  7. Ptd: you would probably gain more, intellectually speaking, buying Amway as opposed to reading his blog.

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  8. PTD, you should be one of the commentors that you find at the back of People or Us Weekly,clever minx.

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  9. Sounds like the bad blogs are the most fun to review. Or at least they result in the reviews that are the most fun to read. Ask and Ye Shall Receive shows that anger has an upside.

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  10. Blog author:

    Please study up on effective affiliate marketing. Wipe off most of that garbage and find one offer that work well (with in mind your readers. Or two if you're into pushing too hard.) From what I can see, you assume your readers have a lot of stretch marks and body related self esteem issues.

    Affiliate marketing isn't about dumping links and ads all over blogs: its about study, planning and then execution of a well planned blog campaign.

    I was offended by the number of affiliate offers on your site and I want to gut you now. For that reason alone I stopped reading you past the first second an ad flew out and spat on me. I'm not much into having crap shoved down my throat these days, unless I shoving heaping piles of homemade pasta into my mouth.

    Again, too, too too too many affiliate offers going on, and they're all different. You go from targeting the hairy-lady audience to Google for Muslims. Your Frankenstein business model is insulting - and not very well thought out.


    The number of ads on your blog is so grossly disproportionate to the number of hits per day. There are tons of ways to monetize a blog - so many in fact that there's no need to even try and monetize a blog that gets so little traffic. You get 84 visitors a day on average, and you have at least 6 different offers sloshing around a lit up drunken person.

    Please, stop. Think.

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  11. This review makes me glad I removed my post about my mommy issues from my blog.
    Nice review, LB, I especially like that you only linked to his blog in naming the blog. Ruthless.

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  12. Longest autobio EVER. I didn't make it past the quote, actually. I can't stand people without any sense of humor whatsoever.

    I think it's a mix of Hollister and Abercrombie, but here's the difference: Abercrombie is for pot smoking cool kids who want to pretend they don't care, and Hollister is for the anorexic desperate-to-be-adored bunch. American Eagle is for the plus sized econo group.

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  13. Ack! When shit starts moving on the side of the page, and it isnt a bug on my monitor...I stop reading. That page annoyed the shit out of me and I didnt even READ anything.

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  14. I admit it. I read the entire auto-biography. I had to. I wanted to see if there was ever anything that happened in his life that could explain his attitude.

    Nope. Not a single thing. I fucking hate the head pat. If you want me to hate you, do the head pat. The one that says, "Oh you're so sweet in all your ignorance. Here, let me dumb myself down so you understand me better, you cute stupid little person."

    I don't know my IQ. Have never known it. Don't suspect it's 174, and I'm suddenly very thankful for that. If having a high IQ would turn me into a self-righteous, hypocritical, egotistical crybaby like this, I'm more than happy to be of average intelligence.

    My average intelligence found nothing interesting in this blog. The only thing I came away from it with is the desire to punch this guy in the mouth for even trying the head pat on me.

    Why don't you try leaving your tower once in a while and walk among the peasants a bit more often. You might learn to actually be human.

    LB summed it up perfectly. We're bloggers. We all think we have a story to tell, we've all been there, and most of us have experienced some fucked up stuff in our lives. The only difference is, some of us don't use it as an excuse to be scum-sucking bottom dwellers.

    My seven year old has some deep words of wisdom for you. "Cry me a river, then build a bridge and get over it, already." (She'd kick this guy's ass in a battle of wits.)

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  15. Okay, I tried not to. I said to myself that I wouldn't. I didn't want to click and add to his page views after reading all of your great criticisms.

    But alas, I'm weak. I clicked. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I added to (probably inflated) page count, and I'm sorry that I read any of that self-important blather.

    I don't know what was worse - all the advertising or the smug bastard plastering it all over his "writing."

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Grow a pair.