Years back I mentioned to a friend that I was becoming a recluse. She said something about me being a recluse with a whole bunch of new on line friends. It was true. I had a long list of people who I checked in on every day. I still love and value my on line community, which has shifted from writing and reading blogs to mostly Facebook and mostly silly Facebook games. Not nearly as satisfying as a daily tour of my blogroll.
Awhile back I read an article in the New Yorker about a blogger. When I hear about a blogger who makes money with their blog, or has a book deal as a result of blogging I feel jealous, resentful, insecure, all the usual yucky human stuff.
I think if I had seen the blog a few years ago I might have added it to the blog roll. It's sort of charming. But it's like a magazine. So glossy. So mo-fessional. So full of marketing. It makes me squirm.
The article talks about the evolution of the blog.
Her early posts were the sort of personal nothings that could have been for a mother’s eyes (or ears) only: droll poems she wrote (“Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?/Their war cries pound my brain /Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?/I slowly go insane”), audio recordings of herself burping, and folksy, Reader’s Digest-style anecdotes about country living, such as happening upon two dogs mating. Initially, she says, she viewed the blog “as an enormous digital scrapbook,” and it reads like one.
I mean. Yeah. That's how so many blogs begin. Then she won a blogging award. Then she stated food blogging. Then she won more awards. It just kicks up my not-good-enough issues.
My own food blog didn't get me to write more and I'm not a good enough photographer to win any awards. And, really, I'm never going to take step by step pictures for the same reason I'll rarely if ever publish a recipe. I think cooking is about gathering some information and then experimenting. I tend to write about what I'm thinking.
The article is mostly a portrait but takes a few mild shots about the monetizing of a daily life.
She posts photographs of her stays at luxury hotels, and, in 2008, at the height of the recession, she serialized the remodelling of the Lodge, the ranch’s guesthouse, into a McMansion full of bourgeois amenities. (Reader poll: a copper or stainless-steel washing machine?) “Her charmed existence is not the norm,” a blogger wrote, in a post titled “I call Bullshit! On Pioneer Woman.” “Portraying cattle ranchers and their families in this manner leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I know no one who’s not struggling now. The cost of her camera alone is several months’ worth of many household budgets.” In the end, perhaps, Drummond is too cagey about her family’s wealth without being cagey enough. As one online commenter put it, “If the size of her kitchen didn’t give her away, then you weren’t paying attention.”
Yeah. I'd sell my soul for this much of her kitchen. Well, maybe not my soul. But I wonder if I would put ads on my blog. I never thought I would but those drawers are pretty cool. Back when I was writing more I had more readers but I never had enough to monetize.
I never really got the hang of My Space. I never really liked the look of it. Facebook is OK but the rules change all the time. I had both blogs hooked up to post automatically and suddenly they stopped. Then one started again and then, months later, the other one did too. Netflix stopped posting my movies. Who knows why? I've been having fun with Get Glue for a few days. And I like being the mayor of all my doctor offices on Four Square. It's all silly.
Gotta go harvest something now.