Considered by many to be the Granddaddy of all Bloggers, PC Maestro was one of the first to capitalize on the potential of personalized web publishing. Unfortunately, his sudden rise to fame and internet glory was not without a cost. PC met an early blog demise attributed to excessive pixelation and insomnia. Presented here, is an excerpt from Maestro's famed lost blogspot blog from 2000 where PC imparts his blogging wisdom. Scholars of blogging attribute this entry as being the inspiration which launched both Glenn Reynolds and Atrios on their blogging careers.
Things new bloggers should know
by PC Maestro
Rule number one: blogging is personal. But enough about you, back to me. You see, I've been doing this for almost a year now, so that means if you're just getting started I'll always have blogged longer than you, so obviously, I know more about it. Like I said before, blogging is personal, and the blogging community is growing exponentially, yet as someone who is smarter than at least ninety percent of the other bloggers out there I feel comfortable saying that a blogger's point of view can only be truly validated if it reflects my own highly refined and absolutely correct worldview. Otherwise, it's piffle.
One way you can make your writing more personal is to develop your own personal voice. My own personal voice is notable for the way I am able to highlight my ample experience and insight with my every utterance, even when it really has no bearing on the issue. But if you choose to use this technique, try to be subtle about it, for instance preface your statements with self-description "As a person of handgun ownership, I think the price of tea in China is too damn high!" or "As a cross-dresser, I think those Queer Eye chaps are soooo camp." By doing this you'll be able to establish your standing within the community as a subject matter expert and bolster your own self-esteem as an added bonus. I personally like to draw upon my extensive experience in the fields of law and journalism. I try to bring this to light tangentially in conversation, just as a gentle reminder to readers that they're not dealing with some intellectual lightweight. Generally, I've found most people are too polite to actually delve into why I'm not actually a practicing attorney or why I blog rather than work in established journalism, which brings us to my next point. One of the interesting aspects of blogging is that, among bloggers, there seems to be more of a willingness to use their actual identities as opposed to developing personas and using pseudonyms which was de rigueur in previous internet forums obviously, I have eschewed this practice, as it is easier to launch personal attacks debate issues from a position of anonymity. The additional benefit is that it helps create a mysterious aura to MY blog persona. Alas luvs, most aspiring bloggers aren't up to my standards, especially the members of the neo-convertible extremist movement. In general, I've found most of my detractors are, coincidentally, ardent supporters of this hate group. Oh sure, maybe not overtly, but I know it's true.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Eric Olsen
Genius! Acting! classic Joe, thanks. I believe I make out a dim outline of myself somewhere in there.
2 - Dew
...the crowd goes wild!!!
I should not 'get this', the sad part is that I do and that says soooooooooooo much!
3 - Natalie Davis
Very funny!
4 - Craig Lyndall
How is it possible that this guys knows more than I do. As a blogger that runs in direct contrast to what I know. That is that I know everything there is to know and subsequently more than this guy. I would be confused by this, but as a blogger, I don't get confused. I know more than you.
:-)
5 - Mac Diva
So, Joe wrote an entry that is more than a sentence long. Amazing! Too bad only a few folks at Blogcritics will see it, since no one reads his so-called blog. But then . . . there is nothing to read.
6 - Joe
Cool, thanks for the link!
7 - Mac Diva
You're welcome, considering it is probably the only one your blog will get this month.
8 - Joe
Crushing. Why the bitterness?
9 - Dawn
Why the harshing on Joe's mellow? Or did I miss some humorous satire because I am the dumbest blogger ever?
10 - Chris Arabia
Issues, up close and personal...
11 - Mac Diva
Dawn, I discovered that some of the mouthiest people around here have practically non-existent blogs, including Joe and Chris Arabia. (See his stats here.) Poor, unread and bitter Joe wrote this nonsense as an attack on me. Suffice it to say those who can blog do and those who can't attack those who can.
12 - Mac Diva
The other nincompoop's stats are here. The above link is to his sorry excuse for a blog.
Seems to me that Blogcritics is in danger of becoming a dumping ground for people who don't really blog but want attention like Joe and Cross Chris.
13 - Tom Johnson
Suffice it to say those who can blog do and those who can't attack those who can.
Oh, the irony!
14 - Mac Diva
Another member of Club Unread pipes up.
15 - Tom Johnson
The best tactic to disprove someone's claims against you is, of course, to continue doing them.
You don't get it, do you Diva? This isn't a popularity contest for most of us. I think I'm like most of the people here - if you read my site, fine, if not, oh well. I'd love to know why it's so important to you, actually. You're really hung up on being popular, it seems. Too bad this isn't high school, where it might mean something for a short-while, anyway.
16 - Chris Arabia
yesterday i discovered that mac had bungled typing her blog address so that the link over her BC comments doesnt work. today she tries--well, i dont know what she was trying to do--but she tried to link to some blog linking service and fumbled that and instead linked to my blog. that's 2.
she read this piece, about a blithering idiot of a blogger, and instantly claimed to be the subject. huzzah! a trifecta of stupidity!
i'm a nincompoop and that's ok,
i drool all night and i blog all day...
17 - Dawn
Well I figured there had to be some inside story as to the animosity.
Joe, now I ask you, why are you harshing Mac's mellow?
As for using stats to prove the validity of one's right to blog, I have a personal anecdote to that.
There was a time when I was enjoying all kinds of traffic and feeling rather smug about it. Some unknown (at least to me) wrote something nasty about me that I should have ignored, but didn't and it turned into a rather unpleasant exchange.
She wondered why I wasn't off scrubbing toilets - a job I was forced to do when my corporate job was liquidated and in turn, I wondered why she shouldn't fuck off into the obscurity from whence she came.
Of course I used her lowly stats as my excuse for being a bitch. (I don't know what her excuse was.)
Some of my regular readers privately and politely told me I was an asshole for mentioning someone's stats as a point of ridicule, and they were right.
I now dine on the proverbial humble pie, as my stats are, well in the toilet.
18 - Alissa Johnson
Mac Diva, why should you concern yourself with other bloggers' stats? Some people just like to write. That's like saying people shouldn't keep a diary because they're the only ones who will read it. It just seems a little petty that the only thing you can use against these people is that they don't have a lot of readers.
19 - Phillip Winn
I don't give a wet fart who is more popular or who links to whom. All I care about is what someone has to say. There's a lot of infantile posturing going on around her, but I won't take sides.
I'll suggest only this: If you want to measure the readership of a blog, the only links that matter are ones to SiteMeter, Extreme, or some other similar service.
My SiteMeter and Extreme links are not password-protected, and I cannot think of any reason why any non-commercial site's would be. I'm open to hearing why such statistics should be kept private, though.
20 - Dew
A wet fart huh Phil? I hope you don't mind if I add that to my acerbic lexicon?
21 - Mac Diva
I didn't start it, Dawn. One of the biggest egos (and most unread people) around here, Cap'n Ken, attacked Mac-a-ro-nies, claiming it is not worth reading. The rest of the BBBBs rushed to join in. I posted the data to show what kind of people were attacking a good blog -- those incapable of producing one themselves.
And, no, I don't think it is a mere coincidence a bunch of Right Wing white guys who can barely write a readable sentence collectively are always attacking a minority woman blogger who is smart and well-informed. These guys are bigots.
22 - Tom Johnson
I can understand wanting to have readers - I have my own friggin' ad right over there on the left. I want readers. Readers are good - you know you have an audience, and it can help form your writing. I just don't care all that much if people don't find what they want there. It's my site. I write what I want, when I want. You don't like it, you go elsewhere. I don't have enough of an inferiority complex to obsess over my stats - and especially not to obsess over everyone else's.
But I liken blogs to music, as I do everything - it's not always the most popular things that are really the best.
23 - Chris Arabia
so smart she can't type a web address. i was wondering when she'd resort to portraying herself as the victim.
-- nincompoopy pants
24 - Tom Johnson
Oh, Joe, you forgot to include the racial issues. When backed into a corner, never forget that most disagreements on the internet are REALLY about race issues. Everyone that disagrees with you is most definitely a Right Wing neo-Confederate.
25 - Phillip Winn
Dew, you are most welcome to use anything I say, of course. I'm glad you like that one. I've got a few others, but I don't tend to roll them out in public where they go on the record. ;-)
Dawn, your comments about mocking others' stats are excellent. Fortunately, I've struggled up from the bottom myself, never having an association with a high-profile site (before Blogcritics, of course, which has struggled up somewhat itself) to boost my stats, so the climb from 100 daily visitors when I started with BC to 400-450 daily now was a long one.
Also against me is the fact that I'm generally a uniter, not a divider, and gentle posts don't tend to draw nearly as much attention as divisive ones.
I used to read your blog quite regularly, but then you stopped posting quite regularly. I guess that should be a lesson to me - I hadn't posted in November before today. I need to get back on the stick, but I like to wait until I have something worth saying, and I just don't get as angry as some of y'all. ;-)