Productivity and Spamming

08/10/2005

Wednesday

It’s getting hard to find productive bloggers worth reading, nowadays. So when I lose one for whatever reason I get a bit upset. I understand the need to get out when the secret identity is in danger of exposure, and even did it myself once. It is kind of the risk we all take, especially with relationship blogs.

By “productive,” I mean someone who puts out quality content on a regular basis. “regular” being no less than once a week, and preferrably several times a week. “Quality” meaning that I can be reading it at midnight and not be dozing off but wantimg to read more.

While I write mostly for myself, I’m still an entertainer of a sort. Let’s be honest, that’s one of the groovy things about blogging. Getting feedback of the good, the bad and the ugly sort. I like giving feedback as well as getting it.

In the movie Gladiator, there is a scene that was deleted from the theatrical release, but can be seen in the DVD. In it, Proximo, the owner of the General-turned-slave-turned-gladiator, Maximus, gives a bit of a pep talk before Maximus goes into the arena. “All you do is kill, kill, kill! You are an entertainer! Go out there and entertain!”

In the theatrical release, you saw him sharpen his sword, go into the arena, give a bow to about 5 guys and proceed to slaughter them all. Then he proceeded to throw a sword into the crowd while shouting “Are you not entertained? Are you NOT entertained?!? Is that not why you are here?” He spat upon the ground and stalked off.

We are all entertainers of a sort, entertaining the mob. At the same time, we ARE the mob! Having a good story and being a good writer isn’t enough. We need to win the crowd. Win the crowd.

I enjoy writing enough that I would do it some where, some way, no matter what. The internet was a huge break through for me. First BBS’s, then Usenet along with a message board or two.

First Email, then Usenet, then the Web, then IMing..all of these have been compromised by SPAM. Now Blogger. The last three anonymous comments were spams. Time to shut them down and stop anonymous comments. That might be the strategy, though. If Blogger is getting spooled up to exploit their growing database of users for more commercial gain, this would be one way to do it. Then more people would have to join in order to post comments and then more people who would get and spread the spamming around.

Thank you, whoever decided to squat and take a digital dump in my little corner lot of cyberspace.