Bloggers using Blog Speech offend my Ears
The bloggers who blog about making money online from your blog are perhaps the worst kind of bloggers. They like to borrow phrases and words from the business world to convince you they are themselves successful and to help up the emotional ante and get you personally involved in their useless blog drivellings.
I once made the gigantic mistake of entering my email into a blogger’s blog about making money from blogs. I don’t really know why I did it, but at the time I felt excited by the stuff I had been reading, despite how little information I had actually been provided with. The language itself was exciting. It drew me in. Shortly after, and pretty much every other day since, this bastard blogger has emailed me as part of his making money online blog newsletter. His unsubscribe link mysteriously doesn’t work and I’m petrified of contacting him personally in case I end up buying his ebook. I’m weak when it comes to exciting language.
This newsletter begins “Dear Jon, Today I really want to reach out to you.” What? why?. It then continues to go on about how pathetic my life is and how great his is, and here are the ways his life became great (insert affiliate links for various clickbank ebook products). It then ends “My Warmest Personal Regards”. I’ve never met this guy. I visited his website once and to this day I still regret doing so. What business has he with sending regards that are “Warm” and “Personal”? I might not even like him (if I ever met him). He might not like me if he met me (this is almost a sure thing, since I would probably slap him). So what is actually going on here? He’s lieing. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about me and certainly doesn’t genuinely send his “warm and personal” regards.
The latest version of his newsletter advises me on how to retain my blog visitors. He suggests making a special effort to let each and every one of my visitors know that I love them and value them. He suggests this act would mean I am remembered by my visitors for a long time and my “bounce rate” (more on this hilarious phrase in another post in future) would decrease dramatically. Well I suspect he is correct - if I let my visitors know I love them they will probably not forget it for a very long time.
All this reminds me of what BBC journalist Lucy Kellaway wrote on language:
“One of the big banks is currently advertising for [passionate] workers saying “we seek passionate banking representatives to uphold our values.” This is a lie. Actually what the bank is seeking is competent people to follow instructions and answer the phones.”
Similarly this blogger is not seeking loving, caring and personal friendships in which he can nurture you to wealth. He is looking for idiots who will buy over priced electronic garbage so he makes his dollar commission.
But hey! This is web 2.0! Or is it 3.0? Better ask a blogger.