IHateBloggers.com

There comes a time in most bloggers’ lives when the initial excitement has worn off, the friends and family (haha.. yea, I know, but it’s a turn of phrase) have stopped being interested in whatever it is Dennis does all day at his computer, and the blogger realises that blogging is actually quite a lonely activity. With this lonliness comes a certain self-doubt. ‘Maybe this blogging lark isn’t all it’s made up to be after all?’ 

Unfortunately, the doubt doesn’t usually last long. Or at least, not long enough to actually force some considered thinking (as this would inevitably result in a change of plan for all but the most moronic of humans). Bloggers who experience this blog-anxiety have come up with a ruse to ensure, much like the lesser well-thought out aspects to Scientology, the anxiety gets quickly and quietly swept under the nearest carpet.

BLOGCONS, or Blogger conferences, or blogging conferences, were created to bring bloggers together so they can, er, well.. to bring them together. You’re familiar with the idea of the industry conference- car conferences, marketing conferences, sales conferences. These are typically created by sponsors with an active interest in the field or industry in question- and nice luncheons are put on, qualified speakers may entertain or education the gathering and quite often all and sundry are put up in a nice hotel for a weekend.

Blogging conferences differ just slightly from this. Blogger conferences tend not to be created by sponsors but rather by the bloggers themselves. Rather than hotels, they tend to meet at bus stops. Rather than nice luncheons, they tend to eat in MacDonalds (free wireless- awesome man!). Rather than qualified speakers educating and entertaining the group, a blogger will show you slide shows of his blog and tell you what you could have gathered in the nanosecond of glimpsing at said pictures, except he will make it last about 45 minutes and will be so shy, or so loud and over the top, that either way you will tune out his voice within 3.456 seconds and instead concentrate on the quiet ringing sound your ears make whenever you breathe in or out sharply.

The main reason for BLOGCONS is to reinforce the delusions that bloggers suffer from: that what they spend their time doing is (a) important, (b) worthwhile, (c) admirable and (d) profitable. It helps stave off the uncomfortable reality of things just a few months longer.

The narcissism of your average blogger is never short of breathtaking. Even the most useless and boring of blogs like to make a huge trumpet and fanfare about the smallest of changes to their blog. One of the biggest examples of this is the “new look coming soon” type of nonsense.

It’s so easy to change the overall look and feel of a blog that many bloggers change it every other hour. Psychologists have debated if this is due to bloggers having tortured-genius minds suffering from ADHD or just that they are total wankers. The jury is out. But one thing is for sure -  the excitement never ends when there are 4 000 000 000 wordpress themes to choose from.

Changing the look of your blog is yet another scam artist way to try to get another trickle of traffic to your blog. It’s the perfect excuse to write a newsletter to anyone foolish enough to have ever entered their real email address into your blog. “Hi I’m Simpson Brackle from blogs-kill-puppies.com and I just wanted to let you know we’ve changed our blog design to better help you navigate through the mind numbingly shallow posts on budgeting for your first pet hamster..”

That’s another thing. Use of the royal “we”. Who is this “we”? Multiple personality disorder?

Oh please. I wish respectable media sources would stop giving credence to the idea of “professional blogging”. Imagine having the occupation on your passport listed as “blogger”. Is there a more ridiculous idea? It would be like taking up potplants and suddenly making a career out of it. Actually, pot plants are a much more legitimate professional area to submit one’s time to that blogging. But of course, pot plants wouldn’t interest bloggers since there is no way to talk about oneself all day if your main activity is replacing soil and watering leaves.

Blogging, in practice, has become a synonym for masturbation.  It’s unphilosophical, materialistic navel gazing with no goal other than to comfort the ego either by elevating the bloggers own sense of self worth (low by default) or by elevating the balance of his bank account via the same means. But in reality less than 1% of bloggers make any money worth writing home about. And they wouldn’t have to write home, they are already at home. Their mothers’ home.

Here’s a short list of legitimate professions, which took me 0.00023 nano seconds to think of:

- Doctor

- Teacher

- Banker

- Musician

Here is a list of all the professions which people really really wish were professions but are actually just bullshit hobbies:

- Blogging

- Actually just blogging

Well, you’re not fooling me, bloggers. Enjoy it now while it lasts, because eventually the whole world will wake up and realise that just because something is written on the internet, this does not necessarily mean it is worth reading.

You can’t move one link online these days without bumping into a blog. Blogs are quite a nice idea, companies can communicate with their customers, friends can stay in touch when they go on long trips and you can tell the folks back home all about the newborn’s latest gastric intentions.

Unfortunately, blogs necessarily gave rise to bloggers. Bloggers are a weird breed. They come in all shapes and flavours- the high school kid who wants to document his daily thoughts while wishing the class to end quicker or the executive of a large conglomerate hoping to make his faceless company that little bit more personal by sharing what he had for breakfast. There is one thing all these “people” have in common- huge, massive, out-of-touch-with-reality sized egos. And I really, really hate them.