Popularity: Blogging vs. Real Life November 19, 2007

Do you think they’re related? Sure they are!

You have the following that come into play:

1. You get out there and socialize. People who are members of committees, boards, clubs and who attend many of the parties that come their way are typically well-known. They also usually drink too much to deal with the stress of it all, but that’s beside the point. Blogwise, participants in StumbleUpon, other blogs, IMs, conferences and other activities way to numerous to list here will gain you some degree of popularity even if you don’t say shit.

2. If you screw people over in real life, people will hate you and you will not be popular. Unless you are a politician, CEO of a mega human-eating corporation, oh never mind. I just figured that if you double-cross people on your blog, maybe people wouldn’t like you. I could be wrong.

3. I learned that being featured on TV, even for a mere 30 seconds, increased my real-life popularity. The same is true for your blog. Don’t we all want to be mentioned in the New York Times? Seriously, I got interviewed by the NYT because of a prior blog. My blog didn’t make the article, but it was a nice little ego trip in the meantime. I’m shooting for a mention on Oprah, although insincerity and sarcasm doesn’t really seem to be her thing. Yet. Maybe if I write a book about cute puppies who live in an impoverished African community. It could work.

4. Being good at what you do typically garners the admiration of others. Either that, or they are jealous and want to smite you. The guy in the produce department at our local store knows his stuff, and knows half the town as well. If you can write a blog post intelligently comparing Madagascar chocolate with the Venezuelan stuff, you’ll probably find that you will win over a few chocoholic friends. I wonder if Chavez will cut off access to gourmet chocolate if we attack Iran?

5. I really can’t think of a fifth thing right now, but four things just didn’t seem like a long enough list. While taking a break from writing this post, I dropped one of those huge glass measuring cups on my little toe, where it proceeded to shatter into dust. The measuring cup, not the toe, which is now blue. Having a blue toe will not make me popular, online or off, but I got kudos from my son for cleaning up such an impressive amount of glass without cursing.

I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling with the online popularity thing right now. I have stifled creativity on the many days when I hear of the horrors that seem to permeate my students’ lives. I’m in the PTA. I have family stuff going on, RL friend activities, a house that needs cleaning, and animals, one of whom recently had a very horrible accident on the carpet that lives on in the form of a brown stain.

Tip of the day: When you clean your refrigerator, throw the stuff in the trash. Do NOT feed it to your dog.

I’m hangin’ in. You do that too.