Tag Archives: Blogging

At what point do critical comments become bullying?

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breaking_point

As a person with Avoidant Personality Disorder, I’m not the type to readily confront others on their bad behavior, but at this point, I’ve gotten so fed up with one commenter I no longer care if what I say makes them mad. It appears that lately, this commenter has been criticizing every one of my posts, it seems, just to be able to criticize. This commenter and I have some serious disagreements about several issues related to the content of this blog and life in general, and that’s fine and dandy; I don’t expect or even want everyone to agree with me all the time. After all, my opinions are just opinions, and disagreements, if presented respectfully and in a way that doesn’t seem like spamming or bullying, can can lead to healthy debate.

But this commenter has reached a point where their snarkiness has become trollish and bordering on bullying. Not only that, but this commenter appears to ALWAYS be here, because they always seem to comment almost the minute I put up a new post and are usually one of the first to comment, if not THE first. Yet this person rarely if ever “Likes” anything I post (which is fine in itself, many people don’t use the Like button). But I don’t understand why, if this person dislikes what I have to say so much, they always seem to be here, watching and waiting. It’s creepy to be honest. I feel like I’m being stalked.

Not only is it creepy and hurtful, it’s also incredibly BORING and ANNOYING.

I have informed this person I am almost at the point of not approving any of their comments, because I’m just so damn sick of it. I HATE drama, including online drama, but this is just too much. I need to take action.

If you blog, how do you know if a commenter has crossed the line into trollishness?

The simple answer is: if you feel like your boundaries are being invaded. Here are some things to pay attention to:

1. Do you get a creepy, stalkerish feel from someone who frequents your blog?

2. Do they snark on or criticize almost every post?

3. If they run their own blog, do they post articles about your blog or about you that are excessive and/or critical?

4. Have other bloggers complained to you about that person or have they stopped coming to your blog because that person ran them off?

If any of these things are true for you they are red flags and you should listen to them. The same thing goes online as well as offline, and if someone is making your blogging life less fun and causing you undue stress, please listen to your instincts. There are basically two things you can do if this happens:

1. You can stop approving comments or block that person from commenting.

2. You can try to reason with the person and let them know why their behavior is bothersome to you.

First of all, try to determine if it’s just you overreacting. Sometimes it’s hard to know if you’re just reacting badly to someone disagreeing with you, but if others have complained, or they are leaving because of that person, or you just feel uncomfortable only with that one person, then it probably isn’t just you being over sensitive. If you’re like me and hate being harsh and like to give people the benefit of the doubt, you can try #2 first. But if the bad behavior continues and your warning seems to fall on deaf ears, then it’s time to take more drastic action. (I have already tried to reason with this person so that leaves me one choice).

At the end of the day, it’s YOUR blog, YOUR rules. If someone continually violates your rules or disrespects you or your other commenters, it’s time to enforce your rules.

How is your website doing?

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alexa
My Alexa ranking.

There are many things that factor into how well your website is doing, including a lot of things I don’t really understand yet. But considering there are almost a billion websites on the Internet (woah, that’s a LOT of websites!), having a ranking of 1.5 million globally and under 500,000 in the United States is pretty damn good.

You can get some general info on how your website is doing (without signing up for anything or paying for anything) here:
http://www.alexa.com/

My blogging mojo is back!

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girl_computer

This is my 10th post today. I don’t think I’ve ever made 10 posts in one day before. Yes, I realize they’re all either pretty short or reblogs, but still! I’m very proud of myself. Maybe I should give Jonas the credit though, since he trapped me inside my house all day today.

In general though, my interest in blogging has returned after a couple of months of feeling like it was becoming a chore. I think bloggers go through the doldrums every so often and you just have to keep on writing and wait for them to pass. I think my Seasonal Affective Disorder had something to do with it too. In the fall, I lose interest in pretty much everything. Once the days start getting longer, my mood improves and my interest in things and my creativity returns.

Search terms that make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.

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plastic_cat

I just read a short post by another blogger who wrote that in her search terms, she found her full (real) name followed by “bad parent.”

That’s pretty alarming and would suggest this blogger may be being stalked by someone she knows.   I’ve been lucky that way I guess, but I remember a few months ago, I did see a search term that said “Lucky Otter is an idiot and a psychopath.”   That made me sort of cringe a little inside.   I hate it when people hate me.   I have no idea who used a search term like that, nor do I want to know.   Probably someone I pissed off in a blog post.  Who cares?   Much more creepy than that was the time I found this in my list of terms:  “I want to f*** Lauren Bennett.” (That isn’t even my real name). This was followed by a few more words describing doing something that was even more unmentionable on a blog like this one. I bet I’m twice the age of whatever sociopathic basement dweller searched for this blog that way.

Most of my search terms are pretty boring.  So boring that I stopped making posts listing the “funny” search terms because there really aren’t any funny ones.  They’re all about as interesting as staring at a beige cinder block wall.

 

WordAds: Advertising on WordPress

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If you blog and are interested making some money from your blog, WordPress has a program called WordAds that makes this possible. You probably won’t be able to quit your day job (my earnings last month were about $40 but are going up each month in small increments based on number of “impressions”) but it’s definitely worth it, if you qualify. I don’t blog for money obviously, but it is nice to have the extra cash.

This post about the WordAds program is the most imformative I’ve seen. I can’t think of one question here left unanswered.

Why I’ll never have a Youtube channel.

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no_youtube

Yesterday, someone asked me why I don’t have a Youtube  channel.  That’s a good question and I’m going to answer it.

Having an accompanying Youtube channel seems to be increasingly popular among bloggers, especially those who blog about mental health issues. It’s so ubiquitous these days, that it seems almost required to have a Youtube channel to get any sort of traffic for your blog (this blog does just fine traffic-wise without one).   If you’re a mental illness blogger and aren’t on Youtube, people wonder why the hell aren’t you? They suspect that maybe you have something to hide.

Let ’em think whatever they want. Because you won’t ever see me nailing up a shingle on Youtube. No way, no how. And I’ll tell you why.

1. I’m socially awkward and not very articulate.
It’s true. While I express myself very well in the written form and can present myself well verbally when I must (such as on job interviews and horrible office Christmas parties), the latter is very exhausting for me. As an INFJ and a person with Avoidant Personality Disorder, I’m an introvert and socially anxious. That extends to speaking into a camera on my computer, knowing that my voice is what people will be listening to and my face is what people will be looking at. I pepper my spoken language with a lot of filler and “ums” and “uhs” and “you knows” and “likes” and do strange things with my hands and face while speaking to cover the fact my mind goes completely blank when I have to speak in front of other people, even if it’s recorded ahead of time.

2. I’m not a performer.
I know not everyone with a Youtube channel is trying to be a celebrity and many mental health and narcissistic abuse v-loggers are wonderful people who probably have good hearts and really want to help others. But for me, talking to an audience for the purpose of making a video comes very close to feeling like a performance, and that’s just a whole lot of stress I don’t need or want.

3. I don’t want to worry about what I look like.
When I blog, I’m usually lounging around on my bed or on the couch, my hair uncombed and my face as naked as I was on the day I was born. I’m usually dressed in some grungy pair of threadbare in the thighs jeans or yoga pants 3 sizes too big (I lost a lot of weight the past couple of years but haven’t replaced many of my clothes) and a holey T-shirt covered with coffee stains. On a few occasions (especially in the summer when it’s hot), I like to lounge around in nothing but my underwear and a tank top. I also like to eat or chew gum while I blog, and have no particular desire to be talking to an audience while snapping Wrigley’s or munching on a mouthful of Herr’s Cheese Balls.

So don’t go looking for me on Youtube, because the only thing I’ll ever be doing there is commenting on other people’s videos.

 

 

The 8 Worst Types of Blog on the Internet.

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your_blog_sucks

One of my favorite websites is Cracked.com. Since I blog a lot about blogging, and “enjoy” bad blogs as much as the folks over at Cracked, I want to share this countdown with my interested readers. I’m well aware that by doing this, however, I’m guilty of being a “Parrot” (see #5), at least sometimes.

Let the laughs begin.

The 8 Worst Types of Blog on the Internet
By Chris Bucholz, posted July 26, 2011 for Cracked.com

Back in 2007, when the Internet was young, a plucky and ambitious group of hellions going by the name “Cracked.com” launched a feature on their site called the Cracked Blog. There, an elite team of barely legal humorists posted their thoughts about themselves, the state of society and semi-popular television programming. It was, in every sense, marvelous — every word a bolt of golden silk, hanging in an eternal summer breeze. But time passed, and the bloggers started getting worn out, tired with the hectic pace of updating multiple times a day. They began writing longer posts that appeared less frequently, eventually shape-shifting into a MILF-ish group whom we now call the Cracked Columnists. By late 2008, the Cracked Blog was dead, a loss which would soon rattle the world’s economy to its core. But it turns out that despite Cracked’s wholesale abandonment of the medium, blogging didn’t die out at the same time. Since then, many different blogs have continued to thrive and evolve. There are blogs about video games and blogs about food, and even a blog where there are pictures of a cat saying things. This is all well and good, but unfortunately, not all blogs have achieved such lofty feats. Many, in truth, suck all sorts of balls. Below is a list of some of the worst examples of how the blog format has been misused.

#8: The “Let’s Start a Blog” Blog

dear_diary

You know what these are like. The first post (which still hasn’t scrolled off the front page) says something like “Test” or “I Have A Blog!” The next three posts are a little less focused. And then nothing. It’s a problem of access, or too much of a good thing. A blog is a place to say something, and even though they’re freely available to anyone who can fog a mirror, this does not imply that all mirror-foggers have something to say.*

Read the rest of this post here.

“Crazy” blogs help reduce stigma against mental illness.

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Through our “self indulgence” and “shameless” willingness to publicly talk about personal struggles and issues most people wouldn’t even tell their second best friend,  we forge communities where we can offer strength and comfort to others–and receive it in return.

 

crazy-women

Do you, like me, administer a “crazy” blog?

I was thinking about how in the past few years, “crazy” blogs like mine (highly confessional blogs that document an individual’s mental illness and their journey to wellness, or an abuse victim’s struggles to find peace of mind and emotional freedom) have proliferated like mushrooms after a rain storm.

Is this a blessing or is it the Internet version of the worst kind of TV reality shows?

Those who don’t understand, many of them older people who aren’t used to such public candor on or off the web,  like to pass judgment and accuse us “crazy” bloggers pf being self-indulgent, narcissistic, exhibitionistic, shameless, or just plain, well, batshit crazy.    They can’t understand why people with such delicate and personal…issues…would want to blab about them all over the web to strangers all over the world.   They think that by us doing so,  we just prove we’re as insane as whatever mental illness we are struggling with. They think that abuse stories belong behind closed doors and the only public place where they should be discussed is in the courts.

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Highly subjective, confessional stories of mental illness and abuse didn’t start on the web, though the web makes it possible for the average non-celebrity type of person to make their story known through blogging and forum posts, and in the process, enlighten, warn, or provide hope and support to others in the same boat.   Through our “self indulgence” and “shameless” willingness to publicly talk about personal struggles and issues most people wouldn’t even tell their second best friend,  we forge communities where we can offer strength and comfort to others–and receive it in return. Back in the days before the Internet was available, we so often had to struggle alone without any support–or never be able to use what we learned to lift up someone else.

I think “crazy” blogs in particular help reduce stigma against mental illness by describing what it’s like to actually live with one, rather than just listing a bunch of criteria in a psychiatric textbook, which tends to increase stigma.  Instead of being reduced to “Exhibit A-104.3G, our stories and struggles show our humanity.

 

Further reading:  Why Crazy People Make Better Bloggers. 

Losing followers.

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puzzled

As a blogger, I always worry when I lose followers, even if it’s only a few.     For the past few weeks my number of followers has remained steady (and the number of visitors and views keeps going up, thanks to the search engines and continuing popularity of certain posts I wrote a while back), but this week I lost about 4 followers.  Today I have 1314 followers; a week ago I had 1318.

I don’t know who these followers were, and there could be any number of reasons why they’re not following me anymore, including something as impersonal as a WordPress glitch (it’s happened before; in fact it happened to me yesterday:  I had to re-follow Bluebird of Bitterness, who I never knowingly unfollowed).  They could also be spam accounts who unfollowed me.    But I worry just the same, and I always start fretting about what I might have said that may have offended someone.

But what sort of blog would this be if I never offended anyone?  A boring one, probably.   Of course I don’t intentionally try to offend,  but whenever you state an opinion, someone might disagree with you.   It really can’t be avoided.  My blog is so I don’t have to keep my opinions all to myself!   I probably didn’t offend anyone anyway, at least not enough for them to unfollow me,  and even if I did why I am so worried about four followers who I can’t even identify and might have been bogus accounts anyway?

ETA: Twenty minutes after posting this, I gained three followers. 🙂  I don’t know if they’re the same ones or not.

Stream of consciousness blogging.

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stream_of_consciousness

Credit: Paulinasaurus

You might think you have nothing interesting to say, but that’s a big fat lie you tell yourself.

Ever have those random weird thoughts that just come out of nowhere? Write about them. Even if you think they’re silly or embarrassing or insignificant or would make no sense to anyone else, blog about them anyway. You never know who might be able to relate or might have been thinking the same thing. Sometimes some damned good conversations can get started that way.  At the very least, you might make someone think, and getting people to think is always good.

Sometimes your random thought could take the form of a question. If you’ve always wanted to know why you never see baby squirrels or why socks always disappear in the wash (and wire hangers tend to breed), write it down. You may get some answers.

If you don’t think you have a topic to write about, you do. Start where your mind is at right now, this very second, and go from there.  I don’t care how boring you think your life is. Write about the chair you’re sitting in, or the bed you’re lounging on, what you’re eating (if anything), what time you got up, what your plans for the day are, how unpleasant that flu you have is, what the temperature in the room is like, the view outside your window (even if it’s a dark trash-filled alley), what the wall next to you looks like and what’s on it (include photos of it maybe?), or the people and animals sharing the room with you right now. If Grandpa cracking his pistachios all night in front of the TV is the equivalent of being waterboarded, by all means write about it. If you can’t stand the way your husband mouth-breathes and picks his nose in front of the mirror, write about that too. Things that irritate you always make entertaining posts. Or write about how much you love something. How about compiling a bucket list? Lists of any kind are good, and they’re easy to write too. Everyone loves lists. Listicles are a thing.

Pick any one of the things above or something you came up with on your own and elaborate on it. If you feel like being goofy, be goofy. If you feel like ranting, then go ahead and rant. Blogging gets it all out of your system. Sometimes my best posts came along when I thought I had nothing to say. You never know–you may wind up saying something someone else wants or needs to hear.