Thursday was Deluker Day and I missed it by that much. For some reason it didn't make Harmonica Man's list of holidays for 2008. Delurker Day was the joint brainstorm of Rude Cactus with Greeblemonkey supplying the innuendo laden graphic. As a side note, the illustration bears a strong resemblance to a famous poster titled "Expose Yourself To Art". Back in college I had a boss that was a dead ringer for the guy in the poster. This boss had a mild reputation as a dirty old man. Nobody ever believed that he had hired the future Playboy "Girls Of The ACC" model in our office sight unseen. He had a framed copy of that poster in his office and was very proud of it. Life was so much more fun when you could have a sense of humor about sex in the office.
Anyways, Delurker Day was clearly a great success, at least for Rude Cactus. He got 190 comments on that post as opposed to 41 the post before and 51 for the following post. And of course he got lots of links from other bloggers playing along with his silly game, including one or two on my blog roll. I suspect that Mr. Cactus has a fairly successful blog. It seems witty and clever enough and clearly way more popular than mine. Besides who among us is not above a few cheap traffic boosting ploys.
I assume Delurker Day has no connection with Mofo Delurker Day which I ridiculed when it rolled around back in October. Once people figure out how easy phony events are to create, we will see more of these silly semi-scams. And browbeating your readers to leave comments because of a day on the calender is pretty played out. Years ago, I declared my Lurkers Welcome Policy. I love comments. I like leaving them and I like getting them. But some people prefer to consume rather than participate. Without readers there would be no writers. Nobody should have to do what they don't want to do.
Once again, I find myself not very convincingly saying to stop worrying about what other people are doing and just do on your blog what makes you happy. If that results in thousands of readers or just a select audience of fifteen, so be it.
BlatantCommentWhoring™: The meta-ironic hypocrisy in even trying makes my head explode.
10 comments:
I think comments are what makes the blog world go 'round. At least it does for me....call it the attention-seeking middle child in me, I guess.
Michelle sent me.
I agree with Tommie. No comments are the pits!
I went to high school in the city that poster is from (Portland, Oregon). That guy was a tavern owner named Bud Clark and he later became the mayor... Somebody stole that statue, called Kvinneakt I believe, at some point but it was later recovered. Ah, trivia!
Hi Michelle sent me.
Delurker day hmm yeah that's always a good one - yeah tried it I got hmm let me see...............
Yeah an comment increase of not a lot :P
My blog during the week has one or two people that I don't know reading...one is from the area and it drives me nuts that they come almost ever day but can't reveal themselves even once.
It's one of life's great mysteries :)
impetua,
My boss knew that the guy in the picture was a small town mayor and loved that aspect of the picture's notoriety.
motd,
A couple of blogs I read have had to deal with lurkers that border on stalkers. You may be in the same situation. I hope not.
Well..."One never knows, do one?" --Fats Waller
I know that there are numerous people whom I know personally but who aren't inclined to comment at my site. And every once in awhile someone at work will surprise me by citing something I've written, or even just acknowledge that they've seen it.
But your advice is sound in that you really can't worry too much about who is reading, or how many of them there are. It can occasionally have a paralyzing effect on the writing itself.
But yeah, there are times when not having comments kind of sucks, since writing is a form of art, and the point of art is to evoke a reaction.
I've mentioned several times that my parents read my blog. Probably more than my wife does. I'm fine with them lurking most of the time. And it saves me a lot of phone calls because they can just read my blog to see what I'm up to.
I just think it's funny that some people refuse to leave a comment no matter what. I have at least a dozen readers who stop by on a daily or weekly basis who have NEVER left a comment.
But I like your suggestion to add Delurking Day to my calendar. Since I publish it on a blog it makes sense to list it there. Watch for it next year.
Small town?! Portland is the biggest city in Oregon! Population like ONE MILLION! I realize that's small potatoes compared to some cities, but surely it rates larger than "small town?"
Post a Comment