Pointlessbanter.net

This is a long rant with some funny shit, but it is long and some people will frankly not give a shit about what is talked about in here. Now before I launch into this I want to make three points:

1) When I say “blog” I mean write seriously, care about an audience, and put some time and effort in. I don’t mean someone that throws up a post about their favorite tv show, an occasional poem, or basically has something up so four or five people can read it. Saying that you don’t really care but then talking about your numbers, whoring yourself out, or continually returning after you have been deleted shows you really and truly care, so shut the hell up and take your lumps.

2) I started out on MySpace, I owe blogging on MySpace for my current job, blog, consulting, and the reason why I am in grad school. In fact it has possibly gotten me laid, although I would like to think it is my good looks and charm. I have in fact I have blogged about how to get a large audience blog audience on MySpace, and I am not going to deny it is a good place to start but past that… well we will get into that.

3) This isn’t a criticism of anyone’s writing and I don’t think I am better than anyone else, well except a handful of people. Half of the time I look at my blog and wonder if a dyslexic retarded midget with no limbs posted that day. I don’t fashion myself as a writer or have an air of superiority about me, well except when it comes to janga… I’d own all of you.

A few weeks ago I met with the professor that is probably going to be guiding me on my thesis and we talked about potential topics for me to write about. We decided on me writing about how I personally used the social web to accomplish a few different things. It is going to be a mix of my personal story with academic reasoning for certain things; bringing in marketing theory, web theory, and probably some sociology. As I started writing up the outline for this I had to go back onto MySpace and cite some different things. Being back on there and looking around made me so glad to not be blogging on there. I realized that blogging on there is pretty much the dumbest thing I could go back to. Why you ask?

From a financial and artistic perspective-

1) MySpace Owns and Profits from Your Content While Holding it Hostage- Read the terms of service hopefully that will clear up any questions about the owning statement. As far as profiting goes, I had over two million blog views in 2006 and had in general one of the most read blogs on the site. What to know what I got from it? Nothing. Now examine that against possible advertising revenue I could have leveraged and I easily missed out on thousands of dollars. Little did I know that I had cornered the market on dick and fart jokes, midget porn references, and anal fisting mentions. Think about how many craigslist hookers I probably could have gotten or the sheer amount of money I could have spent watching Eastern European girls strip for me via webcam.

As far as holding your content hostage, try exporting your blogs from there. Oh that’s right you can’t. Now go through and spend the time deleting them or copying them, kind of a pain in the ass… I wonder why they do that? Also with their delete without warning policy your entire profile could be deleted taking your content with it, well not really. The content still exists on their servers, you just can’t manage it anymore.

So the question asks, why are you helping a multi-national company by giving them your content? What do you get out of it exactly?

From having it be a limitation on my overall potential audience-

2) Why fight over a limited number of users when I can whore myself to the entire interweb- I really get a kick out of the people that brag about their MySpace numbers (page views, subscribers, etc) or that post their spot on the MySpace blog rankings on their blog or their page. First of all people that sit their and brag about their audience like my male stalker Super Douche does shows how totally stupid they are. It really isn’t their audience, it is people that are on MySpace and go to their blog, they are just providing content within a system that already exists. To give you a comparison it would be like the weather man on your local news saying that he draws a huge audience to the show. While he might have people that are interested in what he has to say and like him, the audience is already tuning into the program. If the weather man leaves, most of the people aren’t going to be tuning out of the program.

That is kind of evident with people trying to leave MySpace and blog. They can’t carry their audience and they can’t build a new audience because quite frankly they aren’t what they think they are cracked up to be.

For example, let’s look at the alexa.com (a site used to determine traffic and advertising values) rankings for a few MySpace bloggers that have left, these rankings depict your overall standing on the web:

Super Douche: 1,140,081 (plus he attempted to milk the traffic of other semi popular writers)

Zara: 708,711

Me: 135,997 According to alexa.com I have the 135,997 most trafficked site on the web… what that means I have no idea. I just know it is better than being over that million mark. Apparently I know something about extending my reach past a social networking site and not getting caught up in my own popularity on there. But then again when your only goal is to have women write balls on their bodies for you, I guess you don’t have to look past your nose and understand the world around you. (Like 10% of you know what that means, I am not going to go into it past that though.)

Some people just care about the ego stroke and the instant gratification that they get on MySpace, others understand that building an audience past there takes work, talent, and good content.

As far as bragging about the MySpace rankings, hell I used to get caught up in it and care. But then I realized that I am looking at a fraction of exposure of what I can get by leaving that website. I am losing out ultimately on search engine traffic, new readers, and a ton of other ways to expose myself.

The blogging subculture on MySpace has totally grown out of hand when you put it into context against the larger scheme of the web. People act like blogging on MySpace is the end all and be all of their existence, they care about who is gaming the all so important MySpace blog rankings, who writes crappy stuff and is yet still popular, who co-blogged with who to get there… Does any of it matter? What is at stake? Money… nope we cleared that up. The sanctity of the rankings? Please, nobody beyond MySpace knows they exist, they don’t care nor does the vast majority of people on MySpace. Bragging about where you rank on MySpace is like bragging about fucking the fattest and ugliest cheerleader on the varsity squad, sure she is a cheerleader but I mean really do you want to stake claim to that?

And stop putting a screen shot of where you ranked in the rankings on your page or blog. Some might say that they are proud at what they accomplished so why not show it off. But what did you accomplish, think about it. It is like a slave during the 1800s bragging that he is the best slave on the plantation. He isn’t getting paid, he isn’t getting a better job, he isn’t getting a slave of the year award at the national slave convention… MySpace loves that the bloggers have fed into this and care about their rankings because it keeps members on the site, increasing page views which helps in their ad revenue generation. You are foolishly buying into it.

From having to deal with the drama-

3) Lets fight over the rankings that don’t matter, who is a fraud, and whatever petty bullshit we can muster- I should explain first what MySpace drama is for those that don’t blog on there or follow what goes on. People routinely attack other writers, create fake profiles to attack other writers because they don’t have the guts to do it from their own, create fake profiles of other writers to parody them, leave nasty comments, and so on and so forth. Basically take everything bad about high school, magnify it by ten, and make it public. The best part is most of the people that are involved in it are adults.

I have to say the drama at times is totally entertaining and a lot of the times what people are saying is valid on some level but honestly if you really don’t like reading someone or think their stuff is shit why attack them? If I took the time out to write about everyone that I came across that sucked or that was a cheater or that I thought was an asshole I wouldn’t have a blog. I would just have giant bitch list about other people, who the fuck wants to read that? What does it really gain? You can expose them? For what? To whom and who cares? Yeah there are a lot of writers that suck on there and that goes the same for everywhere else. I am sure there are some fakes, cheaters, and misogynistic assholes that you will run into them in real life as well.

Granted there are a lot of people I have tussled with in the past and I had to learn over time that it is pointless to fight on a website that is filled with people trying to make up for short comings in their life… Maybe mommy didn’t love them enough or they didn’t gain attention until they started using a social networking website. Whatever the case maybe why get into a pissing contest with someone that doesn’t impact your life in the least?

Sure bloggers outside of MySpace get into it here or there but that is usually called link baiting and it usually only happens amongst geeks. On MySpace though people get so vicious and personal over something that doesn’t matter. There isn’t money at stake, there isn’t professional reputation at stake, there is nothing at stake except people’s opinions over like a two day period, in the end what does it matter?

So what am I really saying?

I’m not saying be nice, that you should get together and sing kumbaya or even stop the throat cutting. I am trying to put this all in perspective for you. Don’t blog on there anymore, start a site on blogger, wordpress, or register a site with yahoo. Don’t piss away your writing in a place that will never let you get anywhere, that is filled with petty bullshit. And expose your work past the walls of a closed garden and to the open world. Your friends and readers, if they really care, will come… It will be rewarding, trust me.

Plus I need more people to start websites and link to me. I want the google juice.

This is going up on Humor-blogs.com even though it really isn’t funny