I’ve been kind of pondering this idea for the entire week. As I work. As I went and saw “The Death of a Supermarket” which included phrases that would’ve made Orwell proud. My favorite had to be “The more you spend, the more you save.” That one sort of stuck itself in my mind, how little sense it made.
Bloggers need to make up those sorts of phrases, like a cute little tag they can use for themselves. How characters in your favorite TV shows have a certain line that make them not only lovable, but relatable. Bender uses “Bite my shiny metal ass”, Oprah uses “Everyone wins a free , etc. I use “Rock On” because I want you to and because it is somewhat playful.
Most people who write these things want to write, but don’t know how to go about it and blogging seems the easiest way of reaching a hyper specific audience. I feel like bloggers ought to tour this great land, the great US of A. Authors do it, so why not internet writers. Internet trolls could be some of their plants in the audience, deliberately placed to increase excitement amongst the otherwise tame audience. Besides, the more bloggers I meet, the more I realize that the dedicated ones should make some cash on the prospect.
Plus, it might bring some much needed money to bookstores; maybe allow them to attract more buyers of coffee and stale pastry. Too often I see so many people writing these things and give up. Slowly the posts decrease and eventually go down to a trickle. I’m of course talking about myself; I’ve had some blogs for years. I remember putting literally several reviews of every album I heard in a day up on the internet. Since then, I’ve grown wiser. Music requires a great deal of time to fully appreciate it, what doesn’t click the first time may click the second or third. Or you could just be in the wrong mood for it.
How about a Podcast, you might ask. Podcasts are used by those with a microphone and I have my issues with them. When I hosted a radio show long ago I deliberately honed a “radio voice”. Later when I listened to my show I watched in the spectrometer how different it felt from my real voice. No matter how much I tried to speak in a normal voice, I kept on doing it. So a real, face to face meeting with people works much better with many. Without the filter of how they sound, they’d be more real.
I feel the other benefit would be the tone in which these words are said. Tone is a causality of the internet; it takes a particularly good writer to get the point across. Even great writers considered “masters” at their art gave live readings, like David Foster Wallace for example. What may have missed a reader becomes more apparent once you hear the writer’s intension. Kafka’s work suffered from a similar problem. When one of his friends was asked about the tone of his readings (yes, I know, life expectancy is a wonderful thing) he stated that the humor of the stories was more heavily emphasized than the hopelessness most associated with his work.
Did I mention bloggers work for dirt cheap? Because I’m assuming most would probably give readings for like a cheese Danish and stale coffee. In fact, they might feel they are “getting a bargain” for just being accepted in public forum.
Part of me would be curious if this would or could even be a thing. Bloggers could help out each other, for each place they stop; they crash on another blogger’s couch/floor/collection of blankets. That way, they achieve an intellectual variation on “couch surfing”.
Please let this be a thing.