bloggers_anonymous

Blog Rage. Is it Really All The Rage?

We at Bloggers Anonymous would like to call attention to a very unfortunate yet very real phenomenon happening across the blogosphere known as Blog Rage perpetrated by Blog Raging Bloggers (BRB).  It’s a serious problem with deadly consequences.  In order to underscore this issue, we would like to reference “recovered” Blog Ragaholic J.D. Matthews.  J.D. Has long since overcome his problem by starting a blog about music.  After all—they say that music soothes the savage beast.  He’s put together a list of signs that might indicate you have a problem.  Since it’s coming from someone who knows about the devastations of this disorder, we urge you to take this to heart.

Top 10 Signs that you might be a Blog Ragaholic:

10:  You own a voodoo doll that says "Die, Seth Godin, die!"

9:  You post a YouTube of you kickboxing it out with a cardboard cut-out of Robert Scoble

8:  You sold the email address of everyone on your blog roll to Nigerian
Advance Fee Fraud Emailers

7:  Your last post was the lyrics to Drowning Pools' "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor."

6:  Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Knight, and Tom Cruise all left you a comment and told you to chill out.

5:  You do “drive by” commenting—leaving malicious comments and leaving the chaos for other to clean up.

4:  Within the course of one day your IP is banned by Wordpress, Typepad, Myspace, Blogger, Facebook, Friendster, and your own ISP.

3:  Ann Handley and Mack Collier refuse to let you into their community.

2:  You read Bloggers Anonymous and want to hurt the first person you see.

1:  You are forced to frequent obscure blogs such as “fungusfetish.com” because they are desperate for comments.  Even angry ones.

Note: J.D. "pursuaded" several BA staffers to post this, and after seeing his last comment—we thought it would be a good idea to just do as he said.

Anonymous Stories

Living with blog addiction?  You are not alone.  And now you can come clean ANONYMOUSLY.  We don’t need your e-mail.  We don’t need your url.  In fact, we don’t need any information at all.  Anonymous stories is a place where you can share your blog-related stories.  We all have them.  Like the time you told your significant other that you didn’t feel like going out because in reality you wanted to “supe up” your Technorati ranking.  Or that time you got up in the middle of the night for a “glass of water” when in reality it was to check on the blog.

Don’t worry, we won’t judge you.  Because we won’t know who you are. Just make up a “screen name” and purge away.  We’re all friends here.  We just happen to be anonymous.

P.S. You can post comments anywhere on this blog anonymously as well.

Ass-kissing for the A-list

It has come to the attention of Bloggers Anonymous that an incident occured over the weekend referred to as SethGate.  We're not sure exactly what happend, but this illustration by fellow "A-list Blogger" Hugh, illustrates how Compulsive Blogging can lead to Acute Ass Kissing (AAK).  Please use this as a reason NOT to start blogging.

The "Mock 10" Signs of Blog Addiction

At Bloggers Anonymous—we normally frown upon spreading propaganda that minimizes the serious nature of our cause.  However, in the name of education and awareness, we would like to point to the this juvenile “Top 10” list of “symptoms” which indicate you may be a addicted to blogging.  We will not reveal the authors as to not credit them in any way.  Please be aware that this ignorance is out there—and defeating the spirit of our cause.

10. You check your blog stats a LOT. You occasionally get up in the middle of the night and sneak a peak.

9. Your significant other suspects you are having an affair with your blog. Even when you’re alone with your special person, you do find yourself thinking what your blog might be doing right then…

8. You “mental blog” while driving or on the train, and sometimes even when you are alone in the shower.

7. You filter everything through your post-writing. You can’t watch a movie, see a play, read an article, or share a sweet moment with your child without thinking of whether it’s blog-worthy.

6. You suffer from “blog envy” when another blogger posts something juicy before you do. You suffer “comment envy” when said post gets 40-something comments – the jerk!

5. You “binge blog” 3 or 4 posts at once—only to feel guilty and empty afterward.

4. You ditched all your real friends for blog friends, because, well, “they understand.” You bypass Bowling Alone at the bookstore (who really cares?) while you reach for Naked Conversations.

3. You think, “I can stop at any time.”

2. Your lunch hour has become your “blog hour.” You keep a few posts tucked in your desk in case you need them during the day.

1. After 5 minutes of meeting someone really interesting you ask, “So - do you blog?”

Hey Drew! You've got Moxie!!!

A sad fact of blogging life is that so many of us are anonymous.  We have to be, because everyone that's not an A-lister is, let's be honest, anonymous.

So I have been doing exhaustive research on the subject, and have discovered that all bloggers are NOT born as A-Listers, in fact, most start out anonymously!  They will later bloom into A-Listers that command respect, and enjoy the luxury of ignoring every one of their anonymous blogging pals that they stepped on while climbing the blogging ladder!

But how does one go from anonymous to A-Lister, I hear you cry....fear not true-believers, I have created a step-by-step process!

Let's take our anonymous hero.....we'll call him Drew McLoud. 

Drew starts out with his anonymous blog(we'll call it 'Macro-Delusion'), with his paltry zero links.   Oh Drew starts out fighting the good fight....posting every day, as much as possible, waiting for the blogging deities to come and reward his efforts on MD with heapings of links. 

It never happens.

Finally, Drew has an epiphany: Attempting to win links based on content isn't working, so Drew decides to try kissing up! 

So Drew makes a list of 10 or so A-Listers, and begins to link to each of them, daily. 

After a few weeks of this, finally one of them links BACK to Drew!  And the great thing about A-Listers is, if one links to you, the others feel like they then HAVE to link to you as well, or else they won't be an A-Lister anymore! (I don't understand this part, but then again I don't understand why I can tell my non-bloggy friends about 'what Doc Searls posted yesterday about the conversation economy was brilliant', and they always respond with 'who the blue hell is Doc Searls?'.  Sheesh..they really need to get a life.)

Drew then comes off the link-love high a few days later, after the traffic starts to die.  That's when the NEXT phase of the plan to become an A-Lister comes into play!

All A-Listers HAVE to go to as many conferences as possible (I think they lose their A-Lister card if they don't).  So what Drew does is decide to start stalkin.....er......ATTENDING the same conferences that these A-Listers do! 

So Drew, at great monetary expense, begins attending as many conferences as possible.  He tries to fight through the crowds to talk to his favorite A-Listers, and after a few trips he gets a quick hand-shake in with a couple of them!

Then, Drew runs back to Macro Delusion, and IMMEDIATELY blogs about 'how great it was to finally meet 'insert favorite A-Lister HERE'. 

Drew does this, because whenever an A-Lister attends a conference, they are required to repost EXPLICIT details of the event, including listing EVERY blogger that they come in contact with.  Finally, one A-Lister admits that, 'And it was great to meet Drew McLoud'. 

Bingo!  Drew is so close to being an A-Lister, he can smell it!  Because when the FIRST A-Lister acknowledges meeting Drew, every other A-Lister immediately becomes nervous, thinking 'HEY!  Who's this Drew McLoud guy?!?  I've never heard of him!  Oh crap....what if he's NOW an A-Lister, and no one told me?!?  Does that mean *I* am no longer an A-Lister?!?'.

So immediately, every A-Lister posts about 'how great it was to meet Drew McLoud!'.  Drew is so overjoyed, he can't bear to correct them!

The cycle is complete, and our hero has now gone from zero, to bonafide A-Lister! 

At the next conference, one of the A-Listers that never met Drew (but claimed she did), pulls aside another A-Lister (who also never met Drew, but claimed he did), and she asks her pal 'Say....who exactly IS this Drew McLoud?!?'. 

At this point, the second A-Lister is afraid the other A-Lister might be testing him, so he replies 'Why you know who Drew is.....Drew's an A-LISTER!'.

The End.

I'm with the Blog: Confessions of a Bloupie

I get shivers whenever I see those old Web 1.0 sites, with their one-entry-at-a-time style, no trackbacks, no comments. How did people communicate back then? How could show your love? What was life like before blogging? How does anyone get through the day without checking Kottke’s Remaindered Links? Or seeing what hot new start-up TechCrunch is giving props to? What is Megnut cooking this week? Where is Frank Bruni dining? Has Dave Winer quit blogging yet, like he said he would 10 gazillion years ago? Who’s hot and who’s not? Pinging Technorati and Google vanity searches take up a lot of time. Why can’t I get on the best blogrolls? When will I be an A-lister? Maybe if I find a way to sit near Scoble at brunch. . . I wonder if I can get Hugh McCleod to do a sketch for me?

Guide to Bletiquette

Sometimes, it’s difficult for us Blogoholics to keep up with all the posts we need to write and comments we need to make.

An easy way around this is simply to lift what others write and put it on your own blog. I don’t mean just link to it, either. I mean sharpen the scissors and get out the bottle of glue, and cut and paste the whole bit of business.

If you want, you can add a brief comment, preferably at the end. Maybe use the word “found,” like “I found this on Guy Kawasaki’s blog,” implying that it was like a stray kitten in the alley that you picked up, took home, and cuddled. Or, “Tara Hunt said something like this, too.” Or “Previously posted by Richard Scoble.”

Who has time to write original content, anyway, when there’s so many posts to make?

Live Blogging with BDD

I sat down to write this post about, like, a million times today. The whole general idea is that BDD -- it stands for Blog Deficit Disorder -- is really hard to live with, and it's hard to concentrate enough on one post or one blog. It's hard to get anything done, bottom line, when you spend your whole day flitting from blog to blog. But it doesn't feel like flitting. It feels like I'm in a...well, community.

As I was starting to write earlier I got to thinking about what might be being published right then -- right that very second -- on all of the thousands, the millions, or blogs all around the country. The world, even. Sifry says there is a blog being added every second. That's 60 blogs a minute, 3600 blogs an hour. Or 85,400 new blogs a day, assuming that they work through the night. Some might be good. Some I should read. Some might link to me, maybe.

What's Seth Godin writing about today? Mark Vanderbeeken? Steve Rubel? Tara Hunt? Then I thought about the contributors at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix. I was thinking, "Wonder who is headlining today? Wonder who's over there commenting on stuff that's really important?"

So I thought, okay, before I write I'm going to need to get that monkey off my back. Just for a few minutes. I spend some time with Godin. Hah. He's always so wise. In a funny way. In a funny/wise way. Then I go to Rubel. Wow. How cool is he? Hold on. Gotta make a comment so I can get my name in the "Recent Comments" list. Woo-hoo! For four or five minutes I'm an A-lister! Yeah! Then I'm hangin' with Kathy Sierra. How does she get 135 comments on a single post? Wow...who's commenting, anyway? Mike Sansone. Mack Collier. Prashant. Be back in a sec.

Oh and Monica Powers commented on Mack's. So did JD. His American Idol stuff was great (33 comments -- woo-hoo!); that guy is a riot.

You see how it goes. It's not that it's hard to get anything done. It's just the opposite -- there's a lot going on; it's hard to...wait a sec. Now THIS is a good interview...

Anyway, TTYL!

Holiday Weekend Ignites "Blogger Withdrawal"

Memorial Day weekend.  The unofficial kickoff to summer.  Gathering with family and friends, grilling out, catching up on some yard work,—and wondering why that guy over in the corner of Panera is frantically tapping on his keyboard.

For thousands of blog addicted individuals,  Memorial Day weekend is an obstacle to their blogging habits and for those without access to technology, symptoms of Pervasive Blog Withdrawal (PBW) can set in immediately. 

“I was on a boat for the entire weekend—no wireless, no mobile, no nothing”.  Says one blogger.  “After going eight hours without a post, I could feel my hands shaking, and I couldn’t even keep my food down”.  Some bloggers were more fortunate.  “I told my wife that I needed to catch up on work and convinced her to let me take my laptop on our trip.  When she went to use the restroom at Panera, I quickly got out a post”.

Seems extreme?  Not to the addicted blogger.  While most typical Americans were out enjoying an extended weekend, Mack Collier who runs a blog called the Viral Garden was busy updating his Top 25 Marketing blogs list.  A post on his blog reads, “The Top 25 Marketing blogs, as always, will be published on Monday. Since I am addicted to blogging, I can't take the holiday off”.

Blogapathy Rampant in Blog Community

“Hey—did you watch the Bush/Blair press conference”? 
—“Uhhh—I think I was working on some posts that night”... 

It’s a conversation all too common throughout the blog community.  Blogapathy—a condition caused by excessive blogging leaves little time for keeping up with current events and pop culture.  “It’s like—I don’t even care anymore what goes on in the world—unless it affects my blog”—says one individual who’s identity we are protecting for privacy. 

Blogapathy is especially prevalent in the younger generation who traditionally tend to ignore world events—but are now tuning out once popular networks like MTV.  “What’s the TV supposed stand for?” says one youth “I know the M is for music, but the T and V?—I should Google this...”.

Hard to believe—but this is what we're seeing with both young and older bloggers alike.  With Blogapathy spreading so rapidly—one has to wonder what repercussions there will be in the long term.  But the real question is—will anyone care?

The Underbelly of Blog Celebrity

This illustration from Gaping Void shows just how cut-throat and pretentious the blogging world is.  It's a world filled with egos, (blegos), self-righteousness and celebrity-like naval gazing.  It's no wonder why bloggers are so easily addicted.  Please stop the madness.  Seek help today.

Blogslexia Affects 1 in 10

A new study has shown that one out of ten adults show signs of Blogslexia.  Blogslexic individuals interpret the word "blog" in place of the actual words they see.  This condition can often cause confusion in how information is both interpreted and processed.

Corporations have most been affected by Blogslexia.  The associated graphic shows how a simple visual can be misconstrued by a Blogslexic individual to mean something entirely different.  Usually it's related to Blogs.

For more information, Google Blogslexia.

BAD T-Shirts Are Here

Dear BlogAnon: Better than Sex?

As a new feature to Bloggers Anonymous, we will be providing life advice to those of you struggling with Blog related issues.  In our first post, we address the sad myth that Blogging is better than sex.

Dear BlogAnon.  A friend of mine recently came across this post suggesting Blogging is better than sex.  Is any of this true? 

Sincerely, Sex Crazed and Confused

10 Ways Blogging Is Better Than Sex
--------------------------------------------------

10. You feel agitated if you don't do it MORE THAN once a day.

9. In fact,  multiple posts in the same day are no problem – EVER.

8. You can manage two blogs at once (or more)! 

7. You always keep the lights on and the shades up – not just for fun once in a while.

6.  You think to yourself, “Man I bet she'd look hot in a Tequila template.”

5. You consider leaving comments on someone's blog that you are attracted to as 'having a quickie' with them.

4. You can do it alone.

3.  You only have to master one good “position.”

2.  You can jump from blog to blog at will, and your own blog never makes you feel guilty.

1. There’s no sugar-coating. When you suck, you’ll hear the truth.

--Dear Sex Crazed and Confused.  Despite the scientific evidence that Blogging actually triggers the same pleasure centers in the brain as Sex, it is in no way a replacement and should not be considered one.  Please resist the urge to replace sex with blogging.  "Blex" as we like to refer to it only leads to a path of self loathing and unfulfillment.

-Yours Truly—BlogAnon

Whose Problem Is It?

We at BlogAnon embrace different points of view—no matter how small minded and un-informed.  We pride ourselves in keeping our Blog Ego (BLEGO) in check.  In the spirit of polite discourse—we embrace this extremist viewpoint from Ann Handley.

"Listen up, friends. Blogging is not a disease; it’s a lifestyle. What’s more, it’s one that you’ve truly chosen and embraced. 

Societal pressure is intense, isn’t it? People always trying to make you what you’re not, trying to make you feel like there’s nothing wrong with them, suggesting it’s YOU who has a problem? 

It’s bunk, friends. Don’t buy it. Frankly, family is overrated."

Blog Intervention

It's difficult to watch this—but necessary in order to understand the disease.  Selina is one of the million individuals who need our help.  She doesn’t even know it.  Please take her cry for help seriously—what’s needed here is intervention, not apathy.

Twelve Steps To Blog Addiction Recovery (BAR)

There is no cure for Blog Addiction.  But there is recovery.  We call this proecss Blog Recovery Basics (BRB) fueled by our unique 12 step program:

   1. We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our blogs had become unmanageable
   2. Came to believe that a Sys Admin greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
   3. Made a decision to turn our blogs, logins and passwords over to a trusted third party
   4. Made a searching and fearless content inventory of our blogs
   5. Admitted to Bloglines, to Feedburner and Technorati being the exact nature of our overposting
   6. Were entirely ready to have the RSS and Atom feeds removed from our sites
   7. Humbly asked our blogroll to remove links to us
   8. Made a list of all blogs we had linked, and became willing to delete them all
   9. Made chmods to our directories wherever possible
  10. Continued to take content inventory and when we were tempted to blog, promptly admitted it
  11. Sought through coffee and Tivo to improve our time offline and resolved to not check our Technorati rankings more than once a day
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

For further information—please contact Gabby Hon, VP BRB, North America.

Open Letter to Marketing Profs

It’s come to our attention that Marketing Profs, has taken the unfortunate position of mocking Blog Addiction.  Blog Addiction is a very serious and very real condition wreaking havoc in families across the globe.  We at Bloggers Anonymous do not condone this type of behavior and are sad to see that there are professional organizations out there making light of Blog Addiction, Compulsive Blogger Syndrome (CBS)  And Accute Blog Compulsion (ABC). 

Bloggers Anonymous would like to take this opportunity to encourage those suffering from this unfortunate affliction—to boycott Marketing Profs and related sites.  We regret taking this O’Reillyan action—but see no other alternatives. We will be happy to lift this boycott if Marketing Profs publishes a complete apology on their blog.

Please Join us in our cause.
The staff at Bloggers Anonymous.

The First Step is Admitting You Have A Problem

Congratulations!

You've made it this far.  By coming to terms with your condition—your chances of recovery have increased significantly.  Bloggers Anonymous will help see you through this difficult time.  Just remember—you are not alone.

Tell us a little about yourself here and let the recovery process begin!