Thursday 24 July 2014

Discussion: Here we are now...entertainers?

I've been thinking about upping the entertainment value of my blog. 

Doodling master plans of confetti bursts for every visit seemed like a worthwhile use of 10 mins, but at the end of the day, I want my writing to be the main headliner. 

My favorite blogs are those that have actual voice. They have that hook that draws me into something that would have been stale; I might not care about that blush but I will care about how you write about it, the more self-deprecating the better, the more nuanced the better. And you get some Jenn-points (purchasing power = zero) if you tease out the hilarity of a situation with an economy of words.


One example is The Man Repeller. Leandra and her team discuss the tangents of fashion while newly-minting buzz words and trying the Tequila Diet for the sake of the blog. The sometimes lengthy-posts still draws a massive crowd and their tone inspires me. This article truly sums up why The Man Repeller succeeds.

But...having read this piece of news and realizing that attention spans are shockingly low, the pursuit to spark interest is almost Everestian. I've probably already lost more than half of you (waves briefly to the three people still reading) and it makes me wonder where all the good writers have gone and if there's still a space for a well written post. More often I feel readers want condensed entries with enough instant-gratification photos and trite summarized opinions to give them that high before they move on. Are we making a slow slide into pumping out buzzfeed-esque time wasters?

Though I'm harping on this subject, I know that my desires as a 'writer' and my desires as a reader don't align. There are only a handful of blogs I actually read in full and I mostly skip and skim the vast majority of content on the web. I doubly fail by producing captivating posts such as this and this which were, admittedly, put together and published without flare. But time was, and is, pressing.
So, let's discuss.  What do you think? 

As a reader: What do you actually read? Do you read full posts at all? Give me a percentage.

As a writer/blogger: What is your approach to your content?

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