Letters to a Young Blogger
Word has recently reached us that our young, upstart contributor the Atomizer has a young brother who now has his very own blog. It's called Spit Bull.
We're thrilled to welcome this young whippersnapper to the world of amateur Internet editorializing. We consider this is our first spin off blog. Truth be told, the opinions of Spit Bull never graced the pages of Fraters Libertas. So it's a strange kind of spin off. Imagine if you will, Richie Cunningham's oft referenced but never seen older brother Chuck from Happy Days getting his own prime time variety show. That's exactly what's going on over at Spit Bull.
Given our close affiliation with him, we feel personally vested in his success. We'd like to see him gain as many readers as possible, as quickly as possible. Sure, we understand he's technically the competition and that any page views he gets may be coming directly out of our logs. But it doesn't matter, we like to give and give and give. The consequences be damned!
In this spirit, we offer him the following roadmap to the express highway of blogging success.
1) In the tag line/mission statement to your blog, make sure to use the term "rant." Everyone will get the self deprecating context, because of course, we all know your work is much more than that.
2) The first couple months of posts should be devoted to outlining your philosophy of blogging. In minute detail, tell us exactly what motivates you and why. Make sure to express the fact you think you're one heck of an interesting person and that the world deserves to be let in our your wondrous observations.
3) Coin a disparaging, pithy word for your political enemies, one that people can rally around. (FYI - "asshats" and "idiotarians" have already been taken).
4) When considering a topic to post about, make sure you have something incredibly important to say about it and make sure you can express it with supreme articulation. If you're not 100% sure, don't even bother to start writing. By the way - you must post something substantial at least twice a day. Ideally five times a day.
5) In those rare times you can't find something important and articulate to say, tell us about it. Do long detailed posts about how you can't think of anything to write about.
6) Promote your inactivity in advance. If you're going to take the day off, tell us on the blog. The farther out you can tell us the better. For example, "Due to upcoming prostate surgery, I'm probably not going to post for the next 2 weeks. Unless there's breaking news about Cruz Bustamante."
7) Devote lots of posts to shameless boasting about your own accomplishments and meaningful experiences. If necessary, feel free to exaggerate, misrepresent, and outright lie. You're the expert on you and it's very hard to get Fisked based on a post about the gourmet dinner you prepared last night for your drop dead gorgeous girlfriend. Don't be afraid of appearing arrogant. Readers want to be associated with the best and brightest. Who do you think they'd rather tell their friends is their favorite blogger, some guy who can analyze Howard Dean's position on health care reform, or some guy some guy who can analyze Howard Dean's position on health care reform AND is the undisputed master of the pan flute?
Follow these tips faithfully Spit Bull and you should have 50,000 hits by Halloween. Upon achieving this level, feel free to send me your application to the Northern Alliance Young Bloggers Development Program, along with your $1,000 (non-refundable) application fee.
