Popularity

One of the blogs I read nearly every day is Bored Housewife. I noticed yesterday that the site garnered "Blog of Note" or whatever the name is. I read Bored before this, and now that she has been so deemed, her comments shot through the roof. More than 100 comments on two consecutive posts; one comment added 25 comments in two hours. That is popularity.

Popularity can be overrated. When I started blogging – not long ago, I had like 8 people who read my blog. I really don't know how many read it, but about 8 people would comment. Two wanted pictures of my vagina (GP: yeah, I know you would say "pussy"; what can I say, I am a nerd), two wanted to "chat", one was a local stalker who I tried to avoid, and 3 were real readers. And I got to know these three guys (well, all I had were my 11 erotic stories online).

Which gets me to thinking – okay, 11 erotic stories gives me three real responders. That is, uh, a bit sad. The stories must have sucked – well, some were about sucking, I guess. But that's not the point. In a phrase, I was like the lone girl on the chess club (that is one time when being the only girl in a room is not a good thing). Think about it. No, this never happened to me; I can't play chess, but you get the point. Yeah, I like attention, but not from pimply-faced nerds on a chess team. And, no, my readers were not like that.

Anyway, now I get a few more people reading me. The attention-whore part of me likes that, but then I start losing those three that started reading my stuff. Before noticing what is happening with Bored, I actually wrote one of the three an e-mail, saying "Hope you are not dead." (He's not.)

And I look to see who is linked to my site. Latest person to link is David. The blog is David Triple Equis. The site is in Spanish and the guy is from Argentina. And I am wondering why this Argentinean would link to me. Not that I am complaining. I translated some of it – not fluent in Spanish, and it is about a christening/baptism. Part of me wishes I could say something witty in Spanish on his site, but I am unsure if my sweet sense of humor would be lost in the translation. Bats eyes.

Getting back to Bored – okay, I know she is way talented just by looking at her writing. And part of me is a shallow bitch. So I automatically want to hate her (but I can't because she is just that witty). Which makes me want to hate her more, and I freekin' can't.

And I start reading her responses. And I can't read all of them. There are just too many. And there are a lot of stupid comments as well. Nothing like what Grant brings to the table. One person points out that the plural of "you" is "ya'll". It is spelt "y'all". Lots of messages about her breasts. Even Bored says she has Ds that are perky (another reason to hate her, but I freekin' can't). One message about telling her that her formatting sucks. Another criticizing her use of the carriage return (for those too young to be able to identify a typewriter, carriage return has turned into the "enter" key but "carriage return" sounds more charming).

Now that I see what happens when you get popular, maybe popularity is not what I want to achieve. I don't want fifteen year old adolescents telling me that I have nice nips. I don't want people commenting on my cookie-cutter format. I don't want people telling me that I misspelled a word ("Likelike", in Bored's case; who cares how the street is spelled). And I don't want people telling me where to put my periods, apostrophes and prepositions. Of course, when I told someone to "fuck off," they would tell me about the preposition thingie.

Just let me write my random thoughts, hone my writing skills. I don't care if people think I am an idiot – or disagree with me. Heck, I link to prata's site and we agree about almost nothing. Heck, for my answers I can always go to Ddot.

Of course, I bet Bored Housewife eventually gets made into a Simpsons character. Perhaps all popularity is not bad!