MetroDad

Blogging as a Popularity Contest: I Lose!

I'm often humbled by the sheer number of people who e-mail me regularly asking me to please post here on a more frequent basis.

Being only human, I have to admit that this flattery often feeds the small part of my ego not already being nourished by my overinflated sense of self-esteem and narcissism. Really? You like me? Oh goody!

But as you can probably tell, I don't really write here because I want to be popular. If anything, I think I'd actually prefer a little more anonymity. 

Why?

When you're young, all you care about is having lots of friends. Then, as you mature, you realize there are much more important things in life---like having lots of friends who are less successful than you are.

Just kidding.

I think.

I might have to get back to you on that one.

Anyway, in all seriousness, I admit that this blog has a certain amount of internet-induced popularity that I'm slightly conflicted about it. On the one hand, I don't give a shit about what other people think of me but, on the other hand, I'd really like to be remembered as the guy who didn't care what other people thought of him. I like to call this the "Fonzie Dilemma."

Anyway, part of the reason that I don't blog more regularly is because I don't want this blog to become too popular. As I look around the internet, I see a lot of bloggers who are more overexposed than George Hamilton slathered in baby oil lying on a bed of aluminum foil under a magnifying glass at high noon in Palm Springs. Their constant self-promotion leaves me feeling a little nauseated by the whole thing.

I don't want to be one of those people whose lives becomes obsessed with blogging. I'll never be one who posts every day, comments on hundreds of blogs, and falsely assumes that quantity can trump quality. Traffic and popularity don't mean that much to me. 

I just like hanging out with you guys and shooting the shit.

Anyway, I would like to start posting here a little more frequently. It's just that things have been, as the kids say, "mad crazy." I'm watching my portfolio shrink so quickly that I picture myself spending my retirement greeting people at Wal-Mart. I'm cleaning my apartment so I can see more than 10 square feet of space at any given time. I'm cursing the fact that I bought a car that gets 12 mpg. I'm subsisting solely on meat and cheese. I'm weaning myself off coffee. I'm catching up on 3 months worth of personal e-mails. I'm purposefully losing daily games of Candyland while teaching my daughter how to tie her shoes. And I'm reading five books simultaneously while trying to figure out whether I should keep watching "Fringe," "The Mentalist," "My Own Worst Enemy," and "The Sarah Connor Chronicles."

Oh yeah...I'm also ruminating on the fact that I turned 40 last week!

More importantly, what's up with all of you?

Blog Friends, Virtual Relationships, & The Wind in Your Vagina

Being a long-standing, card-carrying member of the "blogosphere," I often find myself pondering the state of modern-day relationships in this virtual internet age.

What does it mean to be friends with someone you only know through blogging? Are facebook friends really friends? Does knowing the details of a person's life via twitter constitute anything meaningful?

The writer Chuck Klosterman once wrote that he had 43 close friends, 196 good friends and 2,200 affable acquaintances. Close friends were people that he would phone immediately if he was diagnosed with lung cancer; good friends were people whose death from lung cancer would make him profoundly sad; and affable acquaintances were people whom he generally liked and hoped would recover from lung cancer.

He wrote that statement back in 2002, a time not so far in the distant past but one that predated the explosion of personal blogging, the proliferation of Facebook as a social network for adults, and the introduction of sites like twitter or tumblr that allow you to follow someone's immediate thoughts and activities in real time. I often wonder how the number of Klosterman's defined relationships has changed just in the past 6 years.

Living in New York, I've had the opportunity to meet not only many other fellow bloggers but also several people who simply know me from being a reader of this blog. At first, I was concerned that people's on-line personalities would prove to be far different from reality. After all, it's impossible to convey the complex entirety of one's self solely by the written word. And isn't there a human tendency to shape one's image so that we may appear more interesting (or attractive, funny, or smart) as possible?

However, after meeting so many people in the "real world" that I previously only knew in the virtual one, I have to admit that I've been amazingly surprised. Without fail, I've found that you really can get to know someone closely through the internet and that the people that you think you would like, you almost always do.

Not only have I formed close relationships with people that I previously only knew online but I've also come to realize that I have quite a few great relationships with friends that I haven't even met in person...yet. These are people that I truly care about and whose lives I am fully invested.

Now admittedly, I'm a "people person." I've never wanted to befriend people who are just like me. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I like having relationships with people who couldn't be more different from me. I enjoy being taken out of my comfort zone and I'm a firm believer that any two strangers on the planet, given enough time, can find a common ground that unites them far more than it divides them.

Being a parent is one of those universal common grounds.

I bring all of this up because I recently discovered a new parenting blog called The Wind in Your Vagina that I absolutely love. The writer is a father of two children and refers to himself online as "Black Hockey Jesus" (aka BHJ.) His writing is refreshingly smart, hilarious, and caring. He has the kind of writing talent that makes me drool with envy but I don't begrudge him a single iota because he's a uniquely iconoclastic character who is constantly barraging me with effusive complimentary e-mails. He's on a one-man mission to singlehandedly take over the internet and I have voluntarily agreed to help him in any way possible. I'm the Robin to his Batman, the Kelly to his Regis, the Porky Pig to his Daffy Duck, the Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, the Ivory to his Ebony, and...well, you get the fucking idea. Together, we're going to make him a male version of Dooce.

Anyway, BHJ is on vacation this week so he asked me to write a guest post. I don't normally do guest posts because I barely have time to write on this blog. However, in exchange, he's promised that if I ever need to be bailed out of jail, he'll be there for me. No questions asked. He's also promised not to release that photo of me in cutoff denim shorts. How could I say no?

Go check out my guest post on BHJ's blog, The Wind in Your Vagina. Then, go read some of his earlier entries. If you're not entirely satisfied, he'll give you your money back.

Meanwhile, I'm curious to know what YOU think about virtual vs. real world relationships. Do you have close relationships with people whom you only know online? What have your experiences been like? What are your thoughts about the changing nature of relationships in the internet age?

An inquiring mind wants to know.

3 Years of Blogging & 318 Posts Later...

I was over at my buddy (and fellow NYC daddy blogger) Mr. Nice Guy's site today and was happy to see that he was celebrating his 500th post.  Naturally, I wondered how many posts I had written over here and was shocked to see that this one right here is #318.  I also discovered that, lo and behold, my 3rd blog anniversary just passed in July.

It's hard to believe that, for the past three years, I've been sitting down 1-2 nights a week with a glass of scotch and banging out late-night musings on my love of fatherhood, marriage, the NY Mets, being Korean, beef jerky, and the luxuriant black hair on my head that gives me my Spidey powers.

Of course, during those same three years, I've also spent a lot of time perfecting this sense of detached bemusement that seems to be hardwired into my personality. 

You know what else I've really noticed in perusing my writing of the past three years?  A lot of "fucks."  Honestly, I say the word "fuck" more often than Rudy Guiliani changes his politics.

But in all seriousness, aside from the fact that writing is a lot cheaper than therapy, this blog has turned into my own personal soapbox where I can discuss the truly important issues of our day.  Like when I was changing my daughter's diaper yesterday, I jotted down an observation that I wrote on this napkin. Here it is: SAY SOMETHING STUPID ABOUT BABY POOP!

You see, that's the real joy of writing this blog. Taking on the big guys. 

In all honesty, I truly have enjoyed writing this blog.  I don't know when I'll stop doing it.  So much of what I write here focuses on being a parent for the first time.  However, I think there will come a time when my source material will eventually dry up.  What happens when the Peanut leaves for college?  Will I follow her to school so I can still mine some good material?  I doubt it. By then, I'll be too busy working the night shift at Wal-Mart to help pay for her tuition. 

Besides, I never meant for this blog to last forever.  Originally, I just wanted a little corner of the internet where I could be a little self-introspective about my journey into fatherhood and find a community of like-minded parents.  Unlike others, I never started this blog to make money. I never started it to get a book deal.  And I certainly never started it to try and become popular.

See, for me, being popular means being liked, and there's a certain responsibility that goes along with being liked, because you are no longer in a position to let people down.  See, if people think you're an asshole, you can't disappoint them.  And that's how much I love people.  To prevent them from being disappointed in me, I act like an asshole.  Now, I know what you're thinking.  Are people disappointed if I'm not as big an asshole as they expect? 

All I can say is, so far, it has not been a problem.

I will admit, however, that this blog has unintentionally developed a certain amount of popularity that I'm rather conflicted about. I like to be the outsider, the rabble rouser, the iconoclast, but I also dig the fact that people seem to respond to what I'm writing about.  See the problem?  On the one hand, I don't care what other people think of me; but on the other hand, I want to be remembered as the guy who didn't care what other people thought of him.

You know, when this blog first started, I didn't care who was reading.  But when I started getting a little traffic, I'll admit that I would check my stat counter more often than I would my stock portfolio.  Thankfully, for both me and my retirement fund, I stopped doing that about a year or two ago.

But anyway...on this auspicious anniversary, as I think about where I want to go with this blog, I keep coming back to the sage advice offered by my crazy-ass friend BMC who, in discussing the rising popularity of personal blogging as a means to an end, proffered these words of wisdom, "git back to your roots, bitches!"

To that end, I think I'm going to take her advice.

While I'll still continue to spout the verbal diarrhea that seems to clog the plumbing of my brain on a near-daily basis, I think I also want to get back to writing for myself, my wife and my daughter.  This site originally started as a way for me to not only work out my issues of becoming a father for the first time but also to reach out to a bunch of really cool men and women who not only relished being parents but also didn't want to subsume their individuality to their new roles as parents.  I cherish the friendships I've made from this blog and, in the end, this means more to me than I ever could have imagined. 

So, going forward, whether you're a like-minded parent or a single person reading this as some sort of cautionary tale, I hope you'll stick around.  I'm not really sure where we're going from here but shit, then again...who does? 

Three years indeed.  Happy anniversary to me. 

Advertising on Personal Blogs

I've had numerous conversations and e-mail exchanges with bloggers asking me why I don't put ads on my site. 

It's not that I couldn't use the extra money. After all, cashmere boxers, gold-laced shower curtains, and beluga mayonnaise don't grow on trees, right?  And am I the only one who cares that the price of domestic help is starting to reach stratospheric levels?  Just this past week, my personal foodtaster Toto asked for more dough because his maid needed to get the tires on her BMW rotated.  So yeah, who couldn't use a little extra green in their pockets? 

All kidding aside, I generally find the idea of advertising on personal blogs to be the complete antithesis of what blogging should be about and that's generally why I've shunned them on this site. 

However, I've never really been able to fully articulate my feelings on exactly why I dislike the idea of ads on personal blogs.  Thankfully, I have Mimi Smartypants.  As she writes in a recent post:

I got into a minor debate recently about ads on blogs, because I was naively shocked to see one of my favorites with a big old honking McDonald's ad in the sidebar. I am sure when you sign up with Federated Media or any of the other blog-ad conglomerates, you don't get much of a say in what ads show up. Which is precisely the point.

When you attach your personal output (your song, your blog, your likeness) to a corporation, you align yourself with everything that corporation has ever done. In a small way, to be sure: no one is going to hold the aforementioned blog writer directly responsible for junk-food marketing to children or the destruction of the rainforests. But the fact remains that when you get advertising money from McDonald's, you become part of their business. If that is cool with you, then fine---it would be a cold day in hell, personally, but whatever.

It is not really my intent to pick on McDonald's, as my insides are not entirely Filet O' Fish free. My point is more that, through my lame, idealistic, aging-punk, Diaryland-colored glasses, I have a hard time seeing personal web pages as a business. There is something so cool about getting to read the thoughts of people I have never met, and then over there in the sidebar is this big honking ad for a multi-billion-dollar corporation, and that punctures the pleasure balloon somewhat.

Ads are fucking everywhere. It would be nice to see just a sliver of handcrafted, non-commercial, free-to-all, personal-expression space in the world, even if just on the internet.

I couldn't agree more, Mimi. 

Now I might not be most objective guy to lecture anyone on the dangers of advertising and pervasive consumerism, given the fact that my apartment is overfilled with a random array of useless shit and makes Charles Foster Kane's basement look like an empty breadbox.

But you know the omnipresence of advertising in our daily lives is getting out of hand when parents start auctioning off naming rights for their unborn babies and college girls start tattooing corporate logos on their breasts. 

As usual, I'm not passing judgment on any personal bloggers who feel the need to post ads on their site.  Advertising is a biological impulse found throughout the natural world. Peacocks attract the attention of a mate through a multicolored feather display. Baboons signal their sexual readiness with a pair of red, swollen buttocks. And shit, my wife and I just got a great deal on some attractively priced insurance from a fucking gecko!

So yeah, you probably won't be seeing any ads on this site anytime soon (of course, should the good people over at Aston Martin feel like sponsoring the site and donating the use of one of their fine automobiles, I'll be the first in line to tattoo their logo on my ass and name my second child DB9.)

But just out of curiosity, how do you feel when you see ads on personal blogs?  Do they turn you off?  Do you even care?  If you have ads on your blog, do you feel they're worth it?  Have you ever considered removing them?  In all honesty, I've stopped reading more than a few blogs because I couldn't deal with the advertising.  Have you ever done the same? 

An inquiring mind wants to know...