Dr Strangeblog

or how I learned to stop worrying and love the fact noone comments on blogs anymore

The World of Bollocks, in all its prior myriad forms, passed five years old a month or two back, and I'd like to say that it's never been more popular. I'd like to, but it would be something called 'An Fib'. Blogging seems, if not a dying art, then a coughing and spluttering one, based on a simple comparative count page comments versus previous years, which is the only way short of the towering vanity of page traffic analysis of assessing whether people read this stuff. This kinda bothered me for a while, but then I remembered why I don't give a shit.

There's three types of blogs in the world. The diarists, the op-ed-istas and the funnies. Diarists - the ones who catalogue the whos, whys and wherefores of the minutiae of their existence - have the potential to be the dullest. Flinty's blog is a stellar example of why that doesn't have to be the case. News and opinion is probably what most of the better known blogs are about and for, from tech journalism to political commentary to cretinous celebrity shite. World of Bollocks, though, was never going to be an online diary, nor was it ever likely to contain either facts or well-argued opinion, as pointed out in the first online blogpost in early 2006 - which, in effect, sets out the terms of reference for what was then called The Weak In Sport. The only major change since then has been in name and in focus, broadening the agenda from sporting stupidity to other issues frosted with awesome such as bacon, girls on trampolines, bogan-spotting in Yamba, and cretinous celebrity shite, all dealt with in the World of Bollocks' usual subtle style - think HG Nelson kicking down the doors at Failfax Brisvegas and taking over Blunt Instrument by sheer force of shouting. So WoB lives in that third category - along with a bunch of people who should be paid for the free comedic awesome they provide like Nat and Nat. Though Girlclumsy has been known to have Actual Journalistic Content rather than Complete Made-Up Rubbish as per SOP for WoB.

But, as both Nats and various others have mused in various forums recently, what's the frickin' point if no bastard is reading it?

This is starting to read like a farewell-and-thanks-for-reading. And it is, but probably not the way you're thinking of. I'm not giving up WoB. I was writing this when only a handful of people were reading the thing, and as soon as you start writing for page hits and comments, that is to appeal to the audience rather than to your own amusement, you're on Struggle Street. I do this for fun. That anyone is interested in reading it is a complimentary bonus. I ain't getting famous or rich from this - not even the odd free slab of Grolsch. Just not being fired for writing it would be the main positive I'd be looking towards.

There is a problem though. Over the years WoB has developed itself a sort of subconscious minimum standard, certainly in terms of length and structure. That bacon post is a good example. Effectively a mini-essay, 3-4 paras, each developing the exposition and introducing a different idea for the Taking of Piss Therefrom. It's actually fucking hard to write stuff like that consistently, which is why people like John Birmingham get paid to do it by large media corporations. That, along with the content-leaching effect of other forums like Twitter means that there's a large activation energy inhibiting the writing of columns/episodes/posts. It's almost entirely self-inflicted. Which is good, because it can be almost entirely self-uninflicted.

A week or two ago I bashed out a post about the hypocrisy of F1 teams complaining about Ferrari team orders dictating the result of the German F1GP (including a silly photo of amateur proctologist Seb Vettel) which was titled Can you tell we've stopped bothering to write stuff people might want to read and instead are just amusing ourselves. This, effectively, is the World of Bollocks' Revised Editorial Direction. Basically, there isn't one. Stuff gets thought, written, and posted. Sounds obvious, because it is. But kicking down that self-imposed barrier to posting because of dumb preconceptions about what people want to read, or how many jokes per unit volume are necessary, is actually more difficult than it looks - as a few of the regulars listed at right would probably admit.

The other thing that has to change might also seem a surprise to you, because it was to me. Twitter's got to go. For a myriad of reasons - it's a monumental time-suck which I can no longer afford, it's an exercise in vanity which is a poor indictment on one's character, and to be blunt, it's simply not as much fun any more as it was when I started - but more than anything, 140 characters is just too few to have any fun with. Currently, what funny ideas I have get blurted out into the Twuntosphere without any chance to get developed or extrapolated, unless they get a second-hand regurgitation after they've already been prechewed for a while in 140 character bites. I write for fun, and Twitter's not as much fun as blogging. Fair to say both the quality and quantity of the latter has dipped since the former came along, too. Not to mention the fact that the last part of In The Worst Possible Taste ain't gonna write itself. It'll get written, but it'll appear in its own time, when it's done, not when it's due. I realise there's an irony in reversing the established directionality of social media at the moment, which is to blow up your blog and your Arsebook in favour of Twuntering away to your heart's content, but fuck that, I'm not here to be a trendite. And if this all ends up back with only a handful of old drunken mates and Arsebook acquaintances reading this stuff, so be it. You get that on the big jobs, as my old mate Moff would say. Or was that Bear Sorensen from Hayabusa. Life is cyclical, we end up back where we started - dribbling, incoherent and soiling ourselves - so why shouldn't online life be the same.



So thanks Twitter - it's been swell, but the swelling's gone down. (That was an AJ-ism. Ripping off everyone else's content here.) Thanks to all the very awesome people I've met through Twitter that I hadn't encountered through blogs or whatever else, and I do hope you'll stick around and offer unsolicited sledging on here once in a while. While I'm not closing the door completely on the Twunterverse - haven't blown the account up or anything, keeping it for direct messages and for occasional observational usage around sporting events etc - but as a contributor I'm disinclined to linger longer. Currently the Twitcounter stands at 38,750, and there's a nice kind of symmetry to that, a certain poetry. Primarily because $38,750 was how much your mum paid for her sex change operation before she met your Dad.

The Doctor is OUT, because there's no better ending than leaving on a Mum joke.