December 05, 2003

Blog disease

This blog suffers from a disease. Don't fear, it's not contagious. I choose to call it Nice Blog Disease (NBD). It's similar to Don's and Jim's diagnosis of Nice Guy Disease (NGD). Like NGD it punishes the nice and rewards the wicked. And it is just not fair.

There are all sorts of blogs out there. They fall into 3 main categories. Firstly there's the political ones. These rant and rage against all that is wrong with the world, which tends to be anything they don't agree with. Secondly there's the humour ones. These find some niche and spin comedy from it. Sometimes these are combined e.g. Allah. Then there's the rest which are best described as slice of life blogs. These are diaries, reflections, observations. Of course many blogs are combinations of various elements of these. However keeping it purely in one of these three categories is the first step to blogging success. The next step is to take your category to an extreme. So in politics, take a view and push it hard while slating everyone who cannot see your point of view. In comedy, stick to your theme and redo it over and over again. In the slice of life ones the more open about yourself the better. If you expose demons or expose your life to the world you'll get the hits. Just as people like to stare at car crashes, the same with lives.

I am not saying I don't enjoy any of these kinds of blogs. My blogroll contains examples of each and I enjoy them all a lot. Otherwise they wouldn't be on the roll.

What I do have a problem with is simple. Those blogs, such as this, that are a mix of these categories tend to not get the publicity. The hits. The links. The notice. Especially if you're on a periphery, such as Asia. The Blog-iverse is based primarily around the USA, so that puts Asia right on its outer extremes. There are exceptions of course, such as Gweilo or Jim. There are no slice of life blogs that come close to approaching the dominance of political ones such as Instapundit, with the possible exception of Lileks.

But I maintain blogging is like life. Often, nice blogs come last. Any ideas for curing NBD? Perhaps post a whinge about NBD?

[end of whinge]

Posted by Simon at December 5, 2003 11:16 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Which is why I am trying to do what I am doing with the Asia blog awards (which now includes a category for best essayist and best diairist).

I built it in a way which meant that it was not only the top ten that got a mention.

If 200 Asian blogs (and there are more than that) put the logo on their bar and posted a noted saying go vote for your favourites here we could get a buzz going and extend the readership of some of these sites.

I have a feeling I am going to fail because I think most people prefer to complain rather than lift a finger to do anything or support anyone who does (in general).

Posted by: Phil at December 5, 2003 12:04 PM

A very accurate and beautiful analysis Simon. Congrats!

Phil, I am sure you are going to succeed. And BTW, thanks for doing this for all of us.

Cheers!

Posted by: Ron at December 5, 2003 04:16 PM

There's a fourth (fairly) major category: writing/reading blogs. Neil Gaiman's (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp/) would be a pretty successful example. Mine (http://metastasis.popagandhi.com/) would be a pretty pathetic one. Though I suppose you could treat them as "slice of life" blogs which lives just happen to involve a lot of writing/reading.

Anyway, NBD or not, yours seems to be doing decently. I just discovered it (through Phil's contest, so it looks like its achieving its aims!), but I'll certainly be reading it in future.

Posted by: Nicholas Liu at December 6, 2003 08:34 PM

Simon,

Yes, you're probably right, but does it matter? Aren't we doing this because we enjoy it rather than to win awards or be able to prove that our blogs are popular?

Posted by: Chris at December 7, 2003 10:02 PM

The perverse thing is that if I just did a directory if Asian sites it would not be as effective (although that is mny next project). By wrapping it up in some form of competition it generates a lot more interest.

Posted by: Phil at December 8, 2003 12:23 PM
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