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Meme Me

Good Bloggers Gone Bad…

It makes me so sad to go through my link list and come across blogs that used to have such good writing and content – and now they are nothing but memes, 7 days a week. Sure, some memes are interesting and help me learn something about you, but now that it’s gone from the Friday Five and the Monday Mission to a meme or two for every day of the week, reading these blogs just makes me want to rip my eyes out.

It hurts to take people off of my link list, but I’m tired of reading about what shade of blue you are and if you were an anime character, who you would be. And I don’t need 2-3 lists per day of answers to questions. I want to read about YOU.

Jennifer asked last week about “What sort of blogs do you like?” That sums it up for me. I don’t like the meme blogs. I like blogs that offer me great links. Blogs with wonderful writing. A meme every once in awhile? Great! I’m all for them. But if that’s all I see when I visit your blog I will just keep on moving. So, how about you? What do you look for in a blog?

By Christine

Christine is an Avenger of Sexiness. Her Superpower is helping Hot Mamas grow their Confidence by rediscovering their Beauty. She lives in the Heights in Houston, Texas, works as a boudoir photographer, and writes about running a Business of Awesome. In her spare time, she loves to knit, especially when she travels. She & her husband Mike have a food blog at Spoon & Knife.

33 replies on “Good Bloggers Gone Bad…”

I agree. I might have commented on that over at her blog too. I’ll do the occasional quiz, and the Monday Mission, but all these quizzes. I mean, what’s the point if that’s all you do? I like reading about what you have to say.

sometimes those quizzes are cute… honestly, i have never done one. i don’t know how much time needs to be invested and because of that, i don’t do them. i have far better things to do… like talk about my dog. 🙂 kidding aside, an occasional meme is cool – i do the Friday Five and Tuesday’s This-or-that. but i like content… links are okay… but they’re not necessary because i hardly link on my blog. but i like to read blogs of people that constantly update… and it doesn’t have to be meaningful, thought-provoking… just a little insight into your life. and an added bonus is if i’ve met you in person… or you’ve commented on my blog.

well, dang. you just started to read my blog and of course, i post two silly quizzes…my bad.

i try not to do many, but sometimes, i just HAVE to…like the muppets one…and the doc martens one. they are silly, but fun, every once in a while….

normally, i’m rambling on topics that will bore you to death, like my day to day life…my rather boring, albeit; sometimes silly life…so bear with me, k?

😉

For me, I do a meme if I’ve been really boring and not posted for a few days, or if the questions really interest me, but as a rule I like blogs to have interesting funny links, stories or an insight into a truly interesting person. Wit and hassling George Bush also score points with me 🙂

Oh hey – we all do them sometimes. I just came across a few blogs tonight that *every* post was a meme. Quiz, list of questions. “What shade of blue are you?” Another list of questions. I started to scream.

I post links on my blog so I can find them later. I won’t deny it – heck, that was why I started my blog! But I love good content. That’s what made me so sad – those blogs used to have such wonderful writing that I loved to read it. Tonight I took them off my link list – I couldn’t take it any more. I wouldn’t do that if there was a quiz or two, but when it’s this constant? I have better blogs to read – like all of yours!

Hehe, so do I do them too often? I try to only do either Monday Mission and Friday Five, but sometimes This or That strikes me as interesting … I don’t know of any others, but then I don’t specifically seek them out either. I definitely prefer places that offer a variety of different options 🙂

Honesty is the best policy…unless your in a car crash…then I think an auto policy works best…but I could be wrong…

(Sorry, tried to think of something better than “me too”…I’ll try harder next time.)

Sex, personal experiences and politics interest me. If you can combine them all in one post, so much the better. Oh, and colorful cookies. I love colorful cookies. Especially pink ones.:)

What do I look for in a blog? Great writing, great photography and great skins. But hey, two outta three ain’t bad Christine! 😉 (I’m a smart-ass, I know…)

PS-My new Movable Type powered blog is almost done. I just have a few technical issue to solve then I’ll give you a heads up when it launches. I love your blog and would like to get your input on mine.
Cheers,
Chris.

Hmm. More lessons for my baby blog, I suppose. Okay … I admit, I succumbed. Once. I did BlogTree. But I swear … that’s IT. I have no desire to reveal to the world that I’m Samantha (The Sex & the City Test), Disco Kylie (The Kylie Minogue Test) Blossom (The Powderpuff Girls Test), Yoda (The Star Wars Character Test), Double Stuff Sex (The Sexual Positions Test), The Black Plague (The Horrible Affliction Test), Jan Brady (The Brady Bunch Test), Brian Kinney (The Queer as Folk Test), or Mr. Burns (The Simpson Character Test). So there!
…
Uhhh, Ooops.

Ii’m going through the same thing right now. My blogroll has gotten out of hand, and I hate deleting sites, especially if I’m one of the few that have linked to it. But come on, I like originality best, and meme’s aren’t always it.

So yeah, I’m going to say no more than 4 a week, and they should be good, like Monday Mission (shameless plug) or a cool quiz. Otherwise, you’re outta there. I don’t link to quizzes, I link to writing.

oh christine, i’m way worse off than you. if i see one meme i’m pretty much turned off. isn’t that awful? unless of course, you make up your own meme. that can be fun. but is it a meme if you make it up yourself? oh well. i’m hopeless.

i go through stages of making my link list really small and making it really long. i have thought about doing categories but it seems weird — won’t someone get offended if they aren’t in a certain category or something? i considered blogrolling but decided i was just enough of a luddite to nix that idea.

what i want in a blog changes on a weekly basis, so now i just keep my link list REALLY long. there is a bit of everything there.

oh i’m sorry, was i rambling?

I was just thinking that exact same thing today when I kept hitting the pulp fiction meme game on everyone’s blog tonight. The idea behind these dailies was good, to get people writing about themselves, but I think it can take away from the blog content when all the entries are the same. I like good writing and content, insightful posts and overall originality.

I’ll forgive an occasional meme, but I don’t read them – I scan over them. They’re not “real”. I like real. I also like funny. Not like – “why did the chicken cross the road” funny – just funny in the way things are put. The perspective. Outlook on life.

I don’t like too many details (“I brushed my teeth, then my hair… then I got dressed…” etc.) Maybe if I was a better reader I could take that, but I want to get right to the punch. I usually have so little time to read blogs (and I read so slowly to begin with), I want to get straight to the important stuff. The ‘what’s new’.

Also, (sheesh.. listen to me rant on! this is why I don’t leave comments – I should just save this babble for my own blog! ROFL!) posting daily or near daily is kind of important. If I keep coming back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in a week (and the writer didn’t specifically say they were going on vacation, and would be back on X date…) then I’ll stop coming by.

Content is king. Long live content!! Rah rah! 😉

I do like the writing memes, myself – but I take the time to actually write in response to them, and I don’t do them if I have nothing to say on the topic. One line answers to the Friday Five or the Monday Mission or whatever seem sort of like “punching the clock” blog-wise.

As for the quiz memes, I only do them if I like the graphics that you end up with – as you know, I’m a pushover for cool graphics. I do those for me so I can look at something pretty. But I agree with Jennifer – content is king!

I, too, have walked away from looking at blogs that do nothing but quizzes and daily memes. It’s a waste of time. I still do the Friday Five myself because the questions are usually a good launching place for more than just a binary answer, but that’s it. The quizzes are completely lame.

It’s my observation that on a lot of levels blogging is like the 7th grade all over again and everyone’s inner 12-year-old rises to the surface. A lot of being 12 meant doing everything your friends did, whether it was worth doing or not.

I have to agree with you. I page full of meme me all the time is dull (yeah I’m sure I’m dull also). I can’t even count the times I’ve been to sites and found the exit out rather than read through a meme. I’d rather read about the person than what a test says the person is.

I hate the meme sites myself as well. I mean, yeah, I’m not all that exciting everyday, but at least I take the time to actually write something instead of merely reacting to something. Its getting to the point where several sites I really like are going drastically downhill and it makes me really sad to think that I’m going to have to cut them loose…

You know what bugs me? (Besides the fact that I never post, I mean.) I finally decided to commit to blogrolling.com for my links, and I’m very happy with it—except for all the people who don’t bother sending out pings when they update their site. They linger at the bottom of my list of links. I’m so used to knowing exactly when a site is updated (my blogrolling list does a meta refresh), that I’m forgetting all about those other sites. Are they the ones getting left behind, or is it my fault for getting lazy?

[chiming in]

i read a variety of blogs. blogs like yours with lots of links, tech stuff, and commentary, as well as blogs about daily life, what she had for breakfast, politics, women’s issues…whatever. i agree about the memes. sometimes though, i think they’re really fun. it depends on the context.

I look for a good balance between thoughtful content and trivial pursuits because that’s how I write my own blog. I’ll do a meme or a quiz if I really like the questions/results, and I try to be respectful of readers who might prefer other content; once I posted non-stop quizzes to my LiveJournal so that another user might dump me (I was uncomfortable with his content) but I made sure that friends knew why I was doing what I did.

My own content varies from day-to-day accounts with more… meaty material. Why? Because it takes time to write good content, and I need to balance out my blogging time with work/family! A recent database snafu destroyed most of my content so I have to dig through 2000 entries to pull out the stuff I liked and that others responded well to. This, I hope balances out what I provide readers, even though my primary purpose in writing a blog is not to address the reader!

But I digress… I look for that balance of content because to me, mixing up profound with trivial means that I’m seeing more of the real person behind the blog than if it was all just “deep thoughts” (and definitely more than quiz/memes). It makes me feel a part of someone’s life, as I’d hope someone might want to be a part of my boring life. I also look for a pleasing design… it doesn’t have to be fancy or dazzling, but certain colors, fonts, and layouts attract my eye more. Having said that, however, if the content is so good, I’ll probably overlook how the page looks!

RE: the weblogs ping

I’ve actually gotten lots of timeouts from it lately when I add new posts. But I just figure I update enough that when the next automatic ping works and people hop over to see what I’ve written there will be three new posts to read instead of one.

RE: Meme overload

If the questions in the meme really affect you and get you writing a very personal, interesting post, definitely do them. If you write answers that are shorter than the questions, walk away from the meme. Or at least try standing out in the crowd by doing an archived Friday Five instead of this weeks.

I usually don’t fill out things like that.. actually on my current blog I have the Daily Double, and that’s the first time I’ve ever filled out one of those things (ie; Friday Five, Daily Double) on my blog EVER. I just felt like trying to out once. lol But I do agree, blogs should be more meaningful.. nobody wants to see the same thing over and over again.

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