Are You a Jedi or a Sith Blogger?

I’m not sure that John Chow is the only successful Sith. Or at least there are other successful bloggers who are part Sith. (And as a mostly Jedi, partly Sith, not-yet-successful blogger, I’m not judging.)

Remember Skellie’s post about why great writing doesn’t matter online? Though it generated a lot of misunderstanding and controversy, it’s hard to deny that her point was at least partly true, no matter how you interpreted it.

As an example, she pointed to the most recent post (as of 3/9/2008) at Dumb Little Man and said:

“It’s just not good writing in the traditional sense, and the style is consistent throughout almost all the blog’s post, yet its readers — all 59,000 of them — just don’t care.”

I don’t read DLM so I’m not sure what it’s like, but aren’t there a number of blogs with consistently “not good” writing whose thousands of subscribers just don’t care? To a Sith, it would make perfect sense not to put care into your writing if you don’t have to.

By the way, how can anyone not love Episode III?

“Master Skywalker, there are too many of them! What should we do?”

“Eat lightsaber, dork!”

(IV and V were the best, you’re right)

Good answer to Hutter’s query. I use the same analogy in my profession of nursing, so it’s cool to see it applied to blogging.

I agree with you that reasonable self-promotion isn’t evil; in fact, if you have a great message then you sort of owe to your audience to boost your presence. If, however, it’s used to promote strictly inorganic and valueless content, then that’s a track down the dark side.

But Hutter gives us a very useful and simple metaphor. We all aught to aim to be Jedi, ‘cuz the Siths abound out there.

Definitely the Jedi way is the most enduring. I’ve done both over the years and still my Jedi material has continued to outlast my Sith material in longevity.

I *adored* Star Wars VI and really felt Lucas tied all the ends up very satisfactorily with Star Wars III.

I wrote http://www.barbaraling.com/starwars/jedi.html back in 1999 when I first started playing with Jedi and Sith ways….

Enjoy,

Barbara

I try to be Jedi, but part of me wants to become a bit more Sith.

I appreciate Blog Love and the comments I get. I try to return the favor, and visit other people’s posts and leave comments of my own.

But now small little blog group is growing. I worry that soon I might not be able to sustain this pace.

There are only so many hours a day, and I also need time to do my own original writing. I need to find the right balance.

What I need is a Yoda to show me the true way.

Mmm…strong in me, the force is!

I am sooooo coming over there. Slightly adjusts saber thingy and
calls James Earl Jones for voice lessons….if am going to the dark side I want wardrobe over here. I can’t paint a thing through this damn mask… “Chow, stop laughing….I can too make money online”…(zaps him with out of control bright shiny laser) Now that felt good. “Who’s next?”

Darth Janice!!!! Hm, damn blogging pack.

I hear Yoda’s at the Gateway….Do. There is no try. DEAN!! Get over here.

Jedi = servant and teacher

Sith = exploiter and manipulator

@Sonia, good point. I certainly agree that killer, useful, relevant content doesn’t require writing at the level of a CopyBlogger or a Man with a Pen. If you can do that, great, but unless you need to establish yourself as a great writer (for example, if you’re a freelance writer), I don’t think it’s necessary.

This is part of a comment I left on Skellie’s follow-up to that post:

“I blur the distinction between writing and ideas. To me, a person who writes beautiful sentences about dull ideas is a bad writer. If I can’t stand to read it, it’s bad writing (unless I just don’t like the topic).”

Maybe the DLM example applies only to the writing and not the ideas…I didn’t read that post, so I don’t know how good the ideas were. But aren’t there blogs out there whose popularity seems to be way out of proportion to their rating on the killer content scale? Of course, I’d never name names…

@Hunter, if I let myself think too much about why Blogs I Don’t Get do so well, I’d be even more mental than I already am. One possibility is they’re striking a nerve that doesn’t speak to me.

Another possibility is that they have sold their souls and will roast in eternal torment in exchange for their 6-figure subscriber numbers. Of course, I am much too evolved to hope this is true.

@Hunter – ah, but in both cases, Anakin and Palpatine were not following their true natures either as student or teacher.

I would do a lot better in this discussion if the analogy were to “The Lord of the Rings” instead of “Star Wars”, but I remember enough of the three Star Wars films I watched to follow along with the comments to a certain extent. I think that value to your readers is what matters most, and what over the long run will be most rewarding. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with trying to attract more readership to your blogs through white hat tactics (and I think that Jedis would agree with me here). We should all try to stay away from black hat tactics (you can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time).

@ James – I think every new blogger goes through that phase with John Chow when you first start blogging and signing up to other blogger’s feeds.

The same is true with Problogger, to some extent, and Darren Rowse has even said as much himself – that most of his new readers stick with him religiously for 3-6 months, learn as much as they can, then move on, only to be replaced by the endless wave after wave of other blog newcomers.

I personally think the only people who ‘get’ Chow – and this can be said for many of the MMO blogs, to be honest, as well as some of the other A-listers – is those that aspire to be like him. From what I’ve seen of Chow he seems an okay guy in ‘real life’ but as others have said above the content really isn’t there, certainly not when held up against his success.

But fair play to him. It’s easy to get too wrapped up in the ‘why?’ with a lot of the successful blogs; ‘why not?’ might be a better question, certainly given that many of them have been around for years, which gave them the opportunity to build a big user base when this was all brand new.

More importantly, they stuck with it, while many others did not (he says, bitter and annoyed at his own failure to keep his 2002 blog going. )

Good approach to a subject we all think long and hard about, Hunter. I think, as you yourself suggested, for most of us the true path lies somewhere down the middle. As it normally does.

I loved reading these comments. Those who get it can read btw the lines and know what names people aren’t naming.

It’s like the popular kid in high school:

everyone follows the illusion of their greatness because they’re aren’t smart enough to know better.