Between writing new reviews, moving the old reviews over here, taking road trips, and keeping up with Netflix Quikster movies, I just haven’t been able to do the personal stuff. I guess you could argue that the Road Trip articles are partially personal stuff but that’s kind of a stretch. So I’ve decided that today is the day, and I’ll do it by way of writing some stuff regarding Facebook. It’s actually stuff I’ve thought about for quite a while now, but today is the day I finally have the time.
Just as a page on My Space once seemed to be an internet requirement, the same thing can now be said of Facebook. This especially holds true if you have a blog such as this one, a web site, if you’re a celebrity, if you’re promoting a new movie, book, music album, television show or anything else under the sun you can think of to plaster on your page.
I don’t know how long I’ve had a personal Facebook page but it’s been quite a while. Like most users, my page was simply a way to keep up with all my family members and friends who are spread out across the country. It also enabled me to meet up with those that I’d lost touch with over the years.
So when I began my blog rejuvenation, I decided to try once again to associate a Facebook page with it, and yes, that is a screenshot of it as if you really needed me to tell you that. You can also get there by using that little facebook button on the upper right on this blog that nobody pays attention to.
As you can see, I have 19 likes on there. Not even a spit in a ten gallon bucket. Most of those likes were gathered when I had a mini recruitment among family members and friends asking for support. Before that the page was mostly ignored. Of the 19 people who like there are probably fifteen or more whom still ignore it. But I appreciate the help anyway. I’ve had exactly zilch come from curious readers of this blog but that’s to be expected considering this rejuvenation is in its infancy. Then again, it may always be that way.
The real purpose of the Facebook page is to post links to stuff I write on this blog to let people know when there’s a new article, and secondly, to post articles and stories that interest me from around the web hoping they will interest someone else as well and they’ll offer up a comment or two for discussion. It’s the cut and paste stuff that I used to do here on a regular basis, so the page serves to satisfy that need. I generally got no response to those here, and for the most part, the same kind of result there.
But no politics. Most of the people I know or are related to hate politics, and some of the others just hate my particular brand of politics. And some of them hate that I’m more knowledgeable about these matters than they are, and it goes without saying which group they belong to.
I do have a Facebook page for the political stuff as well, not to mention a blog that goes with it. I seldom write on either anymore for reasons we won’t go into right now although I did post a link on the Facebook verision this week. When I get a chance, I’ll write something as to why I don’t write anything about the political scene anymore. But until that day, here’s a screen shot anyway.
The real reason I’m writing this article, is that I find most of the stuff people post on their Facebook page to be an uninteresting snoozefest, simply because it has become too much of the same old same old. It’s like reading someone else’s text messages, and just as boring unless you’re Scarlett Johansson sending out a self portrait. They are immensely interested in what they are finger typing, I’m not. If you’re thought process doesn’t go beyond twenty five words or less, than what’s the point?
You’ve heard of the old saying to never discuss politics or religion at a family get together? I’m of a mind that everybody should discuss politics, and religion too if you think you and God and your politics can handle a little criticism now and then. I’ll even discuss movies and the entertainment industry as long as you’ve got something worthwhile to say. Just say something, anything, I don’t care what. But don’t tell me your Aunt Jenny has hemorrhoids because I don’t give a shit. Get her a an inner tube to sit on and then send me an email or call me on my cell phone to relate the sorrowful news. Or do like I would do. Write an in depth article on the people who used to do the Preperation H Commercials and see how it’s working out for them.
I guess people are afraid to expose themselves in that manner, probably because internet trollery is and of itself a new art form and they don’t want to deal with it. And maybe they don’t want any hard feelings among family members. I know I’ve pissed off more than a few of them, but I’m way too old to really lose any sleep over it. And yeah, they’ve pissed me off on occasion but I don’t lose any sleep over that either. When I abandoned my old facebook page for the current one, about half of my “friends” and some relatives said screw you, we want no part of your sorry ass. At least I kind of imagine them saying it and it makes me laugh.
If you’re like one family member I have, and you turn out to be a racist, homophobic, senile old pig, I’m going to say so and then I’m going to cut you off and leave the rest of the family to cuddle up and coddle to your bigoted ass because somehow they had the misfortune to be related to you and feel they just have to put up with you because you’re blood thus overlooking your major shortcomings. I don’t.
But this blog is not much different. Most of my family, relatives, and friends, seldom visit. Correction, have never visited it. I do have one brother who was a regular reader before his computer blew up on him, and he’s read just about everything I’ve ever posted including this story that I have yet to make a decision about what to do with that no one else has read since I removed it from it’s original location. I would love to do a major rewrite on it, to disassociate it with the restrictions I had in order to get the thing put on the web in the first place. But where do I find the time? I’m pushing the envelope now as to what I’m capable of doing..
The same brother has a blog as well, but hasn’t post it on it recently because of the aforementioned computer problem. More importantly he is dealing with his wife’s reoccurrence of cancer, which emotionally and financially is a huge drain. So he probably won’t be making a return anytime soon.
But boy, how I miss his input on here. As for his blog banner, I designed it for him and it’s some of the best work I’ve done. And that is his wife with him on the right hand side. The thing is, even when he was keeping his blog up on a regular basis, it was mostly ignored by family members as well. It’s something we would talk about on occasion. We should be interested in their lives, while they ignore our interests.
I have another brother who has visited on occasion, but if anybody else has they have never let me know about it. I take that back. A cousin in Florida finally made it here when I pointed out something to her I’d written but I’m not sure if she’s been back.
There is also an ex-girlfriend from years ago that I met up with on Facebook who is now just a friend and she reads rather regularly and I appreciate that. What makes that odd is that my my current girlfriend that I write about never does unless I drag her to the computer screen kicking and screaming.
On the plus side, I can write what I want about The Girlfriend, confident in the knowledge that she’ll never read it. Write more than one paragraph, and she’s lost. Not that I would write anything bad mind you, but like most comediennes do, I have a tendency to exaggerate the eccentric, as I just did and I’m not sure she’ll get the joke.
Everybody else is googling for sex pictures of Jennifer Ringsley, then getting ticked off when as far as this blog goes, they are coming up empty. I’ve thought about shitcanning that article, but then I’d lose the great majority of my so called readership. And I guess some readership is better than no readership at all, whatever perverted reasons people may have.
But the same can pretty much be said of the Honorable Sons I’ve written about from time to time, including the one that lives with me. When I tell him I’ve posted something new on here and ask if he’s read it, he makes a face and says he’ll get to it. And he will for the most part, but I’m positive he wouldn’t do it otherwise.
He has a blog as well, that he’s given up on. He now has cash, and cash means Paystation 3 and X-Box and PSP and everything that goes along with it. When he first arrived here, I was going to have him offer his take on some of the movies I reviewed, and he seemed eager to do so. In fact, as you will see when I repost a few, he did. But now, it’s bothersome for him to even watch most of them.
But that makes him no different than the majority of people who think blogging is a good idea, then either get bored with it or find out it’s a lot more time consuming than they thought it would be. I myself gave it up, but not for any of those reasons. It was a decision that was forced on me, and one I resent to this day.
My heart is in my writing, much in the same way that my sons is in his PlayStation, my cousin’s is in fishing, and my great-niece’s is in her religion. So you either really want to write, or you don’t. If you go at this half-heartedly, you’ll fail. My other point is that if you’re writing a blog, don’t expect family to flock to it and tell you what a great writer you are. They won’t. And if you write more than one sentence at a time on Facebook, they’ll pretty much ignore that as well. On the other hand, your chances of gaining any readership are non existent unless you’re an exceptional writer and even that’s no guarantee. There are, millions and millions of blogs out there in internet land, and yours is just a microscopic particle in a vast universe.
When I restarted the blog up, I said it was better not to be read by the whole wide world than have people you know ignore it. And I meant every word of it. I made this statement after having tried some stuff out on my Facebook page in a feeble attempt to make it my blog. Some of the people I know may have commented on some of the things once or twice and that’s about it. But they have their lives and I have mine, and if the two somehow aren’t simpatico, then that’s just the way it is. This is nothing really new, and it’s something I found out years ago. I just thought on Facebook it would be different. It wasn’t.
My facebook page now is a means to an end. I’m really only interested in what is posted on Clyde’s Stuff Facebook page, even though so far I’m the only one who has posted anything although just about any person can do so. I made Honorable Son Number 3 an administrator, and even he has posted nothing. Not the first paragraph, or even a link.
Don’t get any ideas about trolling though. I still can boot off any article or any comment that doesn’t fit. But it is a good way to keep track of what’s going on here as well if you spend a lot of time there. As for your Aunt Jenny, I’ve only got one question: How’s those hemorrhoids treating you?
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