Blogsturbation
Posted by 0rion on October 8th, 2007 - 10:12 pm
Yes, even Epic Win is not immune to that greatest of cliches, that bane of bloggers everywhere – metablogging.
If you’re a regular, you’ve most likely noticed that our usual routine of posting every 1 – 2 days has slowed over the last week to, well…none. Guff got KO’d by a nasty flu, and I’ve been busy with work, so things here at EW have been pretty quiet. Honestly though, none of the new anime that have aired so far have gotten me really interested yet, so I haven’t exactly been burning with the desire to pen long-winded diatribes on the merits (or lack thereof) of a given show.
The above images are purely for illustrative purposes. Any resemblance to real bloggers, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Instead, I thought I’d take a moment share some thoughts about blogging in general. Despite my earlier disparaging remarks about metablogging, I do often find it interesting to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes at some of my favorite sites. Really, metablogging only becomes a problem when it starts taking the place of real blogging. Of course, by talking about metablogging, I’ve fallen to an even lower level… meta-meta-blogging. 
Anyway, so here we are, two months and 25k pageviews into this whole blogging thing. We’ve learned a few things, but still have a long way to go to achieve “serious business” blog status. Thus, rather than the usual routine of the grizzled veteran blogger sharing wisdom gained from many years in the trenches, I thought it might be interesting to offer my perspective as the fresh-faced new blogger, still enthusiastic and naïve.
Here’s a nice random picture that’s only very loosely related
to what I’m talking about. I’m supposed to put these in
periodically to break up the wall of text, or something.
So a few thoughts:
1. Comments
OK, so I knew there were lots of people who read but never posted, but Holy Pop Culture Reference, Batman…it’s like 1 comment for every 250 pageviews! I kind of feel bad that I didn’t comment more on the blogs I read until recently, now that I’m realizing how important that feedback and dialogue is to bloggers.
Now certainly many people just skim over the article, go “meh”, and then close the browser. On the other hand, however, for many regular readers who enjoy the blogs they follow, it just never occurs to them to leave a quick comment saying something like, “Hey, good post! I really liked (joke x).”
I think a lot of people feel like they have to have something substantive and intelligent to say before they can leave a comment. That was certainly my mindset before I started blogging; I just felt like I didn’t really have anything to add.
These days if I read a good article, I try to always leave a positive comment or mention a point I thought was interesting, just something so that the writer knows I appreciated what he/she had to say.
2. It’s hard to be funny every day.
I’m not really much of a writer, nor do I have much experience with this sort of thing, so perhaps to some of you this is kind of a “Well duh!” statement. When you’re writing at length on the same topic every single day it’s hard not to fall into the rut of saying the same things and going through the same motions until your blogging just becomes one huge pile of stale copypasta.
I definitely appreciated it before, but now I have a lot more respect for long-running bloggers who have been going for years without a break and still manage to write stuff that’s consistently informative and fun to read. Hopefully a year or two from now we’ll still be around, and will still be able to find unique and interesting stuff to talk about.
3. #animeblogger is a very scary place.
Even by IRC standards. O_o
4. People on the internet search for some weird shit.
A few search engine stats:
By now we’ve pretty well secured the top rankings for the term “epic win“, and it’s our number one search result by far. “Washinomiya” is our second biggest search term; apparently lots of people are interested in making a pilgrimage to the Lucky Star shrine to pay their respects. 
Also highly popular are searches for “Gotouza-sama”, as well as “Darker than Black final” and “Darker than Black 25″, which is interesting, since we only posted about that just last week. And for some reason we’ve become the first search result for “yaki dango” and “an dango”. After that it’s just a flood of hundreds of different variations on Lucky Star related queries.
Some other searches people have found us with that made me laugh, in no particular order: “congratulations you broke the internet”, “stabby”, “shiraishi minoru a man’s way of life”, “gar minoru”, and “kurogane anime blog malaysia” (lolwut?)
I’ve noticed a somewhat disturbing trend as well, which is that recently we’ve started getting a lot of hits from search terms like “dfc delicious flat chest”, “lucky star yuri doujinshi”, “konata x kagami doujinshi”, etc. Now, I understand that the great waterwheel that powers the internet is driven by an endless stream of smut…but seriously, what the hell do they expect to find by coming here? Screencaps??
And of course, by mentioning it, I’m only going to increase the traffic. Brilliant.
/me facepalm
Note: If you came to this site from one of the search terms listed above, since I would feel bad about advertising falsely, for what it’s worth, here’s a reward for you…show
Oh yeah, and to the 37 people who were searching for an “epic anime blog“…congratulations. You came to the right place.
As a blogger I’ve always found it to be criminal amounts of fun just to see what Google search results are, apparently, hitting one’s blog.
Inspired to check, so here’s your benchmarks, courtesy of me:
Subtlety: “anime girls doing it with each other”
Off-topicness: “credits for music from cold case 10-1-07″
And the contemplation: “is tsundere moe?”
I don’t know, random searcher. I don’t know.
Derailing aside, I really know what you mean with #1, with the whole “must have something useful to say” notion that I’ll admit to having; and then being on the other side of the spectrum…although I can’t even attest to 250 pageviews a lot of days. XD
And yeah, long live anime blogging… or something!
(Great title. I hope someone will Google that, too.)
In honor of the self-referential and tongue-in-cheek nature of this post, I am also now going to ruthlessly troll my own comment section in order to increase the apparent popularity of my site.
@CCYoshi
Great search results! At least yours are pretty creative.
And yes, hopefully this whole thing will come full-circle, and I’ll be able to search for “blogsturbation” and find this article.
Well it does take a while for a blog to develop a “cult following” (which, let’s face it, is the driving force for writing blogs anyway: what blogger doesn’t want to know they have thousands of fans up-to-date with the latest [anime] blog in-jokes?). In all honesty, your blog has quickly become one of my favourites, mainly because of relatively similar tastes in anime, so yay!
Good luck to you, and I’ll chime in with the occasional ego-inflating comment.
YES! Burn in guilty feelings for your crimes! Comments are the fuel for the spark of inspiration. I have never heard of the term “blogsturbation” but I like it.
Sadly, sometimes I go back and read my old entries, and I don’t even get all the jokes I made…
Anyway, I enjoyed the meta-blogging post (I love meta-blog asides), and grats on locking up top Google position on a great phrase.
You’ve been getting your blog out there in this short time, and so your popularity is well deserved. But breaks are good as well, especially when you can’t think of what to write. o_o.
Keep going.
I don’t see any fun search terms in recent days, but I do remember one saying something like “is nothing happening at work okay”. It made me laugh at least.
A sentient meta-blogging post? No way!
Welcome to the reality of blogging. As much as I’d like to say that I don’t need comments, well, we all do if just to get that much-needed boost for the next post. All my fun search terms are gone in the 1K+ odd mess of Google Analytics. I used to get top results for “Love Hina porn” once, though. Terrifying.
@LHS
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it! We can always use more ego inflating comments. ;P
@Kabitzin
OTL
@TheBigN
Thanks for the encouragement! My policy has always been, if you don’t feel like writing something…then don’t. I’d rather have one good post than ten crappy ones.
@Owen
That’s pretty scary, indeed! What did you do to deserve such a dubious honor?
Pretty scary yet amusing on the subject of search items. I remember me having similar search items that you mentioned, throwing in “Lucky Star yuri fanfics” (where I was somewhere at the top) and “DS Porn” (which… I don’t know where I was. o_O).
Blogsterbation? lol mymakotobashingpost.
@ xXMikotoNakadaiXx
Searching for “lucky star yuri fanfics” with the quotes shows you coming up at the #1 spot. But of course, you brought it on yourself by blogging about it.
25k pageviews in 2 months ? Amazing ! :]
Okay, first off, congrats are in order for getting so popular so quickly. I know I’m just repeating what the other guys have said above but it’s a huge boost when you realise that people, y’know, *read* your stuff and find it interesting. It’s tough to make yourself heard in such a crowded corner of the internet so yeah, well done guys.
Ah yes, comments. I stick a little too much to the “have to have something substantive and intelligent to say before they can leave a comment” philosophy when reading too, but from the poster’s point of view any comment, large or small, gushing praise or constructive criticism, can offer that crucial boost to keep going.
Running out of things to say is a worry I have too. Recently I’ve had, for reasons unknown, a creative spurt which I don’t want to waste, especially if some unforseen ‘real life’ situation were to crop up and induce a nasty bout of Hiatus Disease. Unfortunately I’ve not been as lucky with editorial inspiration as I have with reviewing material in recent weeks – I’m also concerned that I’m saturating my ‘recent posts’ list when traffic in the blogosphere is on a bit of a lull right now.
This leads me to another point: it’s been quiet generally, partly due to various bloggers’ other commitments and partly because so many of us are underwhelmed with the current fansub season (especially when the last one spoiled us rotten) – if you feel short on good stuff to watch, you’re not alone.
Well, this has been a lengthier comment than I intended…think of it as all those comments I should’ve written earlier, but didn’t or something. So, get well soon Guff and don’t work too hard Orion. You guys have become one of my favourite ports of call in the blogosphere so keep up the good work!
Lol, comments on the blog are nice to receive, nice to hear from the readers. Being funny or innovative is pretty hard to do, I sometimes spend around an hour or two picking out the right screen shots and trying to summarize a whole episode into one post without it resembling past posts, the bleach movie review took me three hours ^^. I got some weird search results for my site too lol, we all do if you’re write about anime. Well keep it up, it’s great that you had 20k hits in two months, took me a while to get that though I believe that was bloggers fault lol.
@ blauereiter
lol thanks! Um, glad you’re impressed.
@ Martin
Haha, Hiatus Disease…sounds like a pretty serious condition! Let’s hope it’s not contagious!
Anyway, yeah I noticed you’ve been posting like every day recently! Keep it up! Maybe given the length and depth of your posts once per day is nearing the saturation limit for some readers, but I’ve enjoyed it a great deal.
@ AS
I know what you mean about screenshots. I too get really picky about getting just the right ones.
@ All
Thanks for the kind words, and of course, for taking the time to comment lol! Glad to see you were paying attention!
FIE ON YOU! How dare you get more blog hits than me in half the time!
…Actually, I have no idea how many people have come in contact with my blog. You all did, however, which is how I found you.
First bit is in jest, of course. It’s great to see blogs get attention quickly, and yours does seem deserving.
I’ve only recently sorted out how I want to handle blogging, and it’s working out much better in my mind. Doing your own thing is definitely the way to go; I don’t really like doing episode summaries, but series reviews and random looks at hilarity, intentional or not, make writing alot easier, and every now and then when I get a big post writing bug I just sorta… write. I hate getting screencaps, though, which is why I try my hardest to say what I want to say with as few screencaps as possible, or perhaps find a youtube vid to show the scene.
Anyway, gratz on reaching a significant number of pageviews. I’ll be a regular reader/commenter for certain.
0rion: I think I was comparing KnJ to Love Hina in its ecchi structure, and then said something about it not being porn. Ahhh, context. Note to self: never mention porn in any post. Ever. Again.
@ DeathToZippermouth
Thanks for stopping by! I actually really enjoy the variety of your site. It’s always nice to mix things up a little bit.
@ Owen
Oh, so now you’re going to mention it in my posts instead, is that it?
Wow, reading through all the posts here was quite therapeutic. Sincerely, being able to work on the blog again has been very cathartic, and needless to say, I really appreciate the comments and just the fact that people bother to read our stuff.
I chuckled quite thoroughly at the search results…poor Google, the pain it must endure through the fanaticism of random searches.
It’s good to be feeling somewhat coherent again.
Oh Orion, you silly comment whore~ jk. Blogging should be for fun and nothing else. Don’t let the silly competition get to you, it’ll just burn you out. Some of my favorite blogs are ones that don’t even post often. I just love it when they actually have something to say. Anyways:
1. I’m also guilty of this. I really didn’t start posting on other blogs until I started blogging myself, and I’ve now tried to comment on most of the stuff I read. Actually, in the same way, I’m kind of intimidated by posts with a lot of comments on them. I almost never post on RandomC even though I read it everyday. 100+ comments makes me scared, lol. Just remember that most people will not comment even if they read your post, and you should just enjoy writing.
2. It comes with practice! Why don’t you look at my first couple of posts (as HORRIBLE as they are)….my writing has no doubt gotten better since I’ve started blogging regularly, and that comes to no surprise. I admit that I like a funny blog much better than a omfgwtf serious business one though.
3. Oh~ isn’t it just lovely?
4. hentai hentai hentai hentai hentai……actually someone searched for their lost shoe on my blog once. It was pretty freaking awesome.
LOL WUT. People actually found your blog from my search term? Well, now that’s just lol.
I’ll give you a tip about my longevity in blogging though, since I like you guys so much, don’t take your blogging as serious business. It’ll burn you out real fast. Then and again, I have not much of a real life, so blogging to me is already something intuitive, haha.
Funnily though, I never did care much about the comments each of posts get. I post with a mindset of expressing something I want to express, but I’m not hoping to get comments much. Of course it makes me happy when I get lots of them, but I don’t feel discouraged when I don’t get any at all.
Anyways, keep up the good work, but don’t go over board. I’ve seen much rises and falls of anime blogs in the years I’ve been around the aniblogosphere, and I hope I won’t count you guys in that category as well
.
Also, I forget to mention, #animeblogger isn’t the scariest place at all. Try #nipponsei, #/a/ or god forbid it, #lurk.
Once you’ve been through those, #animeblogger is just pretty much mild…
@ Kurogane
LOL, I can’t even imagine. >_>
And thanks for the great advice! It seems like probably the fastest way to burn out as a blogger is to make it into a competition and get caught up in the numbers.
I’ve been a blog reader long enough to have seen quite a few rises and falls myself, and while sometimes it’s just a matter of moving on in life, I definitely agree that a lot of people burn themselves out unnecessarily because they forget that it’s supposed to be fun. n_nv
0rion, for good measure I’m going to add (LOTS OF FILTHY LANGUAGE YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF).
Just kidding. Google doesn’t check comments AFAIK. Or DO THEY!? If they do, then feel free to delete this comment.
I generally don’t leave a comment unless I have something that might be of interest to the author. There’s this whole toss-up for newbies like me – are you genuinely commenting or are you just spamming?
Burn out…isn’t the average life of a website something like 3 years? Doesn’t surprise me that people give up or their blogging interests change.
@ Owen
Of course Google checks comments.
The web crawlers just index everything on the page, they don’t make any distinction between posts and comments. The only reason a comment would not be indexed is if it was added after the last time the page was crawled.
@ Griever
Well, depends on whose statistics you believe, but the majority of blogs that are created die within a month, many with only one or two posts. Of those that actually go beyond that, all but a very few close down before they reach the 6 month mark.
These days if a blog reaches 3 years, especially if it’s a site that doesn’t bring in any income, it’s practically ancient.
As for “genuinely commenting”…even if your comment isn’t particularly informative, as long as what you post are your actual thoughts about what you read, I think it’s plenty genuine, and that’s exactly what most bloggers want to find out – how people reacted to their post.