...with Kindness.
Don’t you feel a little bit cheated? A little bit disappointed? A little bit betrayed? Well you should. I just got you to click on this link by posting a provocative title. Now it’s time for a little introspection. How often does this happen to you? You are bored, mindlessly surfing social media when you read a title similar to my own. Your brain is only half-engaged and you actually think for a second: could this be real? Is someone actually advocating that I commit murder? And not just murder, but that I murder my friends and family and my dog?
You can admit it here. This is a safe place. You’ve actually followed this train of thought at least once. You clicked only to find that... surprise surprise... some hack that calls himself a blogger is actually proposing that you do something completely different than what he or she suggested. This is called Click-bait. A title like this lures you into a blog. This little method suggests that the content isn’t original enough to produce pageviews on its own, so the title must make up for the lack of substance in the forthcoming post. It is usually closely followed by Click-hubris, the feeling a reader gets that it is too late to turn back, so they must finish reading a post that they hate.
If you are a blogger, I beg you, if you find yourself trying on a title that advocates the exact opposite of what you believe, just delete the post. Or revise it until the content provides its own title. The following is a list of such blog titles:
• Why your Mother is going to hell
• Why you should ignore Jesus
• 25 ways to get away with rape
• You need to euthanize your pets
• Divorce is always good thing
• Your kids deserve to be abandoned
• Why Hitler should be your role model
• Top 5 reasons to make fun of the handicapped
You get the picture. No doubt all of these would be followed by some “clever” reversal that actually uses words with black-and-white definitions out of context or attaches some arbitrary temporary meaning. You cannot “murder” your friends with kindness any more than you can kill someone until they are alive. Or rape someone until they are happy. That isn’t what those words mean. Using these words with your own meaning attached, no matter how benign it may seem is simply deceitful. Only frauds do it. It is a dishonest and lazy way to attract visitors. Yet the problem isn’t in the hyperbole. Heck, I once called Bath & Body Works a rhino-nuclear explosion. The problem is that titles like these are bad hyperbole. Unnecessary and tasteless.
Another cardinal sin of blogging is to write a generic post about a virtue that is universally known to be good and call it good. If both Click-bait titles and blogs about generic virtues were on a truth spectrum, they wouldn’t be on opposite ends. Both fall onto the dishonest side. Why? Isn’t a post about why thankfulness is good truthful? It is, but the effect both posts produce on readers is the same. The feeling produced is that of being cheated. If you click on a post about thankfulness, the reader’s assumption is that this person is a professional blogger and since a friend that I trust posted the link, there must be something worth reading here. When you do begin reading, you will probably find a disappointing pile of trite platitudes paraphrasing what a thousand other pseudo-intellectuals have already said a thousand different ways. It is about as educational as reading about why some husband is going to be killing his wife with kindness. It isn’t worth a reader’s time to read about why a spade is a spade. Self-evident truths are just that. We don’t need someone to point them out.
Bloggers like this don’t even bother to come up with an original way of saying the same thing. They are insulting your intellect by assuming that they can vomit up clichés and call them new. If the topic isn’t original, then at least the delivery must be. I get that there are a limited number of subjects. The problem doesn’t arise in the repetition. I mean, just look at the Heroic Monomyth. The problem arises in the delivery. You can’t write a blog post about how some virtue is good, or some vice is bad and expect applause. Don’t insult readers by insinuating that they don’t know that beating up random strangers is bad. You aren’t Ghandi, the Buddha, or the Pope. Simply owning a blog doesn’t mean we should listen. A delivery system does not imply authority. If so, mail men would be experts on ethical behavior. Actually they might be. I don’t know. And that is the point. I’m just some guy.
Bloggers shouldn’t be able to get away with this crap, and yet they do. So I’d like to start holding Bloggers accountable. Even me. If you feel cheated, tell me in the comments. Overcome your Click-hubris and tell even professional bloggers that they tricked you into believing they had something original to say, or say in an interesting way.
I made sure to not include the names to any one specific blogger in this post just in case any of you are avid fans. But I’m looking at you Greg Trimble. Naming any specific blogger might alienate my already small following. So I won’t do it. And I’m looking at you Matt Walsh. I would hate to cause any waves. So I’ll just stop while I’m ahead. Jarrid Wilson.
[Keep Following. My next post is all about the virtues of beating your wife!]
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