Greetings, Glancers! I’ve recently been checking out a few other blogs here on the lovely WordPress, and I’ve been amazed (and bemused) by the numbers of followers some of these blogs get. That’s not to say that they are ‘better’ than mine, or worse, or whatever, just that they seem to be much more popular. Honestly, I don’t get it. I imagine it’s because they have an easier to understand name than mine or are easier to find when searching on WordPress or Google. Or perhaps they got lucky and were featured on the WordPress home page.
What has been unfortunately consistent in many cases, is the lack of effort or skill in these blogs (note – I don’t mean any of the blogs I follow – you guys are great). I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t put a lot of effort into my writing here – in 90% of cases I just write whatever comes into my head in the moment, as I am doing now. This is a stark departure from my writing elsewhere and from how my brain works most of the time. This blog has always been a conversational brain dump for me; something pops into my head, and I shart it all over the screen. Done. Sometimes I don’t even wipe.
But I think it’s clear from my movie and music review posts, that I write a hell of a lot. Back to those other blogs and their lack of effort – many of the reviews are a single paragraph consisting of little more than here’s who’s in it, here’s who made it, here’s what it’s about, and I liked/disliked it, followed by a score. These blogs have thousands of followers, and these posts get a bunch of comments. I don’t get it. There are other blogs which clearly put much more love and attention into their posts, and seemingly get nothing.
I know it sounds like I’m whining, and maybe I am, but it’s one of life’s little injustices that the lowest common denominator gets all the attention. Wow, I really do sound like I’m whining. In truth, it is frustrating, but I remind myself that I created this blog for my own amusement and if anyone else wants to come along for the ride – even if it’s only in passing, or for a couple of stops along the way – that’s great! That’s why I lovingly, jokingly, start each post with ‘Greetings, Glancers’. I know most of the people who visit aren’t here for the long haul, and that’s fine. I do the same. Would I love it if more people followed, more people commented? Sure. But I also remind myself that I’m not really trying with this blog, so why would anyone care what I think, or want to return on a regular basis? Why too would anyone want to follow when there’s little consistency to my posting, in frequency or in content?
In any case, maybe there’s still a chance I can draw in new readers in this age of instant gratification, of visual and audio reviewing over the written word. Which brings us finally to the crux of this post. I’ve created two new categories on the blog – you should find them shortly on the right hand side of the homepage – one for music and one for movies. Here, I’m going to post new lowest common denominator material, essentially aping those other low-effort, high-reward blogs. I feel dirty doing it. The posts will be little more than the title of the movie or album, a brief synopsis, who’s in it, who’s the director (if it’s a movie), and two scores – my personal score out of five, and my Nightman Scoring System score out of 100. I will link to my more detailed reviews – at the moment, I only want to do this for things I have reviewed elsewhere on the blog, so if people want to know more about my thoughts, they can click through.
Will this work? Probably not. Will I keep it up? Possibly. Will I have moved on to whining about something else next week? Absolutely. But perhaps some of you music and movie lovers out there will find your way here because of this new approach. I hope so – anything’s better than dealing with reality, right?
One more thing; I’ve cleaned up my categories around the rest of the blog, hopefully making it easier to find what you’re looking for. The main categories are Cinema, Music, and Lists, which are hopefully self-explanatory. I’ve shut down some old categories that I have no intention of adding to, and moved the posts to Archive, while I’ve created the new category ‘Other’ to house other sub-cats which I may return to. Then there’s the more niche stuff like Manics Song-by-Songs, TV Reviews, Books Reviews etc.
The Spac Hole 