Ranty Friday: “RT this:”

January 25, 2013 By 39 Comments

Today dear reader, something that fills me with even more anger than the people who like to finger and squeeze fruit in the supermarket before putting it back, I am going to try my utmost to rant with a modicum of decorum about one thing that really get’s my goat – people who have never spoken to you before that tweet you demanding a re-tweet.

Everytime someone demmands a RT a bird dies

One wouldn’t stroll into the library, meander over to a total stranger, hand them a book and shout ‘TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THIS BOOK’ and then just walk off again. I mean you may do, but chances are that you’d either be on or in need of, medication.

 

 

One wouldn’t potter up the fruit and veg aisle of Sainsburys and shout in someone’s face ‘TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THIS CARROT’ and then stroll on shopping for pak choi.

 

 

Even worse still, shout in someone’s face ‘TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THIS CARROT’ whilst waving a really withered, skanky carrot at you.   [Read more...]

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Social Media and Blogging – you don’t have to be everywhere

January 21, 2013 By 49 Comments

blogging and social mediaIf you are a blogger the chances are that you also use social media to promote your blog posts – but do you share smartly or do you exist in a state of fluster that you really should be getting round to getting on Google + and Stumbleupon but just haven’t enough hours in the day?

 

Picture the scene, I’m sure it may be a familiar scenario – you read in a forum that Whoopee Do’s blogpost on ‘How to bake the perfect Roast Potato’  has received 40,000 page views in the past few days through StumbleUpon.

Cue the following:

  • “Wow! Well done you! That’s great”
  • *Bugger me I need to get my arse into gear and get on StumbleUpon*
  • *Why can’t I get traffic like that – no one ever reads my blog*
  • Mild to moderate self pity coupled with mental note to join StumbleUpon

STOP! HOLD THE FREAKING PHONE! SOUND THE KLAXON OF ‘WAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!’

Ask yourself this:
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On trying to be nice, doing too much and hitting the wall

December 7, 2012 By 44 Comments

Yesterday I chopped wood. Much wood. Therapeutic to have a day ‘off-line’ and reassess what matters to me. Earlier this week I had a blogging-breakdown, think of it as a blogging mid-life crisis. If you are a blogger you may have noticed that our community is lovely, but as with any gathering of very different people, different people have different characters, it’s what makes life interesting. Twitter is essentially the hub of the community, it’s where the cool cats hang out, shooting the breeze and also where peoples characters tend to shine through. For example you have the friendly people, those  folk who tweet out motivational messages, those who are in the midst of a full blown rage attack and should really have stepped away, people who do tweet regularly but 99% of those tweets are links to their own blog posts and the occasionally snarky folk.

So earlier this week after a week of occasional ’tweets-that-needn’t-be-tweets-for-those-who-are-experienced-enough-to-know-better-bordering-on-snarky’ I finally snapped and told someone who had tweeted me something that fell into the category of  ’an email or text would have done’ to fuck off. What then followed was a whole self-assessment of who I am and who I’d like to be. I don’t want to be the type of person who tweets mildy-snarky-cliquey tweets that puts other people on edge and I certainly don’t want to be an angry person. So I am now actively trying to get back to being more myself and less the tired, impatient, possibly paranoid shell I have become recently. And so, I have formulated a 5 point plan: [Read more...]

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Stuart Hertitage, Gregg Wallace and why my love should be silent.

September 17, 2012 By 17 Comments

Stuart Hertitage, Gregg Wallace and why my love should be silentThis week I went to Blogcamp London. I learnt stuff, crapped on to anyone who would listen, made sexy grinds against Sally Whittles leg and … I fell in love.

Not a love of the pure and attainable variety, nor the sort of love that makes you pretend to like Acid Jazz. Twas not the kind of love that makes one hold in ones muffin top whilst simultaneously thrusting out one’s breasts  and most certainly not the kind of love that stands in a alley in a full-length beige mac on dark night. [Read more...]

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I ruddy hate Twitter Parties

May 7, 2012 By 22 Comments

*AROOOOOOGA* *Sound the klaxon of minor rage*

There’s stuff I love about blogging – the community and finding new blogs to read and there’s things that I don’t like. Like Captcha. If Captcha was a little  pink fluffy kitten-like creature I’d pick it up, run upstairs and throw it from my bedroom window. Then I’d return downstairs, head outside, start up the car and reverse over it. Then I’d grab a flame thrower and toast it. Captcha may help reduce spam comments but there are other less-mind-numbingly-irritating things that can do the same job without driving your readers to the outer limits of rage-ville.

I am 37 years old now and so I feel wholly entitled to have a grumpy-old-woman moment and from the title you already know what my grumble will be on this occasion. Twitter Parties. I freaking hate them. I hate everything about them. If money and talent was no object I’d create a Cillit-Bang-esque squirty bottle of ‘NO-MORE-TWITTER-PARTIES’ and I would give it away on the street, FREE OF CHARGE.

Firstly there’s Twitter parties where you – yes you, you lucky devil, could join in and waste an hour of your life that you’ll never get back in return for the chance to win a £50 voucher (often run by someone making mega-£’s). These ‘parties’ don’t involve gin or cake or hotties oh no they involve pulling your hair out as you try and follow the timeline and reply to tweets before they become old news. Following a hashtag is not the stuff of parties.

Then there are more ethical Twitter parties. Charitable ones, ones to empower women, raise awareness and the like. Here’s the deal though. I CANNOT FOLLOW WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON. Something else always happens – a sticky child seeking babywipes, the call of nature, an important email popping up – I am easily distracted. Even if there was a Twitter party for something I really, really, reeeeeaaaalllly believed in and supported I still wouldn’t join in with it my dislike for them is too strong. Think of this as StarWars – Twitter parties are the dark side and common sense is the way of Sky Walker.

If a job’s worth doing it’s worth doing well and if a party is worth having it’s worth investing in some nuts…

 

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