I Am The Fad Police: Now Cut That Out!

8 Highly Annoying Habits
Choking Out The Blogosphere

I have taken up a personal mission to fix what is wrong with the blogosphere. The job ain’t easy but, hey, someone has to do it!

If your blog doesn’t stink, it probably will rank at some point along the way. And, no, I am not talking about PageRank either! So, what’s my beef? Blogging fads, that’s what! Let’s take a look at the best of the worst fads currently dominating weblogs today.Do Follow — Circa April 2007, the Do/I/Will/Shall Follow movement started to take off. Okay, fine — giving out the link love is good policy. To this very day, I am finding freshly posted material where certain bloggers are gushing that they are now part of the “do follow” blogger movement. Um, I have news for you: that train left the station months ago. If you weren’t already a “do follow” blogger until now, then you’re nothing but a detached caboose!You Comment/I Will Respond — This is one of the most inane fads being perpetuated all across blogdom. If you have been ignoring your readership up to this point and are slapping a tacky widget on your blog to tell everyone what you should have been doing all along, you’re simply drawing attention to your lack of blogging cordiality. Miss Manners would clearly not be amused.

I Am A Super Chick Blogger — How quaint! That shocking pink widget hurts my eyes — please remove it at once. We know that you spent half the day paying forward the reward to every gal blogger you can think of. What?! Okay, I am secretly jealous that us guys didn’t think of that one first. Attention: we are now forming the Dynamic Dudes Blogging group — can someone make a navy widget up for me, please?

Memes/Tagging — In May 2007, I declared war on the meme movement; apparently, some of you missed my admonishment. Please, can we all go back to posting original content? After all, there is a reason why the word meme is defined as a mind virus. ‘Nuff said.

How To Blog — Call it a fad or call it a nasty habit, but blogging about blogging is a bunch of nonsense. All that has been said or needs to be said about blogging has been regurgitated 2,497,610,545 times this month alone. If you cannot think of a topic to blog about, then please darken your blog and head back to MySpace where you belong.

Photorama — Pictures on a blog are fine, but must we see every single photo you had taken of yourself over the past 20 years?! Don’t get me started about prominently posting your name in 36pt red font either — your 15 minutes of fame ended more than two weeks ago!

Online Journal — This fad started when blogs were originally known as online journals. For some bloggers, an online diary is more like it. Nobody needs to know all about the intimate details of your life nor is it wise to post very personal photographs of you, your significant other, your kids, your fraternity, etc. The Fad Justice System hasn’t been doing its job curtailing this problem up to this point, so consider yourself warned!

Paid Posts — PPP or Pretty Poor Postings is what you get when you do paid reviews. Okay, I’ve done a few before — lots actually. I’ve made some decent money — lots actually. And I wouldn’t mind doing a few more if the threat of Google terminating this blog’s PageRank wasn’t hanging over my head. Please find another way to make money, preferably non-blog related.

Each of these fads are harmful and must be eradicated like the vermin that they are. If you have openly (or even secretly) been perpetuating one or more of these points, you must cease and desist at once. An election year is coming and a number of new fads are just waiting in the wings for their turn in the sun.