Monday, June 14, 2010

Sometimes you just need to weed out.

The garden? Oh, yes.

Blogroll wise? Oh, yes.

You see, every now and then I've felt the need to ditch a blog. In fact, I've just done a heavy weeding of the blogroll.

There is a particular blog, which shall remain nameless, that has been under my skin for a while. There was a post some time back that really irritated me. I found myself resisting to read updates. I dreaded to see what drivel was coming up. Today, the anonymous date that I'm writing this, was my final day. I couldn't take that blog anymore.

There's something to remember though. Blogs are online journals. If you don't agree with something that someone is writing, you can politely let them know your side. If someone doesn't agree with me, I absolutely appreciate and respect a different angle on things. I try to look at a story from both sides, but sometimes I get blinded by the passion of the story I'm telling. I've had people e-mail me and tell me that they were surprised that I published their thought because it didn't agree with mine. I don't ask you to agree with me. If you do, fantastic! If you don't, that's great, too. Just let me know in a constructive way. It's all good.

The particular blogger I'm speaking of had a life changing occurrence this past spring. It was an experience that will stay with her forever and she is just so passionate about it, that she is just blurting out everything without giving full facts to back herself up. She's become high and mighty with her opinions. She beats people upside the head with the bible. Jesus is my man. Absolutely. However, beating people in the head is not the way. You turn people off.

Again, a blog is an online journal. I ask myself, is it up to her to back herself up with facts and true information? She does have quite a large readership. Obviously, her blog has attracted readers. To spread false or incomplete information to give your story a better spin is just not cool. Does she have an informational responsibility to her readers? I mean, let's face it, she's not a journalist.

I wanted some confirmation about my thoughts. I sent the link on to my best friend to get her opinion.

Oh, it matched mine completely. In fact, she read through archives and told me things that I had sort of thought about in the past and some things were great points that hadn't occurred to me.

So, I've decided to weed through the blogroll. I weeded through the followers listing. There was one person on there that I used to talk to on a pretty frequent basis. She was having life issues, kind of hit a wall with life and was having a difficult time functioning really well. Since she had changed her blog, I had contacted her via e-mail and requested permission to read on to her other blog (as per her request), didn't hear and know that I'll just leave that one be. She can be moody and confrontational. I don't know what I would get if I would try to contact again.

I tossed one a while ago that had 2/3 of her page filled with ads and only one skinny sliver for writing. No, I'm not kidding. The blog is three columns and two were ad space. It was difficult to read and a bit money hungry on the ad aspect of things. She had just finished a book, was doing some column press for the book, but geeze o' Pete!

I admit that I once tossed a blog by a woman that really wanted to become pregnant, then when she did all she did was complain in every single post. Obviously, y'all know my pregnancy story and I just couldn't handle that one.

I've read people speak of ditching blogs for publishing a lot of reviews. I see reviews coming up more and more and have a couple to do myself. I may toss one or two in there in a month or even less. Sometimes, I was sent the product. Sometimes I purchased it myself and was fantastically thrilled with it or bummed to no end. Personally, I like people's product input. There are times it has saved me much money.

That brings me to my questions of the day. Have you tossed someone from your blogroll because you didn't agree with the content that they were writing on their blog? Has their layout bugged you to death? Has their writing bored you so much that you couldn't take it anymore?

What makes you dump a blog from your blogroll? My inquiring mind wants to know. Am I bugging you? Is there something that I do that you would love to see less of? Don't worry. I went to art school. I can take the critique. I made it through 7 years worth.

Smiles in my day:
- K- working hard to earn her TV back. She's been without for almost a month and I see that her attitude has improved nicely. She's playing with things that I haven't seen her touch in a long time. She's more creative. The TV? It will be VERY limited (an hour or less a day), so it isn't like she'll be camped out in front. We'll be issuing a TV ticket at the beginning of the week. Want to watch a movie? Okay. We're going to take that time off of the (maximum) 7 hour ticket. No time at the end of the week? No time to watch.
- Homemade macaroni and cheese, even if I over-indulged and caused myself some distress. (An church absence was called for in this case.)
- Baby tomatoes! K- is so excited!
- The final birthday party is now complete. Our weekends will be ours for a while.
- K- and E- dancing the waltz on the swing set tower yesterday. They followed that up with sitting on a towel at the end of the driveway and doing yoga. E-'s dad asked what the heck they were doing. I told him yoga and he looked at me with the weirdest look. Hey, they teach them a lot in school.
- K- has made Bendaroo knockers for each of the doors in our home. It is her hope that we will use those to announce ourselves, instead of knocking or walking in.
- I don't watch America's Got Talent, but I did watch this one small clip. Oh my gosh, I hope that these people win!

I hope that all of you had a wonderful weekend!

3 comments:

Rach said...

I've ditched blogs that seemed to chirpy and perfect. I've ditched them for too many ads. I've ditched because I didn't like the direction the writer was taking.

Now, as for that TV ticket thing, I gotta tell you, I'm TOTALLY stealing that idea! It's perfect! :o)

Felicia said...

I typically don't like blogs with too may ads either. I enjoy following folks and their daily lives, shows what a boring one I have! I also like DIY type blogs, those I don't mind the ads so much for some reason.

ChupieandJ'smama (Janeen) said...

Adds have caused me to ditch too. I don't mind a few, but when the whole blog is one big add, then it becomes overwhelming to me. I ditched a Catholic bashing blog. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but we could at least be a bit nice about it? And I stopped reading some that got a little too political during the election. Again, you have a right to your opinion, but please don't become condescending about it. I also ditched someone that I thought was lying. This person kept asking for money for medical help and I just wasn't sure that A. They really needed it or B. the medical needs were that dire. It was kind of freaking me out.