You might see the headline as linkbait but I see it as an entry to memories of being a kid in school.
Days long past when people would pinch you for not wearing green on Saint Patrick’s Day and your beloved author would punch those who pinched him.
Perhaps you think that is an overreaction to a child’s game but the rebel in me has always run deep and I didn’t want to have to wear green unless I chose to.
Doesn’t mean I didn’t or that I always responded with fists of fury because I did wear green and I didn’t always use my fists.
It was something that evolved over time and when I chose to stop wearing green I gave notice that pinching me would yield an unpleasant response.
Be nice to me and I’ll be nice to you.
69 Bloggers Who Hate Saint Patrick’s Day
If you are wondering if there is going to be a list of 69 bloggers here the answer is no, there is not.
I am not a fan of list posts for a host of reasons primary of which is because it is the province of lazy writers and or popularity contests.
Granted if you want to pull in eyeballs running a popularity contest can be an effective technique for doing so.
The Sneetches of the blogosphere are glad to wear stars or not wear stars if they think it will bring them more readers and opportunities to speak at conferences or brand ambassadorships.
Anyway, I haven’t any doubt that in giant world there has to be at least 69 bloggers who hate the day. And if you disagree, well I am just following the lead of our president who is never troubled by making statements of fact regardless of whether they are truthful or not.
A Time For Goodbyes
I am making a mental note to ask my daughter if her school experience still includes harassment by the green police.
It includes a separate thought about friendship in general.
Daughter is responsible for having prompted some of this by telling me about the shenanigans going on at school with some of her friends.
Many of those stories make me shake my head in part because I hear the women in my life share stories that don’t sound particularly different than what I hear from my not so little girl.
She is in 7th grade so I am not entirely surprised to hear some of it but when I hear this stuff about forty-somethings I shake my head.
Do people ever grow up?
It is not that men are perfect, because we aren’t but I don’t see the game playing and one-upsmanship that I keep being exposed to.
My issue with men is more focused on those who stay in touch and those who don’t.
That is ‘cuz there are guys who never write nor call and I wonder why I am connected to them on Facebook or anywhere else.
If we are not important enough to check in with, well maybe it is silly to be friends on Facebook because we aren’t acting like friends.
Might be time to say goodbye to some people, wonder if they’d even notice. Wonder if I would notice.
Maybe not wondering is the answer to whether I should let them go.
See, now you had to go and make a blanket statement that I have to counter; curse you lol
Lists posts aren’t close to being lazy; lazy people are just lazy. As a for instance, I had kind of a list post, 31 items, and it ended up being just under 5,800 words. I had another one, 55 items on my 55th birthday, that was just under 4,000 words (I wrote that one first so I’d have something to go after lol).
What I believe you meant to talk about were those posts where someone either names a lot of people and links to them without any real criteria or not even a paragraph about them, or sends out questions to a bunch of people and then highlights the people who actually responded. There’s no real writing effort in either of those posts, although I know it takes some time to post all those images and links. Still, it’s lazy when compared to the actual writing part.
As for your last couple of lines… I almost hate to break it to you but most people won’t notice you’ve gone missing for a very long time on Facebook. A couple of years ago I took a social media break for a week; not a single person noticed, although I had pre-written some blog posts that went out on Twitter so it would have been harder for that group to know I was gone. I thought about that one for a while and realized that messages move so fast on all the social media platforms that, unless you’ve been specifically talking to someone on a daily basis, it’s hard to know if someone’s gone missing or you’re just missing their posts.
Whew; now I’m tired! lol
Hi Mitch,
I’ll give you credit for writing list posts with substance but very few of those come out. Most are published with the intent to grab eyeballs and aren’t based upon substance or criteria other than “popularity.”
Since many bloggers are no different than Sneetches who want stars on their bellies they run towards anything that will help validate them. It is like social proof, a metric that might not always have as much substance and weight behind it as it really could.
I don’t disagree with what you have said about being missed. I just noticed today I was unfriended by a couple of people and I can’t tell you if it happened five years ago or five minutes.
Got no recollection of them being around at all. Guess that is indicative of their importance to me and perhaps me to them.
I go through my friends list on Facebook every few months just to see who’s actually active and who’s totally disappeared. I get alerts when I’m suddenly not connected to someone yet I’ve found that sometimes people shut down for a month or so and then come back, and if you were friends with them before and they don’t check their settings you’re immediately part of their friends list again. It also gives me a chance to decide if I want to mute some of them or unmute some of those I muted previously… although I can’t ever remember unmuting anyone. lol
I love the wittiness in your post. Although you mentioned you have no list of 69 bloggers yet your title says that which catches the eyeballs anyway 😉
But yes, people are writing list post to get more and more attention which isn’t wrong for the sake of marketing.
Do we share a brain or something? I have almost the same problem with friends reaching out. Women are SUPPOSED to be good at this stuff. I do most of the reaching out, with a few noteworthy exceptions. My fiance has the same problem reaching out to male friends. Part of getting older I guess.
I am not wearing green today. Since I don’t know my ancestry, I never did.
Plus, I was raised by an Italian, so there is always that.
Happy Amateur Night Part 2!.
Virus-free.
http://www.avast.com
I understand people get caught up in life and the particular challenges, deals and problems they face but at some point you have to reach out or let go.
I am in a place where I just can’t go any other way,