Bloggers Boot Camp

Look at what I found for free at my local library? Someone had left it there and me being the nostalgia freak that I am, picked it up and took it immediately.

This book heralds back to a time when blogging was all the rage and at its peak - around 2005 to 2006, right? Nope. 2012. Talk about being late to the party.

Why so long? Blogging by then was dead as a doornail. Twitter came up on the scene and suddenly people wanted to read glorified text messages from their favorite celebrities, or get into some toxic libtard virtue signal debate. I remember it was specifically in 2008, because I saw a video where Ashton Kutcher was grinning like some retard at his cellphone in front of an audience, explaining how cool it was that he was using it. It took the world by storm practically overnight.

The effect wasn't instant, but by 2010, blogging was on its last legs. Favorites like Tucker Max, Erin Tyler (The Bunny) and people that I knew personally, had pretty much moved on. Social media was changing, MySpace became a music venue and Facebook was all the rage. People wanted to play Farmville and Mafia Wars, or they wanted to go onto Reddit and 4chan. They were doing it for the Lulz.  By 2011, people couldn't remember what a blog was.

So what's inside the book? Everything that you already know, but someone took the time to spell it out. Here's a run down of each chapter:

Chapter 1 - The Niche

Chapter 2 - Getting Started

Chapter 3 - Target Practice

Chapter 4 - Hello World

Chapter 5 - What to Write About

Chapter 6 - How to Write a Blog Post

Chapter 7 - Mob Rule, Inciting a Riot, and Freedom of Speech

Chapter 8 - Building Traffic, Making Money and Measuring Success

Chapter 9 - Ethics Problems and How To Solve Them

Chapter 10 - Building an Empire

For the most part this is all self-explanatory. The only thing I didn't do with this blog in its heyday was have it generate revenue. Stupid me. I know, right?

Chapter 5 and 6 are no-brainers. Write about what you like and make it interesting. Or, write about events in your life and change the names to protect the guilty. You don't need some asshole from work getting a whiff of what you wrote about them, and having them take it to the H.R. Department, or worse, try to kick your ass in the parking lot. I've always been good about that.

I do find it funny that Chapter 7 addresses how you can use your blog to troll people and start flame wars. That was never my interest, since the last thing I need is for a bunch of pink haired freak shows to dog pile and get me canceled. Still, I do take great delight when libtards fall on their own metaphorical swords and don't mind mocking them for it when they do. 

Chapter 9 is simple. Post a disclaimer on your blog and if anyone tries to sue for defamation, libel or slander, then just take the shit down. I claim that this blog is a parody of life, especially my life. It's a sick joke that even I don't find funny. It serves as an outlet that nobody reads.

Overall, I like that I stumbled across this book when I did. It's a keepsake of sort that I'm going to hold on to, because in the age of Instagram, Tik-Tok, and all that other bullshit, I like to take the time to read something that isn't a 5 second distraction with some Weaboo music playing in the background. Social media has become total cringe and the fact that I can still blog in 2025 is some respite from it all.

Heh.