Saturday, February 23, 2008

Letter

Dear Mr. Lowenkopf,

We at Blogger dot com have been watching your blog for some time now, increasingly mindful that of all the blogs posted on our platform, yours has consistently and resolutely demonstrated the remarkable record of not attracting readers.

Our panel of Peer Review Bloggers has made frequent visits to your site, hopeful of pinpointing some trend either in your use of graphics or language or a combination of both that would allow them to offer you specific, positive suggestions for increasing your traffic.

One of our panel of Peer Review Bloggers, upon returning from your site, left his work area and we have not heard from her since. Two others fell asleep as a consequence of visiting your site, and yet another simply refused to talk about the experience: he simply said "I don't want to talk about it." Of those remaining Peer Reviewers, one is now being treated for amnesia and another is in the Blogger dot com anger management program.

The only clue we found that might address the source of your problem seemed embedded in the subtitle of your blog site, which purports to be in some way about the process of writing.

Our demographic studies lead us to conclude that readers do not have any interest in problems or discussions related to writing. They would rather have information on something more specific such as which fish bite at which bait, where to get the best prices on sushi, and which persons in a specific neighborhood may have been married more than three times, which in many states is simply too much.

On the other hand, you're more likely to have what we like to think of as traffic on your blog site if :

you add pictures of dogs or cats in cute poses,

take up a hobby,

invent challenging games,

offer quizzes,

try organizing a raffle,

offer daily reasons why Hillary is not in trouble,

provide lists of interesting things to do with tofu,

take advantage of our instant translation to exotic languages (adds a note of intrigue to any blog posting).

We try our best to help bloggers, but not all of us have the temperament or indeed the talent for blogging. If you visit us at the Blogger dot com site and click on the menu choice Help, you will be directed to our Recovery Group Online Sessions, which can help you move beyond not having the make-up for blogging and introduce you to the challenging world of online games.

Yours Truly
Blogger dot com
The platform that cares

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Lowenkopf,

You're my favorite blogger of all time.

Love always,
Lizzie

Lori Witzel said...

*snork*

(And dang, that Lizzie is a tough act to follow.)

No metrics yet for Quality Readership in site-meter land, unfortunately.

x said...

A rejection letter from Blogger? This is the lowest of low blows. Clearly you need to participate in prompts, Thursday Thirteen, memes and pre-fab blogrolls. This is a sad, sad state of affairs. I feel for you. However, Blogger doesn't realize that it's not number of visitors, it's quality of visitors. You have the visitors of the utmost quality in the blogosphere. We would be happy to write letters attesting to our own and your excellent character.

thailandchani said...

Yes, it's true that most bloggers want to see awards, tagging, popularity contests and cute family stories. There's not much room for those of us who want to address deeper topics or actually use a blog as a community forum. It's MySpace with fewer bouncing graphics.

So sorry. It looks like you've gotten lost in favor of pop culture. :)

You must want to scuttle that word verification thing though. They're a pain in the ....

:)

x said...

I actually got rid of word verification awhile ago and have had only one or two problems that I immediately deleted. Maybe that's the whole problem.

Alida said...

I was sent over by TIV. You''ve got to be kidding. Don't you sell out, mister! I just read an article (which I'll be commenting on this week in my blog)about the dumbing down in America. Is it any wonder?

Really your abundance of labels should more than make up for any lack of comments:)

Good luck!

This is a joke right? They don't reject people do they? Woe is me, could my silly blog be far behind?

Unknown said...

Dear Mr. Lowenkopf,

I demand you offer more installments of "Run, Hillary! Run!" Small children need a creative means to understand the deplorable direction the election campaigns are currently heading. For the fulfillment of this demand, I will be happy to spam your comments at an obsessive level, in order to sate blogger's concerns over your lack of reader response.

As to the rest of your posts about writing, carry on. Not all of us find ourselves facing a nervous breakdown at the prospect of the intellectual presentation of useful knowledge.

Sincerely,

Square1
a.k.a. The Fanciful Muse

Unknown said...

The exquisitely-honed blade of your satiric wit trimmed my moustache for me while I read your post.

I now resemble Errol Flynn even more than usual. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Shelly!

I take issue with your "Our demographic studies lead us to conclude that readers do not have any interest in problems or discussions related to writing." (the rest was nearly pitch perfect and made me chuckle.) I only take issue because you must have by now realized that blogger fulfills, in society, nearly the same function as Writer's Digest, a magazine which caters not to readers but to other writers who want readers.

It's like an Internet Mobius strip (except with an umlaut, which automatically makes it awesome); everything's one-sided, and that single side is ours! Or maybe like a Zen koan; what's the sound of one hand typing--
No, wait, that can't be right.

I'm pretty sure I started with a point, but then again, didn't we all?

R.L. Bourges said...

A Blogswarm for Lowenkopf on March 20th? (19th already booked for Iraq, unfortunately)

Lori Witzel said...

Well, David's comment just left my *snork* rolling right in the dust, giggling uncontrollably.

*pthwew*
(What's the HTML for "clears dust from nose and lips while brushing oneself off"?)

z said...

Your famous rejection letter has appeared here.
http://literaryrejectionsondisplay.blogspot.com/2008/02/horse-of-another-color.html
Literary Rejections on Display: A Horse of Another Color

Anonymous said...

Hysterical if it is a joke. Sad if it is true. I can't tell the difference ever since I read Swift in grad school.

But you keep on writing!

Anonymous said...

Never take anything Lowenkopf says as fact, unless he's talking about Sally, in which case he never lies.