For Me, I'll Stick To The Fun Stuff...

I remember going to a writing symposium a few years ago and I attended a panel on increasing your online presence. It was created to help authors and artist to improve their visibility online, and therefore, help improve sales if and/or when they published something or unveiled a work of art.

One thing stuck out at me. They said if you want more blog followers, you needed to be specific--the more specific the better, at least, that's what statistics showed. I can definitely understand the logic. If you want to get your fix on a certain subject, if you know a blog has what you're looking for, you'll read it. You want to hear about video games, there are blogs out there. Theater = the same. Food, crafts, photography, movies, writing, editing, relationships--it's all there just waiting for those interested in those topics to come and enjoy.

I walked away from that panel a bit conflicted. There were a couple of things I wanted my blog to do. I wanted to write daily, and I wanted to make sure I did something creative on a daily basis. Being specific on this blog didn't really fit into my goals. Sure, I could write a daily blog on writing. That would mean I'd have to come up with writing stuff to blog about everyday. I mean, as you can perhaps tell, I am not spending hours and hours on these things.

I had to conclude that I wasn't going to get thousands and thousands of followers. For me, I'd be fine with a several dozen a day. And that's the way it's been for many years. I noticed this last week a post about about political things hardly registered a blip when it came to page views. However, the post just the day before got several hundred. Granted, I posted the earlier on on Facebook and highlighted several friends in that post. I'm sure that helped, but I've had posts get hundreds of hits without doing that. I don't do a lot of political posts--I don't like going there. Politics (especially lately...) seem to cause people to shut down their brains and stop people from actually talking to each other.

No, I think I'm going to stick with the fun stories. They are, by definition, fun.

Political T-Shirts--Something For Everyone...Apparently

So, are these t-shirt designs offensive?

Are they disrespectful?

I suppose, it depends on who you ask.

The first shirt I saw last week. It shows Wonder Woman clocking our current U.S. President. Perhaps you're asking where you can purchase such a shirt. I found the picture: HERE. It will only cost you $19.95 to express your dissatisfaction with our current president. Of course, you could spend thousands more and basically get the same result. Just how much does it cost to make you feel better over the last election? We may never know.

And the second shirt I saw just today. A friend posted it on his Instagram account, with commentary. I have no idea where to buy this shirt, and to be honest, I really don't feel like doing a google search to find out. I'm sure, if you're interested in this one, you can find it, and I imagine it probably costs about as much as the first one, around twenty bucks. Think of the satisfaction you'll have proclaiming your political views across your chest with these powerful messages.

I would neither buy or wear either of these shirts. For one thing, I'd never pay $20 for a t-shirt--I'm too cheap for that. We live in interesting times. We have formed our own little (or big...) support groups where we're all like-minded and all our opinions match, even down to agreeing that one shirt is not only appropriate, but "take my money now" appropriate, and the other shirt is only worn by closed-minded neanderthals. But what we fail to notice is the millions of people who believe differently, those with different opinions, those who would find our shirt offensive and theirs, not at all.

Yes, we live in interesting times.