The Mod Muse

Cruising the Internet for new ways to incorporate vegetables into my diet, specifically beets, I came across a post on a small blog, we will call Power Trip Girl‘s site. That’s not the name of the blog. The actual name is something cuter, meaning: not at all the type of thing I would be interested in reading anyway. But hey, I was looking for recipes! PTG’s blog post included a recipe for beet muffins and a photo of the muffin. Thinking my readers might find it interesting fat chance, I mentioned it briefly, posted a link to her blog and included her image of the muffin.

A couple days later we receive this snip little comment below:

I hope you will give beet a second chance thanks to this recipe, but please do not use my image without my permission. I work really hard on my photographs and to have my copyrighted photos republished without my permission is not fair to me as an artist. Please either take remove the photo or have it link directly to my Flickr image. Please talk to any artist before re-publishing their photographs, linking to recipes is ok.

PTG

Seriously?  Artist? Come on people! Listen. First, a picture of a beet muffin is not art. I’m sorry to tell you this but it just isn’t. You will never, ever, in our lifetime see a show debuting at the Guggenheim entitled- “Beet Study: The Muffin Series”. If you read the post below, it really wasn’t about beet muffins. Rather, an ode to a childhood memory. F*ck beets! I wasn’t talking about beets here!

I understand people who do not want their printed content copied word for word on the Internet. And if it were my photo of, oh I don’t know, let’s say, something IMPORTANT,  I might take offense if it were being used by some d-bag with far right leaning thoughts and theories. Then and only then, I might ask them to take the photo down (but probably not since I know the controversy would drive more people to my site).

And no offense to PTG but it’s not my first spin around the blogosphere.

A recent article announcing,  there are now over 2 million pro bloggers in the United States, has made once humble people, hungry with power. For years jotting down their thoughts in private, they now splay them out on the Internet for any old bugger to read. And that thought, the thought of another person caring about what you have to say, is every shy nerds wet dream.

People want to be adored. Having spent the better part of the 90′s in Seattle playing rock so I could have some of that adoration, I understand completely. You just want someone to care about what you are doing. Even if it’s sitting in your small mid western kitchen making casseroles.

But it’s time for a reality check.

Brace yourself, I’ll do it band-aid quick.

Get over yourself! You’re not special.

Listen people, it’s a blog not rocket science. Your blog post about getting up in the morning and “it looks like  good day” is not going to be the big bang that rocks the planet.

Yes, it’s fun to be a blogger. You get invited to all sorts of cool stuff and people treat you like a “blog god“. However, if your traffic includes a few relatives and your best friend from high school- you need to bring it down a notch. Check the ego at the keyboard.

Blogging used to be about sharing links and content, and pictures! But the times they are a changin’ and now that every suburban housewife can keep us abreast of her day to day cleaning schedule, nobody’s special anymore.   Everyone is a blogger. Now, I am not saying my blogs are “must reads” either. My posts on the latest vulgar design is not going to solve problems in the middle east. I know this. I like to keep things in perspective. Blogs are entertainment. When it comes down to it, the most you can hope for, is the pleasure writing it. Most blogs will never be read or make money and most bloggers will never appear as  a judge on Miss America.  The best your little blog can hope for is a few thousand views before it drifts out into the open sea of abandoned content.

Seasoned bloggers realize the benefits of linkage and try to reciprocate. It’s all about exposure. Their concern is page views, not if their muffin receives it’s 15 minutes of fame. The good news is most new bloggers abandon their “works of art” within 6 months. Kind of like nature’s way of thinning the herd.