3 Things Bloggers Need to Stop Doing in 2014

I mean it. It has to end.

I make my living giving other people advice.

Hooray!

This means I am slightly more saturated in the maxims, listicles, and “helpful” opinions of others than the average wage earner, so maybe I’m just exhausted.

But I’ve noticed some really obnoxious trends emerging in the blogosphere in the past few years, and it prompted me to have opinions and put them in listicle format.

(Yessss…)

Bloggers: please knock these things off in 2014.

1. Stop recycling content.

This should be obvious. Don’t reblog what has already been said 8 mzillion kadrillion times.

I’ve stopped clicking on any and all articles containing “happiness” or “healthy” in the title because I haven’t read anything original in at least 2 years.

It sets my teeth on edge to read something that is clearly written in the spirit of, “Well, at least I wrote something! Comments, please!! PLEASE HELP ME OPTIMIZE MY BLOG, PLEASE!!”

If you are blogging because your health coach marketing training told you to start a blog about nutrition and lifestyle change, that is excellent.

But you also need to understand that coaching (i.e. content marketing) is nearly the most heavily saturated online business in the world and you’re arriving on the field in the third quarter.

It’s not enough to extol the virtues of miso and raw cabbage and coconut oil.

If I read about the benefits of meditation for anxiety treatment (always number 3 in the list) one more time I’m going to drown myself in a swimming pool of Adderall and batshit crazy Korean music videos because I would rather live in that state of frenetic adrenal overload than absorb any more stock wisdom delivered in a flavorless blog post.

It’s already been said thousands of times, all of it. All the information is already out there. There are no points for trying.

What to do instead?

Find your original voice. Say it funny, sad, silly, and/or angry. Be interesting. Don’t be afraid of hyperbole; it makes your readers feel something and you won’t go anywhere until you make a lot people feel all the feelings.

And yes, interesting can be learned.

Two of my favorite bloggers use profanity to get their point across in a way that hooks into their readers’ gooey marshmallow centers and eviscerates the little voice inside that tells them they aren’t good enough to show up to the game of mothering or making a healthy dinner.

They are entertaining as balls and because their voices are so different and bold they keep their fans riveted and grateful. They are presenting material that has already been delivered in countless mommy blogs and health blogs in a way that makes you feel like it’s completely new.

You don’t need to cuss (unless you want to) but you do need to put down the paper cut-out you’re holding in front of your face and stop showing up as an industry cipher.

At the end of the day readers want stories and personality, not well-intentioned, bland facts. Find your personal connection to your topics and write from that place. Be vulnerable.

There might not be anything new under the sun, but you don’t have to tiresomely confirm the end of innovation with me-too content posts.

It just depresses everyone.

2. Stop wetting your pants with joy at every cynical marketing scheme that goes viral.

Earlier this year a company that shares 10 of its top 20 corporate shareholders with ConAgra and Monsanto created a “hauntingly beautiful” video supposedly taking Big Agriculture to task.

Yawn.

A corporation that makes millions selling stinky perfume to teenage boys through explicit, objectifying ads of women gets all kinds of kudos from bloggers when another of their subsidiaries makes a gooey, tearful video showing how much women hate their bodies.

COME ON.

Maybe I’m just being a spiteful little troll or a maybe it’s just my inner Commie showing but is this really all it takes? A soaring piano melody and some emotional button pushing from a marketing department that churns this stuff out on the regular?

Perhaps I took my muckraking assignment in high school history class too seriously. Actually, I know I did because my target threatened to sue the school board.

But I’ve always believed it was the responsibility of writers, journalists, and now bloggers to DIG a little bit.

I don’t mean we have to hate on big business all the time, but it’s degrading to let ourselves be dragged along by the nose, playing right into the hands of slick corporate campaigns and giving them loads of free, crooning press despite the hypocrisy of their message.

If you are moved by a particular viral campaign, by all means blog about it, but show some self respect by pulling on the thread a little.

3. Stop making strong statements about relationships if you were born after 1990.

If I read one more article about “Ending Toxic Relationships” written by a 22 year old yoga instructor I’m going to lose my s*** all over the Internet.

Looking forward to checking in with you in 10 years, 20-something relationship experts.

The Web has made armchair experts of us all, but I’m hoping that the nature of professionalism hasn’t devolved so completely that having no real problems, a Mac laptop, and a sheltered upper middle class upbringing are the only requirements for ordination as the next great Humanist psychotherapist du monde.

And while we’re at it, taking marriage advice from religious young men whose entire relationship culture is predicated on a rush to the altar weirds me out.

Human behavior is really damn tricky and really, really, really complex. Advice about entering or exiting relationships in a semi permanent way should not be applied with the “firing a shotgun at the side of a barn” technique.

It’s hubristic and reckless to claim any sort of expertise on what other people should be doing in relationships unless you are specifically and lengthily trained to do so.

Sure, nobody has to take you up on your advice and maybe it starts some meaningful conversations, but keep in mind that it’s out there on the Internet now, all your grandstanding, limited experience with the world.

Google cache is permanent, at least until the robots take over or the Internet breaks.

Whether or not to legally bind your finances and parental rights to someone is a really big freaking decision and your psychological environment may inhabit a different continent than the people you’re purporting to give advice to.

The decision to end a relationship with a difficult parent is something best discussed with a compassionate professional and people who love and know said decision maker.

It makes me profoundly uncomfortable to read a 500 word post on severing relationships written by people who may still be on the sunny side of the worst pain life has to throw at them.

There are problems you now conceive of only in the abstract. Don’t give advice about those problems.

Chances are if you have only been on the planet for a couple decades and change you still have a fairly black and white view of what makes a person good or bad, toxic or holy, worthy or dismissible. (Hint: these qualities cannot be applied whole to a single person who ever lived ever.)

Rather than recommending that we cull and reject or lustfully bind ourselves under the guise of spirituality, we need time in our youth to develop understanding of all the gloriously complicated facets of our own and others’ humanity.

And a whopping dose of humility would not go amiss, either. Part of growing up and maturing is moving along the spectrum toward the “I don’t really know anything about anything” end, where you are rewarded in your senescence by getting to tell young people from a place of experience that they are full of it.

You might be the “toxic” person. Oh shit.

Trust me, the relationship advice I would have written even 5 years ago would make my cheeks burn if I read it today. At best I would want to pat my past self on the head and say, “Oh, you!” At worst, I would be cringing and whimpering under a blanket, whispering to my boyfriend, “Why do you love me? I’m such a terrible douchebag.”

I still want to hear about your experience with love, difficult people, and the journey of being human among other humans, young people.

I just want you to tone down the rhetoric a bit, for your own sake if not for others who might take your words seriously at their great peril.

Opinionated content for the day accomplished. Keep up the good works, bleeps. (My blogging peeps. It’s a thing now.)