This is my 100th article, so I thought I should do something spesh.
Some of you will be aware that I, the Champ, recently went through a middle-aged crisis*, where I stopped writing about politics and started coming over all peaceful and at one with the world. But before I went on this wanky, peaceful path to enlightenment, I was a relatively popular blogger. Correction: I was a widely-read political blogger. No one liked me, but a fair few read my uninformed twaddle.
In that time, I learned a few things about how to attract readers to a political blog. I want to pass the benefit of my wisdom on to those of you poor, sick, addicted fools who write because you crave the attention of people who mostly disagree with you and who want to abuse you in ways that only vaguely have anything to do with the original argument you made. Some of these wisdoms are based on my own blog, some are based on observations of other JUsers and abusers.
1. Include either the word "Left¨ or "Right¨ in your article titles. This is sure to get people racing to your site. My most popular articles are certainly not my best articles, just the ones that contain the word "Right¨ in the title. I'll explain the attraction of these words.
Politics junkies love the idea of an argument, particularly a polarised one where the enemy is clearly identifiable. People like Left Vs Right arguments because if someone's Left, you can just discredit their arguments about, say, global warming by bringing up their veganism, the fact that they want to give everyone drugs, that Communism has been tried and failed, that Kerry lost, that the UN is pussy-footed, that they're a bunch of French-lovers and that they believe in crazy progressivist notions like separation of church and state and are therefore heathens destined for eternal hell.
Equally, if someone's Right, you can simply discredit their economic policy by bringing up their racism, sexism, homophobia, that there were no WMDs in Iraq, that Bush cheated the first time around, that they are religious extremists, and that Cheney used to work for Halliburton.
It also saves having to come up with legitimate arguments against someone when you can just call them a "Fascist¨ or "Communist¨.
2. Say the other side is just like Hitler. Both sides, Right and Left, like to label each other with Hitlerianism. And it always pisses the other side right off, which attracts more people to your site.
If you're on the Right, just say that the Left support terrorists and moustached dictators like Saddam Hussein, who's just about as bad as Hitler, which makes the Left Hitlerian. Or you can go the George Brandis method. Our Liberal Senator tried to link the fact that Hitler was a German vegetarian with the fact that Germany is now a very Green-conscious country, and so environmentalism and vegetarianism must have grown out of the 3rd Reich.
If you're on the Left, make up a few numbers about how many people have been killed by US forces in the past century, decade, whatever and compare this to Hitler. Or you can go the Bill Leak method and compare any attempt by the Government to instill a sense of patriotism in their people to Hitler's brainwashing of the population.
3. Mention Michael Moore. You don't even need to actually find any real reason to include his name. If you want to state something as fact, just say "As Michael Moore said....¨, and instantly half your readership will believe it blindly, and the other half won't believe it even if there is incontrivertible forensic evidence to prove the truth of it. They'll then argue to death with each other over whether Michael Moore says only lies or is the Messiah. Of course this means that no one will actually be engaging with the issues you raised, but at least they're coming to your blog.
4. Post during times when American bloggers are likely to be at their computers. Yes the internet is bringing the world closer, but mostly it's bringing it closer to America. Actually, on balance, particularly at JU, it's mostly bringing the Red states closer to the Blue States. Compared to us Aussies, the Yanks breed like rabbits and as such they can churn out a lot more stuff than us, be it movies, TV or blogs. They happen to churn out a lot more shit than us, but they also churn out a little bit more good stuff than us, such is the enormity of their output. As such, you need to cater your blog as much as possible to American issues. I know you might have come here with some vain hope that you might interest some Americans in learning about the world, but that was just youthful naivety.
For instance, even though I quite clearly know nothing about US politics, one of my most popular articles was called "A Bush Loss = Good for the Republicans¨. It was one of the most superficial articles I've ever written but it was posted at a Draginol-friendly hour. This meant that the Americans saw the article title in the JU sidebar and even though I really didn't know what I was talking about, the American Right flocked to my blog to convince me that Kerry was evil and that we should all vote for Bush. Even us Australians should have voted for him.
5. Come up with a theory about why Kerry lost. The more out-there the better. Months on, people still love to argue over this one. Here are some sugesstions to get you started:
- It was because of a backlash against Michael Moore.
- It was because of a backlash against Bruce Springsteen.
- It was because of a backlash against Myrrander.
- It was because the one-armed man ran off with Kerry's winning votes.
- It was because Bush's second cousin twice removed on his auntie's side is the President of a social club in Florida and managed to ban all black people from her club and only members of her club were allowed to vote.
- It was because people in Florida can't count.
- It was because by accident half the population put a 1 next to the word Bush, when they meant to put it next to Kerry, which is really Bush's fault anyway for not funding public education well enough to make the population literate.
- It was because Kerry is a heathen and God was punishing him.
- It was because aliens abducted all Kerry voters the night before the election.
6. Have strong opinions and express them abusively. The more astute of my readers will have noticed that I haven't been quite as apolitical since my mid-life crisis as I make out I am. I have indulged in some quite negative criticisms of Western culture and talked about the destruction of the social fabric in Australia. Subtle, but still basically classic Leftist whinging. And where has this got me ratings-wise? A massive drop from hovering around 50 straight out of the top 100. Of course it could just be that I have become shit, but I like to think it's really the fact that I have expressed my opinions in much more self-reflective, Zen ways than when I used to like saying things just to ruffle the feathers of bigoted morons like drmiller, littlewhip and FishHead. Calm down guys, you know I only said that to piss you off ;>
7. Try to stick to divisive issues that get a lot of press coverage. Just about any article about abortion, no matter how supersilious, uninformed or emotive, rates through the roof. No matter how many times people have gone through the same arguments over and over again, people still believe that if they yell hard enough (or punch the keyboard hard enough) they will convert the other side.
So they love to debate abortion, just as they love arguments about whether immigrants should assimilate or embrace multiculturalism (Littlewhip has made almost an entire career out of this topic) , the separation of church and state, Iraq, social security, public health etc. Please don't bother trying to come to any sort of compromise position with bloggers or suggesting we all just move on. Any sort of rational comment that has a well-balanced argument suggesting some sort of middle ground is usually ignored so that JUsers can get on with the real business of abusing each other.
8. Bring up Communism. In fact you only have to subtly suggest some sort of slightly Leftist leaning in your economic policy (by this I mean that you might believe we should maintain the dole and some sort of public education system) and most Right wing JUsers will be happy to turn your blog into a debate about "where would we be without capitalism?¨. And most Communist JUsers will be more than happy to indulge them in the same old battle between the Reds and the Red States.
So there you have it, political bloggers, there is the sum of my wisdom gleaned from a 100 article-long addiction that I am now quite proud to have come out the other side of. Go forth and abuse!
*For my regulars who missed the crisis, it brought about a change of name. (This blog used to be called Champagne Socialism). I have gone on about some resolution to find myself through some sort of spiritual search. And I seem to have a general sense of calmness and disinclination to engage in debate, preferring to wonder why we can't all just love one another. Seriously, Champagne Navel Gaze?!?! What the hell does that mean anyway? Have I bought a Swedish penthouse and poured champagne into my navel for blonde beauties to drink from? And what the hell is this search to find myself? I'm right here! Look boy! In front of your eyes!
Since the crisis, I've been pretty much left with a few old readers with an overly-strong sense of loyalty, most of whom are just sticking by me, assuming I'll soon snap out of it and start making nasty comments about the Prime Minister again soon, and then there's a few new readers who are probably about as wanky as I have become.