Velveteen Mind

Debunking, Defusing, and Demystifying the Big Name Blogger; Mommy or Otherwise. And Delurking You.

"I feel out of my depth."

"I know I'll feel overwhelmed."

"This is way out of my league."

"I am so intimidated by this group, but..."

These are just a handful of the emails I have received regarding RSVPing for The People's Party, a pre-BlogHer party I am co-hosting with a handful of bloggers the night before the BlogHer conference at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco this year. 

Because we need to keep loose numbers on how many drinks and goodies our sponsors need to provide, we have asked you all to RSVP if you think you'll be able to come.  That's the customary purpose of an RSVP, but some of you seem to think that we have chosen to use it as a torture device and have been hesitant (popular word:  intimidated) to even leave a comment or email that says, "I'll be there."

Lord knows what you think the actual party is going to be like...  Spotlights at the ready to point out your every flaw...  Live rankings of everyone's blog stats projected on the wall over the bar...  Buckets of pig's blood dangling from the rafters a la Carrie...

Well, we will require you to log into FeedBurner to verify that you have at least 500 subscribers to your blog before you are allowed to enter, now that I think of it.  Sucks for you blogging losers.

Okay, that was a joke. 

The People's Party is just that:  a party for the people by the people, because that is all any of us are.  Seriously.  No one should feel left out or not cool enough or not popular enough or not enough enough.

Because, enough already.

You know The Bloggess?  She is hilarious, right?  Almost intimidatingly hilarious.  But you know what?  She's not buying the hype for a second.  She knows that at the end of the day, she's just a woman with a foul mouth, a decadent mind, and access to the Internet. 

She is a lot like you.  Only with less censoring.  And possibly less underwear.

She wants to meet you.  And, better yet, she is just as nervous about meeting you as you are about meeting her. 

Now swap "The Bloggess" with any other big-name blogger and you end up with the exact same scenario.  Possibly fewer references to "vaginas" and "ninjas" and "vagina ninjas" and "ninja vaginas," but you get the point.

If I have learned anything from planning this party it is that "Internet Celebrity" is all of the following :

1. Perception.
2. A fluke.
3. Fleeting.
4. Rampant.

None of the above are a reflection of my co-hosts, as this lesson is simply a result of the entire process as a whole.  Mostly a result of being exposed to more opinions and perceptions regarding "celebrity" than I have ever been exposed to before.

What makes a "Big Name Blogger" is not necessarily based on merit.  It is occasionally just the result of sticking it out and being at the right place at the right time.   It is sometimes based on hard work.  It is often not deserved.  Or if it once was, it is no longer.  It is the ultimate contradiction in terms.

Simply put:  It is meaningless and often holds little real value.

It is all perception.  And that is up to us.

However, being a successful and popular blogger is something in which I know we are all interested, which explains some of the "celebrity" fascination that extends to bloggers.  The most popular link on my Mommybloggers: The Resource page?  How to be a Popular Mommyblogger by A Mommy Story.

Wanting to grow your audience and expand your reach is healthy.  Boasting a large readership is a good thing because it opens you up to more opinions and feedback, which helps you grow your own voice.  However, when you begin to think of "popularity" in terms of the "cool kids table," you lose me.

We give the concept of cliques power that they do not deserve.  After BlogHer last year, the number one complaint I heard was that it felt like high school.  That the cool bloggers hung out with the cool bloggers and the newbies hung out with the newbies.  That "cuteness" came into play, whereas it doesn't usually factor online.  Friendships through blogs did not always translate in real life.

People you thought you would hang with shunned you from the "cool kids table."

Enough, already.

After we announced the party, I received a lot of comments along the lines of, "I had no idea you hung with the big girls" or "How did you get in with them?" 

First of all, I am a big girl.  Second of all, I let them in with me. 

And you are, too.  And you should, too.

It didn't occur to me that I might not be cool enough.  That my traffic statistics might not be high enough.  That I might not be popular enough.  So I just did it.

The imaginary boundaries placed around cliques?  I figure, if my son can't see them, I shouldn't, either.

And now my blog name is on a gajillion badges on a spajillion blogs, right along with Oh, the Joys! and motherbumper and One Plus Two and IzzyMom and, yes, The Bloggess.  People at Parents Magazine's GoodyBlog know who I am.  People at Sprout® and PBS know who I am. 

People know who I am because I know who I am.

I'm a mom who writes her blog mostly in her underwear.  With a sink full of dirty dishes and piles of laundry staring at her from her peripheral vision.  I'm a blogger who puts on a good show, but whose numbers followed the fancy facade she put up for the world to ponder.  I'm a blogging mother that wanted and needed a way to reach out, get some things off my chest, and connect.

And I'm just like you.

Robin from Pensieve left a comment on my post about being interviewed by NBC Nightly News for msnbc.com (and my subsequent decision that I should be on the Today Show kissing with Matt Lauer) that said, "If 1/10 of Megan-the-blogger translates to Megan-live-and-in-person? The ratings would soar off the charts."

Megan-live-and-in-person is exactly like Megan-the-blogger.  Except with more pants and poorer spelling.

Want to meet me?  Come to The People's Party the night before BlogHer in San Francisco.  We are right below the newbie party that BlogHer is throwing, so you can float back and forth.  We'll have drinks and goodies and lots of compliments and questions and interest in meeting you.

And we'd love for you to RSVP so we can be sure to have enough of all that goodness, all for you.  Because you?  You are our people.

And me?  Well, I like to think that I'm your people.  Regardless of whether or not you are going to BlogHer.  Regardless of whether or not you are a mom.  Regardless.

Now, how about you stop lurking (reading a blog and never commenting) and take this second to connect with me. 

You.  Delurk.  Now.  Leave a comment.  Connect with a not-so-Big-Name-Blogger that may or may not be wearing pants right now.

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I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

Rain is tapping at my window on this lovely Sunday morning.  The air smells clean.  My mind is clear.  And I am thinking of you.  Our day has yet to begin, so I enjoy this luxury.

More specifically, I am thinking of the subject of accessibility.

Most specifically, I am pondering my email inbox and this lovely blog's comments sections (tongue firmly planted in cheek, thank you) and I would like to ask you a question:

Do you, as bloggers, reply to comments via email or within the comments section itself or both?

Generally speaking.  I know there are exceptions to either preference.

I used to email everyone back, however I felt it made it look like I ignored my comments.  Then I tried responding with comments of my own on specific posts, but that was just messy.  Plus, I rarely go back to see if anyone has replied to comments I leave on other blogs.

Finally, I tried responding to comments with comments of my own and then emailed those commenters to check for the published reply.

Yeah.  Um, no.  That was crazy.  Though probably the most effective.

ProBlogger has a great article on accessibility as a blogger, by the way.  But it still left me with questions.  That's why I am coming to you.

For reasons that I will gladly share with you soon, I have been discussing the topic of iconic bloggers lately with a handful of fairly iconic blogger friends.  The fact that I have access to these people is both laughable and a result of my not thinking of them as "iconic." 

What never fails is that the "big name blogger" with whom I am speaking always thinks that one of the other "big name bloggers" with whom I am speaking is the real deal, while they are just a fraud to be outed as such at the next turn.

Celebrity is perception.  Online celebrity is virtual perception. 

All of it is fleeting.  All of it is surreal.  All of it is laughable.

We would do well by ourselves to laugh.  We would do well by ourselves to let it go.  We would do well by ourselves to just keep writing...  and reading...  and sharing.

Which brings me back to the notion of accessibility.  I am a mom, at home with my boys, reaching out and releasing some brain waves through the internet.  I tend to talk to you about non-poop-related stuff because I live poop-related stuff.    Rather, I talk to you about the stuff that I can not talk to my toddlers about.  Or, at least, I talk to you about stuff about which I get unsatisfactory responses from my toddlers.

But occasionally I wonder if you feel like I'm talking at you rather than with you.  Because of the comments question I asked above. 

You see...

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

I am the walrus.

My son would then ask, "So, what color are you?  What do you eat?  Do you go to school?  Do you like Buzz Lightyear?  Can you tell me a story?"

Purple.  Apricots.  Yes.  Absolutely.  Always.

But I would also like to hear your response. 

Do you get caught up in the "celebrity" status of some bloggers and feel like you wouldn't be noticed if you did comment?  Do you inadvertently appear to be a blog-snob yourself because you have yet to master the art of replying to comments?

What defines "accessibility" when it comes to bloggers?

How accessible are you?  How do you respond to comments?

Am I taking these questions too seriously?  Do you even care?

If you are not a blogger, I am quite sure you do not care.  In which case, my apologies.  We are quite full of ourselves and our minutiae, no?

Goo goo g'joob.

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Let Me Back Into The Matrix

A little over a year ago, I took the blue pill.  The one that places you inside the Matrix.  The Matrix that is the blogosphere, that is.

A little over four months ago, I took the red pill.  The one that removes you, albeit painfully, from the Matrix.  The one that plants you in the real world.

Now I'm ready to take the blue pill again.  But will you let me back into the Matrix?

~~~

It is amazing how much I missed while I was out of the Matrix.

It is disconcerting how little I missed while I was out of the Matrix.

Wading through hundreds of blog posts, it is clear that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Conversations turn into friendships.  Slights turn into tantrums.  Radicals are born and movements are started.  Resolves fizzle as the shine of new blog buttons begin to dull.  Awards are doled out and flashes appear in the pan.  All that glitters...

And yet nuggets of genuine gold are there.  Scratch them.  See for yourself.  There is value in this Matrix that we have created.  You just have to know where to look.

So I took the blue pill.

Now let me back into the damn Matrix.

~~~

My progress so far...

Apparently BOSSY really did email me about her Excellent Road Trip  while I was, uh, not reading my email.  Thanks for supporting my bludgeoning of her for "overlooking" me anyway.  I should probably read my email from her before I start yelling at her next time.  Nevertheless, I will be meeting up with BOSSY at her stop in New Orleans and I couldn't be more excited to have her in my neighborhood.

>>>

TopBlogMag is not dead after all.  It was just in a coma.  Unfortunately, it has woken up from its coma with amnesia, not being able to even remember its name.  Therefore, I have renamed it and given it an all-new identity that suits my purposes as its new publisher and editor:

Blog Nosh Magazine!

After consulting with all of TopBlogMag's excellent writers, the new reincarnation will be a magazine featuring republished posts from your blog's old archives. 

You know those really great posts you wrote before anyone was reading your blog?  The ones you try to pimp out in your sidebar's "Dear God, Please Read These Before You Judge Me for Writing About My New Haircut 4 Days in a Row!" section?  Yeah, those.

If it has fallen off of you r front page and you love it, then we will be noshing on it!

*With your permission, of course.*

I'll be calling for editors soon to start compiling content for lots of subcategories.  While TopBlogMag always had male writers, the majority of the bloggers seemed to come from mommyblogs.  Time to ditch our niche and help promote and discover  some solid content not originating from the uterus.

Not that I don't love mommybloggers.  ;)

*By the way, we will still have some "themed writing" challenges, but it won't be the entire content model now.

Want to get your name in early as a writer, contributor, and/or editor?  email me and I'll add you to the Blog Nosh Magazine mailing list for updates and cries for help about the progress of the magazine's restructuring and relaunch.

>>>

In this same vein, one of my favorite new discoveries post-hiatus is Alltop.com.  Granted, I sort of hover around the moms.alltop.com section, but when I do venture out, I am always richly rewarded.   Alltop.com is an excellent source to break out of your "Internet stagnation."  Taken from their "about" page:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections ... into individual Alltop sites based on topics ... At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — we call this “single-page aggregation.”

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet... The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

Precisely.  As such, Alltop has become an excellent source for knowing which blogs' archives I might like to dig through to find old content that they might like republished and re-promoted for Blog Nosh Magazine.  Particularly blogs in niches that I don't generally read.  A gold mine, indeed.  Although they only display the most recent headlines and preview the first paragraphs* from these blogs' posts, it's usually enough to know if I want to click through or not.

*Good reminder to all of us:  open strong and headline with intrigue!
 

Love it.

>>>

Finally, the worst of my renewed immersion in the Matrix has been twitter.  When I took the red pill and stepped away from the computer, I was a so-so fan of twitter.  Mostly, I found that people used it to promote their blog posts and maybe talk about what they were eating.  No real conversations within the circle of twitters that I followed.

At the suggestion of MammaLoves, however, I decided to give twitter another go.  Apparently, Mamma is a drug pusher.   

May I suggest that if any of you decide to take a hiatus from blogging (highly recommended, mind you), twitter may be the fastest track back online.  Within days of logging back on, I have found at least a dozen new blogs that I adore and gained twice as many lovely "followers" as I had even last week. 

Talk about getting lost in the Matrix.  Get yourself an account or start using that dusty old one you already have and start following me.  You'll be amazed at who you'll meet, who you'll start reading, and who will start reading you.

>>>

>>>

>>>

Now it's your turn.  Tell me, what else did I miss while I was away?   Pop a blue pill and draw me further into your Matrix.

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Hijackers, Fools, and David Duchovny

After accusing Sara at Suburban Oblivion of hijacking my post this morning, I figured I'd better knock this one out before I head to bed in a minute.  For those of you that read my virtual b*tch slap in Sara's comments, I really was kidding because I knew she was going to post before me.  In fact, she started writing her post as I was still telling her about my theories.  Yeah, she's just that serious.  Crazy mad blogging skills, while I'm still prattling away on IM.  For those of you that haven't read Suburban Oblivion today, here's the story.

Heather at TopBlogMag emailed her writers asking for us to participate in a little contest called Blogging to Fame.  In short, it's a most-votes-wins popularity contest in which the blogs and bloggers with the most votes win cash prizes.  I'd love to go into more detail, but, well, the details are sort of sketchy.  To say the least.

Heather was nice enough to offer to share the prize money if TopBlogMag should win, and since I'm all for free money, I logged onto the site, even registered, and started poking around to find out more about it. 

The first thing that struck me was all of the typos and grammar mistakes.  (Suburban Oblivion readers, these red flags are going to seem familiar to you because they are the same ones I told Sara about and which she totally stole!  Damn you, Saraaaaaa!  Picture me waving my fist in the air in futility.)  English seemed to be the author's third language, at best.  There was a distinct absence of the article "the" all over the damn place.  Now, I don't have any problem with poorly translated blogs, but, seriously, if you want me to believe that you are going to give away tens of  thousands of dollars in cash and prizes, please use words like "the" and "a" every now and then.

The time frame of when the contest starts and ends was vague at best.

Where the money is coming from was, well, uh, it seemed to be a secret.  The origin blog stated that they would prefer not to reveal the sponsors right now but to rest assured that it was going to be "big."  Hmmmm.  Okay.  Fine.

Based on all that, I decided to not participate, despite wanting to throw some votes TopBlogMag's way.  Then this morning we got another email from Heather about it.  Knowing that Sara would have gotten the same email, I IM'd her and asked what she thought of the whole thing. 

Since she's not a "whoring out your blog for votes" kind of girl, she hadn't even looked at the site, yet.  In fact, it took some hounding on my part and a distinctly funny "I'm having a hard time working up a giveadamn" on Sara's before I could even get her to look at the site. 

Then I had her hooked and started turning her mind all skeptical-like.   We were all Mulder and Scully:  The truth is out there... and we were going to find it.

If you want to check out some more red flags that Sara and I unearthed, check out her post Blogging to Fame?  Not likely.  Otherwise, here are my theories:

1. This is a legitmate contest that's just not fully formed yet and from which I will never see a penny.
2. This is a half-assed contest that is not fully formed, never will be fully formed, and will just taper off with some lame excuses for why it didn't work.  Probably blaming us for not contributing enough in the end.
3. This is a social experiment to see how far our vanity and narcissism will take us.  Just what will we do when promised fame and fortune?  How much will we whore ourselves out?
4. This is a phishing scheme.  I did register, after all, and for all I know they are hacking into my accounts right now.  One of the questions was actually "name to make the check out to in case you win," as though this might be the last time they hear from you, despite the whole requirement that you fly out to their awards ceremony, etc. etc.

Suburban Oblivion says this is all a link-baiting scheme.  I didn't know what link baiting was, but she explains it very well.  I imagine this could be both link-baiting and legitimate, but, whatever.

On the off-chance that this is a legitimate contest, by all means, head on over to TopBlogMag and click Heather's links and vote!  I don't intend to nominate myself at this point, but who knows, I may come to my senses...

Speaking of coming to my senses, I've gotta say again that I'm glad Sara posted her totally-stolen-content post first (wink, Sara).  The reason?  Had I not read hers before I wrote mine, I would have absentmindedly linked to the Blogging to Fame website.  Yep, I would have fallen into the link-baiting trap set somewhere in the remote regions of India, waiting for naive little bloggers like me to stumble right on in and snap!  She's a great Scully to my Mulder, in that case.  Or is she Mulder?  Whatever.  David Duchovny is incredibly attractive to me and absolutely cracks me up in Return to Me, so any reason to post pictures of him.  Le sigh.

Or, again, this could be totally legitimate.  This contest could be the real thing.  Or, I should say, "Contest on Internet could be real thing."  What do you think? 

***Check out Sara's post for Tuesday morning, Small Update on Blog to Fame, for a comment she received from the blogger behind Blogging to Fame and apparently one of her supporters.  It makes as much sense as, you guessed it, the contest itself.  It's definitely worth reading, though.  I gotta say it again...  I want to believe, but...

Mad Props All Around

Exhales, happy.  Now this is more like it.  A girl could make herself at home in a place like this.  So what do you think of the new digs?*

Huge and enthusiastic thanks go out to Jules at Everyday Design:

I can't tell her enough how much I like how this turned out.  I think it fairly well "screams" Velveteen Mind, so a job well done.  Folks, I highly recommend Jules for any blog banner work you may need.  From the point that I emailed her my file of image ideas last night to the point all was completed and posted, it was less than 24 hours.  Unreal.  Reassuringly professional, highly flexible, and satisfyingly easy to work with-- she's fabulous.  Thank you, Jules.

Mad props go out to my thinking girls that helped get my own sad creative juices flowing and are my winners of the giveaway:

• Annie at Blooming Marvelous
• Sara at Suburban Oblivion
• Lisa

Yes, I know, I always link to Annie and Sara, but they really were key here. (cont'd)