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Well folks I have a doozy for you today. The main point is about commenting and the things that we are trained to do as bloggers that get ignored by some. One of the first things I learned when I started blogging was to encourage conversation in the comments. And to always respond to comments. And to not argue in the comments which I always took to mean flat out arguing as well as name calling and profanity laden libel.
(Again with the pictures that have no bearing on the post whatsoever. I dunno why it came up but it was a fish so I used it.)
Wednesday the 20th, here on the Coots site we had a great bump in traffic. There seemed to be a couple of reasons for this that I could pinpoint right away. First there were incoming links from some search engine stuff about classic cars and repair.
If you go back to Ralph’s post, Bob and I both commented about car repair in response to Ralph’s handyman service and amateur plumbing. I thought that this must be a decent spike and began to craft a post about cars and repair and how they want you to go to the dealer for the repairs. That post is still coming, I have some things to say about that.
But for today, back to commenting. Bob sent me an email later talking about what he thought was the issue. From Bob’s email:
Stirred some **** at a pioneer woman hater site (did you know there is a whole
damn cottage industry around hating Ree Drummond?) and logged in as
Bob@JuicyMaters. Well, after quite a bit of fun, some of the wimmin
there tracked me back to JM and found the link to COC. When they
went back to the hater site they spread the word that I wrote at COC
too…and today’s stats are the result. My stats yesterday were
double my second best ever day (I did have one post go semi-viral last
year…I don’t count it).It’s probably over. A new post is up over there this afternoon and
all of yesterday’s **** is off the landing page and won’t get as much
attention…LOL. (the edits are mine)
I went back and read all of the comments from this site that I am not going to give a link to. I was surprised to see the backlash against Bob and the only male perspective on this whole post. Screw it here is the link: http://www.thepioneerwomansux.com/2011/04/monetizing-the-hate/. They really attacked him and anything that they could find out from Google about him.
Now, I am standing up for my friend Bob and his place on this site. That said, I will argue with Bob any day of the week of I don’t think he is right. He will do the same. But he will at least entertain your argument (read it, take it out for drinks and try to make it his) and then agree or stick with his point. Therein lies the problem. Bob has opinions. Bob is knowledgeable. Bob knows what he wants and more or less how to get there. He has the detail map to Hell in his back pocket. and he will share that opinion. Argue if you must, but be prepared to be at least intelligent about it.
When the owner of the blog comes back with a profanity laden tirade against Bob and his opinions, and then blocks him from her site! So many things that are just not “right” in the bloggers code. And her cronies start in on little nit picking crap that doesn’t make a difference, but makes them feel like they got the upper hand. Good for them, all of the “Yes Men and Women” are in line and ready to kiss the ass of the moderator, and the lone dissenter is exiled to the blogosphere…..
I probably would have let all of this go but then they started in on Cantankerous Old Coots. Through the magic of Google, the following stream ensued:
Mary Beth says:I just wanted to share one more thing about Boob, sorry Bob. I went over to his site and found a link to a site called Cantankerous Old Coots. I found the following:
http://cantankerousoldcoots.com/2011/04/18/report-from-the-obgyn-department/#more-4614
I can understand why he didn’t include his contribution to this site in his web site resume. But I do love a good case of irony. Wonder if he was on or off meds while he was typing all his crap.
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poppy says:
Hi, Mary Beth! Would you please give me a run down? I don’t want to click on anything of his. Thank you!
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Just Another says:
Hi Poppy!
Oh yes I went there. That one isn’t his site, it looks like a collection of different contributers who write essays about being old coots and where they vent about how the world is on its way to hell in a Longaberger basket and anything else they don’t like.
I know! Something like this has never been attempted before in the history of the entire internet. Please contain your shock!
Bob’s essay was about how he had to go to the hospital for something something (not life threatening, sounds like he’s a regular there) and the first room available to him was in the ob/gyn wing in a bed with stirrups. He was having a crazy day I tell you! And get this — all this happened while he maintianed saintly endurance of ER shenanigans! and tornado warnings!
And that’s as far in as I could stand to go.
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Hey guys….What do you expect when ya go to an ALL female site. These gals have nothing better to do than sit their fat asses behind a computer all day and gossip. “Chick” sites suck. But Bob, way to go. Ya sure ruffled their tail feathers, which is probably the most sensation they’ve had in them parts in a long time 🙂
Oh yeah…the picture just kicked in. Great graphic for a post on castrating she-devils.
Hansi…you know the best comment there about the whole thing? Toward the end one of the commenters named Karen, after reading the hospital story here, went back and posted:
“Only a misogynist would make a big frakkin’ deal out of being put in the OB-GYN wing at the hospital. Seriously, my husband would have been mildly amused, but just grateful he could afford health care.
“Seriously, this site must have seemed like an all you can eat buffet to a woman-hater like him.”
Note that my post shows the same “mild amusement” as she says her husband would feel. I didn’t write a 1000 word screed on the horrors of the gyno-terror I endured.
Also, based on that comment and others by her, her husband is probably afraid to show ANY emotion if it is wimmin related for fear of being Bobbit-ized. I’d be afraid to sleep with her even in the same house for fear her imagination had detected some non-existent slight requiring vengeance. Having sex with her probably causes frostbite of the…er…male parts.
Justin,
Well, I always knew that Bob was trouble. How many people do you know who live in a Yurt and whose favorite blogger is a homesteading woman. Still, you have to give him credit for attracting the readers, menopausal old biddies or not.
I think Hansi may have some help for the poor lonely old things between his meds and his sex toys. Maybe you can attract more flies with vinegar after all.
Justin,
I may reap the whirlwind as well, thanks to your well-intentioned but probably ill-advised post here. I visited the site of Bob’s skirmish and asked those biddies if they ever considered being for something. I think we may need some Valkyrie music going on here.
I just returned. They seem reluctant to wage war or burn their bridges. They refused to admit to having any positive feelings about anything other than feeling good about envying the Pioneer Woman and wishing that she would suffer great misfortune. It is a sad world. They also insist that they will never darken our doors for fear of inflating our readership numbers. Pioneer Woman is hard enough for these women to bear, they can’t bear to take responsibility for encouraging any Cantankerous Old Coots.
It was a great idea to fool these harpies into boosting our numbers, Justin. But the biddies are just too smart for you. Get that old thinking cap our and try something else.
Hansi – suck a goat. (Nothing against you, but I have a knee-jerk response to ‘Trust women to’ comments)
Bob, I think that while you may have had a point, opinion, and wanted to right what you perceived as a wrong you went about it completely the wrong way. Gone are the times where you could have started an intelligent debate and it would have stayed that way – in this new ‘world’ we have going people are assholes. They don’t want to understand other people (and towards the end you’d sunk to their level), they don’t CARE. In their lifes, their opinions and the opinions of those they respect (ie, those similar in at least some ways) matter, not the opinions of a peanut-boiled salesman in the sticks.
You can’t go around carrying things to that level, it’s never going to make the blindest bit of difference and honestly its a waste of time on all fronts. Learn to let go sooner, or everyone looks bad. Heck I’ve stopped following big names for less!
As for you Justin, I get that it irritated you that the small-minded ‘caught-in-argument-mode’ people said that about this site without really looking at it properly; this still should have died. By posting something like that and linking to it you’re inviting a heap of trouble, which may or may not materialise.
Rants are one thing, coot-style, this isn’t the same thing. Testosterone aside, and current (irrational because I agree about the ALL female sites, they’re hell if done wrong, though its still a generalisation) irritation at female stereotyping this is such a non-issue.
People got angry on the internet, let’s put in a press release. 😉
You know Heather, this was a thing that started and I wasn’t going to dignify it with a post. But the more I thought about it the more it needed to get out that people could at least be civil in the blogosphere. As for linking to the site I really debated that even if the post didn’t seem like it. In the end, I thought people could make their own opinions about the whole debate. If you noticed, there was no name calling, no attacks on anyone directly, just the attitude in which it was done. I am not trying to start a fight here, I would just like to call attention to an increasing issue I see around our little world. And as for all female sites, I could care less about who is writing, as long as they are not in attack mode.
Oh the female thing; I just growl every time and figure if I point it out each time someone will get the hint lol. (I do leave it alone sometimes)
Anyways I CAN see that you weren’t trying to turn it into an argument. Let me explain a little. The last thing I want to happen on here is for it to turn into another ‘lets rant about the blogosphere’ site; it’s not and thus far hasn’t been, nor do I expect it to become so because that’s not what any of you are really about, But. I felt I had to make it clear that it wouldn’t be the right way to go.
I will stand by what I said about the way in which this was approached though, yes I can see that you agonised about whether to link and what to include, however I’d have still left it be or run the post without being about this. Calling attention to the issue could have been done in a ton of different ways after all.
Heather.
But would it have been fun?
Yes. It would have. =)
Tell you what, this summer I’ll write a fun, controversial, but objective piece about some element of blogging for this site and we’ll see how it goes. Grow it a little first though hm? Better fireworks. 😉
Heather,
Justin is the slavemaster around here but if he lets me have a vote, I’ll give it a yea.
Then I shall wait to hear with bated breath. =) Thanks Ralph
Heather, apologies ahead of time, and you’ll learn as you age I’m right (don’t you HATE that? I did. “You’ll understand when you are older.”), but the poit is not about the blogosphere, it is about wimin in general, anywhere. I have never seen a woman so catty as when she is talking about another gal who is successful.
It’s everywhere. An example that comes to mind is the viscous attacks over here on Sarah Palin. They have been especially bad from wimmin newsies. Hell, one female “newswoman” wrote an article yesterday “celebrating” Palin’s son Trig’s third birthday. Trig has downs syndrome. The newsie…yet again…suggested the child was Palin’s daughters son, not Palin’s, then finished, “It doesn’t matter though. Either way, Todd (Sarah’s husband) is the father.”
Wimmin are mean. The worst ass-kickin’ I ever got was by two gals in high school who were fighting. Trying to play Galahad, I tried to break up the fight so no one would get hurt. They ganged up on me, beat my ass, and continued as before.
Bob, everyone has the capacity to be mean. When women go at it they do, hard, and I’m not really an exception in that respect.
However.
In what way are men so different in their intensity? Or in the underlying emotion? How it manifests is hugely so, but that doesn’t make them any less catty.
Heather,
Just you wait until you have a woman boss. It’s hard to explain, you just have to experience it.
Ralph,
I’ve had one, in an office full of women and only one man. It was… strange. But there was free chocolate so I wasn’t paying much attention and the whole thing could be considered ‘non-typical’ as a result.
There was also that other time in Guides… They Were quite bitchy though I’ll admit. Not out of the ordinary though, and my ‘bitchiest’ boss was a guy.
Chocolate ALWAYS skews the observations. A box of my Pomegranite Truffels will calm any gal down. It’s better than Prozak.
It was a food distributors – there was this one day where we all got handed 4 bars of Ripple chocolate (gorgeous flakey stuff… not expensive but good anyway). Everyone was so happy that day lol.
Heather, any time you want to write something feel free.
Bob, where can I get some of those truffles?
Everyone, I wish this post was up for our comment contest. This is the best discussion we have ever had.
Cool, I’ll bug you in the summer then.
Justin, I don’t make them real often after the Christmas holidays until the weather cools in the fal. They are difficult/expensive to ship during hot weather and they are the one sweet thing I make that I have a difficult time resisting myself…not good thing for a diabetic.
Besides, they are SO easy to make. Truffles aren’t expensive because of the ingredients or difficulty. They cost so much in chocolate shops because while easy, they are labor intensive.
That’ll be one of the recipes upcoming in the In the Kitchen category of JuicyMaters soon…and sourcing the one “special” ingredient will be there as well.
I agree with you! I’ve been reading the PWSux site off and on, and most of the posts and comments are very negative. Anyone who disagrees with the commenters gets slammed immediately. A recent commenter named Heather said some things they disagreed with and then they made up a whole post about her and a link she had on her blog. I’m a woman and I can’t stand working with, or really even doing things with other women because they are very catty. In some aspects I agree with the fact that PW has been slightly vague about things, but I also understand that she probably wants to protect her privacy as much as possible, which is hard to do on a personal blog and still have good content. On her original blog, she did say she had a part time nanny.
Thanks for giving us yet another perspective on this Jenn. I have to agree, it is hard to find the balance between personal and business and just how much to share or not. thanks for dropping by and commenting!
I got down about a dozen comments or so, not worth my time.
Bob, the hater crowd is a waste of time. Once in a while I get truly hateful comments on WiaW, and I just delete them. Then I continue on about my business helping people make the world a better place.
Truly, you *cannot* win in that arena. You can only play and lose.