For once I can write about someone still alive! Both off and on this petite blog, the eulogies are burnin’ a hole in me.
Mr Inman is, as you may know, creator of The Oatmeal, a blog of let’s call-it wacky, finely-drawn cartoons, flaming scenes and observations. I do not know him personally, or he, me. I’m just a longtime fan.
You surely know him from the viral, “How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You” and “How Much Do Cats Actually Kill?” saying to yourself, self, I detect a theme with these- and you’d be partially right.
The Oatmeal’s timely “The Life Cycle of a Chicken” will have you tapping your head – but – what’s my deal? Why’s this here?
Current events.
In the way-back Before-Times, kittens, we used to use a little thing called RSS. Fun feeds of content we’d selected were delivered to our email sidebar, to be read at our leisure. Then, social media took over. Suddenly, post-everywhere to unknown audiences took over, and the Game of Likes sprung up, for fun and prizes. The Influencer was born!
This setup kinda works – as long as the host-aggregator site’s a benevolent, background host-entity, using your content for views. When the host rises up to take over, as it must in order to live, it quickly becomes The Animatrix’ The Second Renaissance (WARNING, this hard-R rated animation is the single, most terrifying depiction of dystopia I’ve ever seen. I am not kidding.)
At The Oatmeal website, you’ll be greeted with his pop-up asking you to sign up to get his cartoons directly, almost as good as ole’ RSS, instead of survellience social media. I second The Oatmeal’s request and urge you to join him.
Has this week’s Do You Know Me? of persons returning to Twitter and Facebook, left you hoping for a prelude to a revitalized American Express campaign instead? Chances are, the poop going into these shared punchbowls will quickly reach critical mass.
Content Creators: do you want your carefully-grown audience for your valuable IP, viewing it alongside this “content”? You can just bet, bad guys are counting on a free ride to get exposed to your followers and viewers.
When a friendly, collaborative site turns toxic, your followers will beat feet, and they’ll take their views with them. You’ll be left holding the bag of the former Vine, Friendster, or even MySpace, and no one will know how to contact you. (If you’re on FriendFace? Carry on)
After I wrote all the above, I discovered The Oatmeal said the same thing with humor and drawings. This is why you should subscribe to his site. We gotta be like Matthew and have our own hang, such as what WordPress offers.
Helping you get started, for free?
I’ve been wondering why more people don’t do this? This post isn’t an ad because no one’s paid me, but – WordPress will give you a solid boost into your own free site, albeit one ending in wordpress.com.
Why not get started on the best, most professional site, one you won’t outgrow or have figure out how to migrate your content from? WP is the biggest, most professional host, with all the big corporate clients. Yet, it’s yours to set up with your chosen template – essentially Web style sheets. Play all their tutorials or take part in a live webinar. Once you get rolling, promote this starter site to your own dot com by buying and adding your domain and paying for your level of site you need. That’s what’s in it for WP.
Something else you’ll gain is access to the shared, newspaper-ish WordPress Reader, where you can – quelle surprise! – subscribe, to other WP user’s “feeds” when they publish a post. All this, with no scummy, high-vis grifter-persons to harsh your vibe.
Like I said, just my two cents and perhaps your mileage will vary, but see if this advice is useful to you. Just, subscribe to The Oatmeal, buy a book or two and also, please, start your own website. Tell ’em you saw it here.
And watch out for cats.
Cosucoe 