Blood, sex and suffering

As many people know, RaRaMiMu is syndicated on the kottu.org blogroll, as a consequence of this I have had many visitors come to the site. They come to see what I write, and sometimes comment on it. I admit to only posting a few times on the blog since I was added on to kottu.org, but what I have learned from the experience is quite, for want of a better word, interesting.

I have posted muses on my dotesgee trip. I had maybe two or three responses. I make a muse about the irony of Mahinda's complaints regarding the ltte, and I have seven comments to a post. SEVEN bloody comments. In-fucken-credible. Why is this? Why is it that if I make a muse about the society in dotesgee no one says a word, but I talk about this stupid fucken war, everyone and their dog has something to say.

People complain that the news is full of bad news. Or in other words, that no news is good news. But lets face facts. People buy the newspapers to see who's doing what to whom. Who did Paris Hilton throw up on last night? What is Tom Cruise eating for dinner? What is the latest horror? The juiciest scandal? People want to know. And there are news sources that cater to them

There are blogs that have Google Adverts on them. Some of them like Roland Piquepaille depend on the advertising revenue for, if not their bread and butter, then at least a few extra cubes of sugar in their tea. Obviously these blogs need more and more visitors so they can get more and more ad views and more and more clicks. A penny here, a penny there, and soon you're talking about a dollar.. then you can go to the dollar store and buy something.(OK Russel I'll stop stealing your jokes. I know.. someboudy gonna get a hurt real bad.. Somebody). But the point is that the people who srite those blogs WANT you to come over. The newspapers WANT you to buy them. The TV stations WANT you to watch their shows

And so it comes down to what people want to see or hear. They want fights, controversy, blood, sex, and scandal. They want to see little kids having sex, so that they can feel better about themselves. They watch shows like the Jerry Springer Show (motto "no depth too low") where they have episodes like "my daughter is a 11 year old slut" (yes, really). They watch reality shows in the hopes that someone will get naked. Or hint at getting naked. Or the entire crew will have a massive orgy. in ancient rome they had the gladiators, now we have the WWE.

We want it and that is what we get. Even I have been.. entranced is a good word, by the antics of the "guests" on Jerry Springer. There's something about two or three over weight trailer trash women having a good old fashioned hair-pull over some equally trashy guy. You can feel your brain cells committing suicide. Your IQ dropping. Your intellect battling to return to the primordial ooze in the hopes that if it could get back there MAYBE it could convince the first proto life that dividing is a bad idea and suicide is not only painless but preferable to what the future has in store for it. But we can't look away. Even with our hand on the dial we want to watch for one last second, just one more hit.

So who do we have to blame? Only ourselves. We, ghouls that we are, thrive on the suffering of others. The Germans call it "schadenfreude" and it is a major part of our life.

When a blog is supported by the number of visitors to it, you get a tendency to want to maximise that. zyou write what your readerss want to hear, not what must be said. Your writing defines your readership, and your readership defines your writing. its an unending cycle.

This site will never be ad supported. Google may eventualy add its own ads a la geocities, but I never will. I will write what I feel like writing. If you agree with me fine, if not, well, that's fine too. I'll keep writing. You can keep commenting.And unless you remove your comments yourselves, the comments will always be open and undeleted. Good night and good luck.