Foreign Blogs, or an Exercise in Humility

We all get a little smug and comfy up on our high horses sometimes. Usually, it's the places you'd least expect that kick you right down off that high horse and into a puddle of dung beetle sombreros.

Today, I decided to check out what happens when I'm on my own blog (checking for spelling errors! I absolutely do not go back and reread my own posts or look at my own pictures or video for amusement. I'm doing a spellcheck. Spelling.) and you hit Next Blog.

Normal enough, right? Don't act so cool, I know you do it, too.

Immediately, I was taken to a series of photography blogs with (I'm just going to say it okay?) odd, slightly amateurish pictures of wedding parties (all nontraditional like - so maybe the bride is made up like a pretty pretty princess standing under a tree and the groom is three feet away, wearing basketball shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt to show off his dynamic arm tats. Also, he's wearing sunglasses. And they don't even look like they're into each other. "Thus our story unfolds" the caption (should have) said) were the main focus. And then a bit farther down the page, a few pictures of babies with food all over their faces but in Black and White (now that's avant garde).

So, clearly, I kept clicking.

And curiously, I very soon found myself roped into a group of blogs in another language. A language I didn't understand. A language I don't even recognize. The first visual was so arresting, I had to take a screen-shot.

Gel Kizim indeed.

Kind of funny, yeah? Awkward geocities format, obviously very little SEO optimization and even less consideration given to make the format or color palette appealing. I felt smug and condescending. Oh well, at least you've got that child there, Oguz. Maybe people will read your blog one day, poor ponce...then I saw his followers. 16. 16?!

I don't even have UHH follower. Let alone 16 followers who would painstakingly check out my bi-annual updates and grainy cell phone photos of me and my kid in front of our scary haunted house curtains. (those curtains are the kind an old lady would lovingly hang, and then die in front of) And I have animation! Well, drawings.

Anyway, I felt a little taken down off my pedastal. Where were the really bad foreign blogs? The ones where someone hasn't even manipulated their pre-formated design scheme and has animated gifs of things like magic dust or jumping bunnies?

I clicked on.

The next blog was even worse. And by worse, I mean better.

No need to overdo it with cuteness, Olga.

She has an adorable cat-pumpkin drawing, a funny blog title in English pun no less and a sexy picture of her and her cocaine dealer boyfriend living it up in the Moscow night. Moscow has the most billionaires in the world, did you know that? And clearly, Alice and her miraculous breasts have taken advantage. She's probably one of them, in fact. Because she had over 400 followers. That's kind of cheating though, because maybe teenage boys stumbled onto her blog by searching something about bras and became followers in the hopes that somewhere, somehow this foreign woman would post pictures of her boobs.

Foreign blogs are better than me. It's clear. But I just couldn't stop, I had to find something that was bad in a true way. Not just a wedding photo way, that's such an easy bad. Anyone can do that kind of bad.

Next blog.

I was hopeful.

There were no pictures. And the layout and text design left very much for the creative neurotic to desire. The posts were long blocks of text with no paragraphs or even spaces between some periods. I was starting to feel smug again. Even jolly.

Then the followers. 138. 138 people would rather go blind reading what, I don't know Moby Dick in Portugese? than look at my inoffensive pictures and charmingly droll anecdotes? Apparently. But the design was crap so I still felt kinda safe in my mind tower.

Next blog.

I quit. I quit the internet.

First of all, there was a song. And not the blaring hip hop loop that made me want to eat a lit firecracker, but a hauntingly sweet melody where a (probably) parisian woman whispered things in Finnish as a harpsichord danced about. It was beautiful. And there was Latin on the page (note to self: Must put some ancient greek on my page somewhere, I know enough of it - Augmented Fricative! Delta! Psi!) which automatically gives it depth. How many followers? Take a wild leaping guess.

WRONG! There were over 1700. And I couldn't even figure out how to add myself to their followers because it was in a different language. I did click on one of their adsense ads, though. It was cute. And you know, power to the people and all that.

So I guess it's good for all of us, when - for whatever nonexistent reason - we're certain we're god of the internet that we realize there are people out there who are better than us. Without even trying. They're like the stars in the sky that make up constellations. Those stars get noticed. But most of us...we're just the little winky ones you can't tell if they're lowflying airplanes or not. And no one cares. Into the black abyss. Of night...ancient greek things...i go...Hamlet and stuff...