Day: December 7, 2021

Truthful Tuesday — Do You Like Me?

Fandango37 Comments

Frank, aka PCGuy, has published another one of his Truthful Tuesday posts. Frank is changing things up a bit on this Truthful Tuesday prompt. Instead of asking us specific questions, he is giving us a topic and asking us to discuss it. This week’s topic is the “Like” button. Frank wants to know…

How important are likes to you on your blog, and how do you determine if you are going to click like on other bloggers’ posts?

It’s nice to be liked, but the truth is that, when I look at my notifications on my iPhone, I don’t even bother with Likes. I just look at Comments.

From my perspective, between Likes, Comments, and Followers, Comments is the only true metric that matters. It is the best indicator of whether or not what I write resonates with those who read my posts.

Views just tell me that someone came across my post, either on the web or by seeing it on their WordPress reader. Likes tell me only that a viewer clicked on the Like button. I’d like to assume that anyone who tapped the Like button actually read my post and, indeed, liked it. But that might be naïve. As Frank points out, “there is no way to know for certain if those who clicked the Like button actually bothered to read the post, or were just acknowledging that they saw it.”

Followers is a useless number. According to WordPress I have more than 4900 followers. But I typically get fewer than 500 views a day, so why do people bother “following” my blog if they never read my posts?

Frank contends that blogging is not conversation. He says that it is communication. Technically I suppose he’s right. Blogging is a form of one-way communication from the blogger to his or her readers. But Frank admits that, “at least with comments, there is some indication that communication is happening.”

So to answer the first part of Frank’s question, I appreciate Likes, but they are not that important. On the second part of his question, I only Like a post that I have actually read and that I genuinely liked.

TMP — Junk Mail

Fandango20 Comments

Every Monday, Paula Light, with her The Monday Peeve prompt, gives us an opportunity to vent or rant about something that pisses us off.

I know that today is Tuesday and I wasn’t planning on posting a Monday peeve yesterday because I was in a fairly good mood for most of the day. Then I went to my mailbox at the end of my driveway late yesterday afternoon and my mood changed.

What I found stuffed into my mailbox had to be ten pounds worth of junk mail. Catalogs from Lands’ End, L.L. Bean, Lamps Plus, The Sharper Image, and a number of other retailers were crammed in there. Also, there were at least four different catalogs from children’s toy companies because my wife has ordered kids’ toys for our grandchildren.

And in addition to all the catalogs, there were leaflets, brochures, and fliers ranging from senior living communities to the local shopper’s guides to home improvement services to real estate agents.

These catalogs and other pieces of junk mail move, unread, directly from my mailbox to my recycling bin. As far as I’m concerned, anything in my mailbox that doesn’t contain a check gets tossed.

And I get steamed thinking about what a total waste of not only my time, but of resources (e.g., paper, ink) all of this crap consumes. How many forests were destroyed to produce all of these catalogs and junk mail? Even the hapless mail carriers get overloaded having to deal with tons of junk.

So yeah, I’m a day late with my Monday peeve, but I’m peeved nonetheless.

Fandango’s Story Starter #23

Fandango16 Comments

It’s time for my weekly Story Starter prompt. Here’s how it works. Every Tuesday morning (my time), I’m going to give you an incomplete “teaser” sentence and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to build a story (prose or poetry) around that partial sentence. It doesn’t have to be the first sentence in your story, and you don’t even have to use it in your post at all if you don’t want to. The purpose of the teaser is simply to spark your imagination and to get your storytelling juices flowing.

This week’s Story Starter teaser is:

He realized that she had made a fool of him when he opened the drawer and found…

If you care to write and post a story built from this teaser, be sure to link back to this post and to tag your post with #FSS. I would also encourage you to read and enjoy what your fellow bloggers do with their stories.

And most of all, have fun.

FOWC with Fandango — Not

Fandango22 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to December 7, 2021 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “not.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.