How to get traffic to your blog...

ANSWER: nobody really knows.

Hell, I'm just broke, nerdy, and curious. I'm no business mogul. I can't tell you twelve ways to revolutionize your stock options, your daily output, your number of unique visitors...I just wanted to know how ads on websites worked in general, and AdSense didn't really seem that bad to me. I dove in and just chalked it up to a learning experience and something that might be fun on the side. But apparently, to everyone else, ads on "amateur" blogs are the corpulent wart on Satan's fiery O-ring. So sorry, Trent. Go back to protecting your soul patch goatee from all that pesky soy latte foam at your local altar of ecommerce adulation.

That's what gets me. Blogging as a new profession. It's a double-edged sword. Is it cool? Yeah, it really is. I've met some REALLY cool people in the past by blogging. It seems when money enters into it, like everything, it becomes as backstabbing, cutthroat, and petty as the sandbox in your local kindergarten play yard.

I mean, come on. How many sycophantic, pretentious, faux-intellectuals do we need on the internet blathering about inane bullshit? Really? I know what a lot of these self-righteous twits might have been called not ten years ago...wannabe writers. But now, oh now, heaven forbid we utter anything against the high and mighty expert on how to write a diary and get paid for it. So sorry, excuse me, I am but a mortal here.

The list of things you should or should not have on your blog fluctuates like the conversation about what part of the egg to eat used to. One minute lists are good, the next lists are bad, one minute ads are good, the next ads are bad, one minute, write with a human, every-man kind of voice, the next, write as an imitation Pulitzer journalist. Oh, New Yorker, here I come! You'll all bow before my wit and smarm one day, I tells ya!

The world cries out to me every day, a whole horde of people, ignorant, pretentious, you name it, and do you know what they all say? "I AM IMPORTANT!! I am far more important than ANYONE else. You all must back away and shrink out of my peripheral. If you dare approach me, you must have the utmost reverence for me, the all-high singular mind! I am human, hear me roar!" I swear, all this purple language, bluetooth use, and coffee-drenched ego are gettin me a little hot. I might have to take a cold shower...

Man, I wish everyone would get over themselves. For the record, I claim to be a fat, nerdy, out-of-work art student who has nothing to show for his life but a mountain of debt. That's who I "think I am." I'm no one important. I do not claim to be better than anyone, but I sure as hell know stupidity when I see it.

Perhaps I'll dive back into the antimatter to escape the forthcoming onslaught of negative repercussion, harsh words, biting judgment, and all that mess. Later on, friends.