Blogtortionism

I am now officially a published columnist. My column entitled “Skeptic Tank” comes out on Thursdays in the Manila Times. Get your copies today. This is my first article I wrote for them.

Blogs, in case you haven’t joined the information age, are open books in cyberspace that nobody wants to read… until now. With everyone from legitimate writers looking for a no-holds-barred outlet to grammatically challenged attention seeking youths getting on the blogwagon, these web journals have become the popular source of uncensored, uncut, and unedited information. A lot of bloggers even make a decent living just by being popular and getting thousand of hits a day without ever kissing the filthy behind of a publisher. But, as with any powerful medium, some blogs have become weapons of mass destruction, e.g., the one by an Aussie who allegedly got robbed by his ex-lover who allegedly got assaulted and is allegedly part of the socialite circle of alleged recreational drug users (I don’t want to be sued for libel).

After long and laborious research, which included accidentally visiting adult websites featuring midgets and senior citizens looking for whatever they can get, I discovered the secret formula for accumulating the most visits on your blogsite without having to resort to nudity. Here are the easy steps to making your big splash in the blogosphere:

1. Pick a juicy target for your tirade – members of high society, celebrities, politicians, or any person who loves the limelight.

2. Give your target(s) a catchy name like the Channel Cougars or the Prada Posse or Hermes Hags (too bad Gucci Gang is already taken). The cheesier the moniker the better.

3. Connect your target(s) to a scandal involving sex, money, violence, drugs, deportation, obesity, bribery, assault, and any element of your favorite telenovela. Keep the conflict simple but expound on the drama.

4. Connect anyone remotely related or involved to your target, e.g. a passerby who just happened to be in a photo with your target.

5. Upload supporting documents like compromising photos exposing fatty tissues or lack of fatty tissues, letters from lawyers, email correspondence, etc. This will give your site more credibility.

6. Allow comments. Don’t allow comments. Then allow comments again. When you suppress the water from a hose, the pressure just gets stronger.

7. Throw a party at a posh club like “Emba” to boycott your blog. This will legitimize and pique more interest for your site.

Once you get around 60,000 hits a day, sell ad spaces and rake in the cash, but remember to save some for your legal fees and personal bodyguards because there will be collateral damage and death threats. Some people will, as Mariah Carey sings in her Elvis-record-breaking hit, hunt you down. And that is the beauty and folly of living in a digital democracy. The truth can set you free but it can also set you back $70,000, allegedly.