The Dennis the Peasant Blogging System™: Part Three

Part Three: Your Blog’s Theme

Now that you know who you’re blogging at, you need to develop a blog site theme for your blog.

This is critical.

Understand that it is not enough to blog about “politics”. You have to have a consistent viewpoint to use in writing posts about the political issues and events of the day. This is because the people coming to your web site are not interested in gathering information or being challenged to think. They’re interested in being entertained.

But just what does that mean? “Being entertained”? Well, when it comes to all things political, “being entertained” means, for the most part, being pandered to. Let’s face it, as a blog reader you want to read certain types of posts, which can easily be listed as follows:

1. Those blogs which articulate an opinion you’ve already formulated.
2. Those blogs which justify an opinion you’ve already formulated.
3. Those blogs that prove your opinion is right.
4. Those blogs that vilify and/or mock those who have a differing opinion.

And as a blogger, these 4 types of posts are what you are going to be writing. Now I know numbers 1 through 3 sound dangerously close to ‘sophisticated, fact-based analysis’, but don’t worry: In the hands of an amateur, there is always the danger that posts can get cluttered up with fact and logic... But after you’ve learned the Dennis the Peasant Blogging System™, you’ll know how to avoid that sort of pitfall.

Helpful Hint: We cover content-free posting in Part 26.

Why Your Blog Site Theme Is Important

For the vast majority of people, a key part of being entertained is being able to avoid surprises. This is why a television series can run for years and still score spectacular ratings. Take Sex in the City, for example. Now I’ve only watched it twice (both times on an airplane over the Atlantic) so I’m sure I’ve missed some of the variety and nuance, but it was pretty clear, even after a total of two viewings, that what you were going to get with that show was a story about good looking 30-something women having fun with sex while living in a city.

And that never changed. That was the premise of every show.

What is important to remember for our purposes here is not what happened, but what didn’t happen. This was part of the key to the success of the show. What kind of things didn’t happen? Well, Sarah Jessica Parker didn’t catch a dose of the Clap or suffer a date rape, to name just two. You see, you put stuff like that into the show and you’re off the air halfway through Season One.

That’s because audiences don’t like surprises.

In the case of Sex in the City, the audience is there for, well, sex in the city. They expected something light, breezy, and fun. That’s the way they want to think of sex when they are being entertained. What they do not want are real-life complexities and complications: Things like V.D. and unwanted pregnancies and marriage, for example.

So it is with sex, so it is with blogs.

That’s why it is so important to have a blog site theme, and to stick to it. People are going to your blog looking for the same old thing every day... It’s effortless, safe and gratifying. Remember, you’re writing for people living in cubicles; these are not the sort of folks who are likely get up from their desk one Tuesday and say, Fuck this, I’m going to go climb the Matterhorn. They want safe, above all else.

How To Develop A Theme

It is surprisingly easy to develop a successful blog site theme as long as you remember these two rules:

1. You must be able to express your entire theme in five words or less, and
2. You must hate at least two separate and distinct categories of human beings and/or things.

Helpful Hint: Here’s a template that many of the leading bloggers have used to become successful:

I hate [insert Demographic/Thing #1 here] and [insert Demographic/Thing #2 here].

Although there are plenty of other ways to develop a theme, I have to say that the above template is where just about every blogger wants to start. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First of all, if you use this:

I hate [insert Demographic/Thing here].

You run the risk of being labeled simplistic. You also run the risk of becoming monotonous. People, even those with very simple minds, don’t like to think of themselves as simple. Don’t even suggest that they are. Besides, it takes a certain amount of skill – which you probably don’t possess – to pound on just one type of person with enough variety to keep things interesting. Like a pitcher, you need a good second pitch to have a chance at winning the game every start.

On the other hand, though, you don’t want to get too complicated. Here’s a perfect example of a blog site theme that is just that:

I hate [post-modern deconstructionists].

This is too complicated for general use. It’s too complicated for two reasons. First, the most of the general public has no idea what a post-modern deconstructionist is. You would have to explain it. Which means you’d have to understand it... Second, post-modern deconstructionists don’t understand any of it either. Alan Sokol proved that. In fact, most people who have looked into the matter are of the opinion that being unintelligible is the whole point of both post-modernism and deconstructionist philosophy.

This is not the sort of stuff that wins large audiences. If it was, both you and your readers would be able to correctly answer this question:

Was Jacques Derrida a French mime?

Get my point?

Another thing you want to avoid is being too narrow. Here’s an example:

I hate [Nigerian bankers].

This is too narrow largely because not everyone has had their bank account cleaned out after responding to an email from someone claiming to be a Nigerian banker wanting a safe place to deposit $35,000,000. That you did respond, and that you did get hosed, should probably remain our little secret. It will be hard for your audience to share in your hatred without either a similar experience or an explanation. In this case, an explanation is something you do not want to provide. Trust me. You’ll learn why in Part Four: Developing Your Persona.

Case Study: Four Examples of the Dennis the Peasant Blogging System™ Blog Site Theme Template.

Let’s look at four well known high traffic blogs and see just how the Theme Template works for them. The four sites are:

1. Daily KOS
2. Michelle Malkin
3. Little Green Footballs
4. Oliver Willis

Here are the templates for each:

1. Daily KOS:

I hate [Republicans/Conservatives/Right Wingers] and [whoever else neccessary to advance my political/personal/business agenda].

2. Michelle Malkin:

I hate [Democrats/Liberals/Progressives/Leftists] and [Arabs/Muslims].

3. Little Green Footballs:

I hate [Arabs/Muslims] and [the religion of Islam].

4. Oliver Willis:

I hate [Republicans/Conservatives/Right Wingers] and [racism*].

* Which means “White people who criticize me”.

Now go to each of those sites, and read a couple of days worth of posts...

.........................

See? Just about every post at each site conforms to the template listed above. And because these four bloggers keep it simple, straightforward and consistent, they get MEGA TRAFFIC! So get to work on that theme... Because you have to have your theme finished and ready to go before moving on to Part Four: Developing Your Persona.

Comments

[Steve H.]

When I feel like I'm becoming famous for being mean to other bloggers, I come here to remind myself that someone else is even worse than I am.

[Lou Minatti]

"what you were going to get with that show was a story about good looking 30-something women having fun with sex while living in a city."

You blew it big time, pal. I'm with you on everything except this. Who the hell (other than Matthew Broderick) thinks Sarah Jessica Parker is hot? Maybe Mr. Ed thinks she's hot.

You have lost ALL CREDIBILITY, Dennis.

[FabioC.]

Shit, on my blog I try to do scientific and technological divulgation... it means I'm out of the big league?

[Gandalf the Purple]

It pains me to take this seriously, but your "Sex in the City" analogy doesn't completely hold up. Some of the unforeseen complications you mention did come up during the show. Miranda got pregnant accidentally and did (eventually) marry the father, something she resisted quite a bit. Charlotte got married, divorced, and (I'm pretty sure) married again. Even Samantha switched teams for a little while. Only Carrie, as the main character, managed to avoid such developments.

I think it's fairer to say you can put in such developments, but only after you've established your overall tone. At that point, your fanbase should come with you.

[Mr. Ed]

Look, pal, not only is Sarah Jessica Parker hot as a firecracker but Matthew Broderick is an American Olivier, and if you show up in my stable, you get a hoof to the groin.

[richard mcenroe]

Yer a cheezy fraud, Peasant!

You left out the most versatile and potentially profitable theme of all:

THE (DEMOGRAPHIC/THEME) MENACE!

By going broader than the D/T specific itself, you can tie the D/T M to ANYTHING you want to rant about, by citing its insidious (indeed, maybe even invisible) effect on everything else!

[DennisThePeasant]

Note that we will cover "How to write posts that allow readers to wander off onto tangents that have nothing to do with the post itself" in Part 13.

[richard mcenroe]

Oh, and Sarah Jessica Parker is a hot tamale, but I prefer her blue jean commercials with Lenny Kravitz...

[Sam]

That proves my whole point about Brokeback Mountain.

[Sam]

I meant that to follow Dennis' comment about off-topic comments but it's funnier where it wound up.

[I are erudite or could have been]

What's not to like about the recent "poor little Larry Summers" sub-theme of Hating the Left, aka Dubai- whazzat? Although nobody actually cares about a left-of-center university prez being ousted by a further left professoriat, this issue is perfect blog fodder that keeps on giving: it affords bloggers and some of their commenters the opportunity to flaunt their professor or Ivy League credentials and others the chance to diss the universities that rejected them. Great eye-rolling fun!

[Tillerman]

I am going to start a blog with the theme of "I hate bloggers who write about blogging and bloggers who are anonymous".

[thibaud]

Don't forget the community aspect, which is basically the politics version of dirty chat. By regurgitating the Nefarious-X-and-Y-Watch meme, the blogger attracts a reliable crew of regulars who can be counted on to snipe, swipe, smack and whack at X and Y with commentary that would, were their identities not hidden likely cause them to be fired and/or divorced, on grounds of sheer stupidity and ugliness.

Another way to think of blogging is the political equivalent of professional wrestling. The difference between Kos and Johnson, or Malkin and Marshall or DU and Powerline, is trivial. The real distinction is between the blogger/barkers and those people who do real research and real writing-- ie, dig, sift, analyze, query, confirm, test, confirm again, and then edit their writing again, and again, and several times more, before they publish. The blogosphere's hackers have only enhanced my appreciation for those real writers, ie, the better-educated and more responsible journalists. Such as John Burns, Anne Applebaum, even people whose opinions I (often) detest such as Anatol Lieven or Krugman, or those whose views I occasionally detest, such as Hitchens, or whose prose style leaves me cold, such as Tom Friedman.

These people are WRITERS. Real writing is HARD. It requires revision, research, reflection. Very few people can do it at all, let alone do it well, let alone do it consistently well over many years. But anyone can blog, and does.

[thibaud]

Full disclosure: the pro wrestling analogy above was lifted from Calvin Trillin, a real writer who first used it ~20 years ago when commenting, hilariously, about the rise of the "Crossfire" and McLaughlin Group format for TV political commentary. Isn't the blathersphere really just the same kind of hokum? Though with audience participation in the circle jerk, and without any kind of business value to advertisers.

[Guesst]

Speaking of going off on tangents, here's one now:

The MSM and some of New Media, have finally caught up (or on) to the points cited here a few weeks ago regarding Eller and Co. initiating the big antiDPW crusade by using Schumer to generate the controversy.

They are just now reporting on it, plus noticing that Schumer's wife heads the Department of Transportation in NY.

New Old Media, Baby!

[Cameron]

As for the REASON for hating (fill in the blank), there are only 2 acceptable ones: they're EVIL and/or they're MEAN. Anything else requires an explanation, which defeats the purpose of content-free blogging. It also makes it much easier to pull the plug on pesky commenters (assuming one is foolish enough to allow comments) by immediately turning them into EVIL TROLLS.

[DennisThePeasant]

Cameron-

We teach you how to convince your audience that the 'other side' is evil and mean without resorting to facts in Part 62.

[sonic]

You missed out picking a political figure at random then adding the word "watch" at the end.

[Bush Ate My Soul...]

Dude.... and to think I just added "DennisThePeasantWatch" to my BlogSiteTheme yesterday.

I am like... so totally prescient.

[sonic]

I have trumped you mate with DennisThePeasantWatchWatch

a must read for friends and enemies of our host.

[Oliver]

I call people who are actually racists racist, I could care less what they say about me.