The Dennis the Peasant Blogging System™: Part Four

Part Four: Your Blogging Persona

As you remember, in Part Three, you learned how to develop an effective blog site theme for your blog. The next step you must take is to develop an equally effective blog persona. Do not underestimate the power of a good blog persona. In order to properly sell your blog’s theme, it is essential that your blog persona compliments and enhances that theme. What is a blog persona, you ask?

Well, basically it’s a pack of lies. Lies about you.

Always remember that in the blogosphere, reality is your enemy. Actually, always remember reality is your enemy, period. This is because in reality your 45, 20 lbs. overweight, wearing a bad toupee, dressing in polyester, driving a Chevy Chevette and relying on me to guide you to a fast buck. In real life, teenagers laugh at you, waiters ignore you and local merchants ask if you need directions to Kmart.

The great thing about the blogosphere, though, is that you can be just about anyone you want to be. And as long as you keep your real identity a closely guarded secret, chances are you’ll be able to convince a substantial portion of your readership at you really are 32, winning triathlons, have a modeling career to fill out your free time from the neurosurgery practice, buy Gucci and drive a 2006 Mercedes Benz S500.

Oh yeah, and you’re dating beautiful women.

Beautiful women that you don’t have to blow up first...

By now it should be obvious that the last thing you want to do is present yourself honestly to your audience. One of the keys to blogging for big cash is to convince your audience that you are what they would want to be, if they could be someone other than the loser they are. You cannot do this by being open and honest about yourself: Not that many people want to look like Buddy Hackett, sound like Curly Howard, think like Britney Spears and write like Sean Penn.

Remember: If you were a city, you’d be Cleveland.

Therefore, always keep the following rules in mind when you are “in character”.

Lie About Your Possessions – You may own a monkeyshit brown 1977 Chevy Chevette, but your readers would be all the more happy if you drove something you could never afford in real life. Something like an Audi S4 with the 4.2 liter V-8. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never even seen one of those puppies, what is important is that you give your audience a vicarious thrill by referencing said automobile... Just keep the comments cryptic and no one will ever know the truth of the matter.

For example: Yesterday, you drove to the 7-11 to buy some milk with the food stamps you found under the sofa, and the Chevette gave off a large puff of black smoke, rattled loudly and then stopped running in the middle of the busiest intersection in town.

Now you could write that up factually, but the only thing it might induce in your readers is pity. And you don’t want or need pity from them (you get that from family and friends), what you want is cold, hard cash. So what you need to do is tailor this event to project a certain aura about yourself. To do that, you write something like this:

Yesterday was not a good day. I was doing a cool 105 down I-670 on the way to a sit-down about a major investment opportunity that’s popped up, and wouldn’t you know it, my 2005 Audi S4 throws a rod... and with less that 4,000 miles on the odo. As much as I love that car’s road manners, I’ve got to say it doesn’t seem to be as substantial as some the other Teutonic offerings I’ve owned in the past. I sensed the same thing in the 1999 Mercedes Benz E320 I owned, which is why I went to the S4 in the first place. Oh, to have my old 911 back... Now there was a great car!

See how much more interesting that is? And look how you come off – dashing, sophisticated, and rich – all the things you aren’t. Also note that this is just the sort of post that will generate lots of comments from your readers – all of whom are driving Hyundai Elantras or whatnot. Like you, they all want to appear dashing, sophisticated and rich... and will therefore start commenting about cars they’ve never been in either.

Lie About Your Career – I’m sure you’ve acquired some pretty interesting anecdotes while working as an Assistant Manager on the night shift at the Sioux City Taco Bell, but that’s not the sort of thing that brings profits from the blogosphere. You have two choices in approaching your pseudo-career. Here they are:

1. Be as elliptical as possible about what you actually do, thereby ensuring that you aren’t providing enough information for you readers to come to the conclusion that you work the night shift at a Taco Bell. Or anything else, for that matter. If today’s big adventure was accidently dropping a case of taco shells into the toilet in the employee bathroom, write it up as something like... Today was a toughie. One of my biggest commodities positions took a sharp drop. Unfortunately, I didn’t see it coming and couldn’t unload it before it crashed. It’s going to take some time to clean this one up... See what I mean? Based on that, absolutely nobody could be really sure of what you actually do for a living.

2. Pretend you’re a lawyer. Lawyers think they sit on the left shoulder of God, can’t shut up, and usually don’t have the faintest idea of what they are talking about. You can say all the stupid sort of shit you normally would, and all you have to do is pepper it with a few things like... I can’t believe they gave Alito a ‘well qualified’. Never would have happened if I’d been on the committee – or – You know, if any of the Assistant Attorney Generals had any balls, they’d RICO Bush and Cheney.

That’s all it takes. Just drop a comment here and there, and you can have your readership believing just about anything about what you “do for a living”.

Lie About Your Intelligence – Obviously, this is a no-brainer: You’re trying to make a living blogging. In order to make the big bucks, you have to convince the blogosphere that you Know It All. There are two easy ways to suggest to your readers that you’re much smarter than they are.

The first is anecdotal. Every now and then you write something like this:

Boy, I haven’t been that embarrassed since the time I slipped on the stage, fell on my Phi Beta Kappa key and damn near broke my coccyx. It’s a good thing you can only be a college class president once.

The second is by phrase. By this I mean you invest in one or more foreign language phrase books. Then you can write something like this:

Obviously John Kerry would like to stake out series of stronger positions on National Security than he did in 2004, but post hoc ergo propter hoc, this would just alienate the Far Left.

It doesn’t matter that post hoc ergo propter hoc means “They’re serving horse lips on toast for dinner” in Latin. What matters is that using foreign language phrases suggests you once actually learned a foreign language and are smart enough to remember how to use it.

And remember: Never, ever, ever resort to facts and/or analysis...

Lie About Your Education – Nobody really needs to know that you graduated from the Grapevine, Texas Community College with a 2 year degree in interior decorating and a D+ grade average. For all your readers know, you’re a lawyer. Right? So you need to compliment that illusion with the additional illusion that you were educated at a prestigious institution of higher education...

The great thing is this one is that it is the easiest thing to fake of all. You don’t have write anything other than something like this:

Oh, I see Yale admitted a former Taliban spokesman. They’ll never see another penny from me...

Or this:

Oh, I see the Harvard mafia finally chased off Larry Summers. They’ll never see another dime from me...

That’s all you have to do for your readers to assume that you graduated from Harvard and/or Yale. This that great or what? Just make sure to avoid providing dates... say things like... Well, I started at Yale a couple of years after I healed up from my tour in ‘Nam. It gives people a general idea of when you went there, but leaves you with enough weasel room to fend off inquiries from readers who actually did go to Harvard or Yale.

Not that having Harvard grads reading your site should be a big worry on your part...

Lie About Your Personal Prejudices – Unlike everyone else in journalism and/or the blogosphere, you really are objective. Always assume the loftiest tone of moral infallibility as you can muster. Remember: You take positions based on your knowledge, expertise and ethics... and never just because you hate people who are different than you or because you don’t have a clue as to the issues involved. This is because you must be able to convince your readers that you would never stoop the sort of ignorant, uninformed hatred you decry in politicians, pundits and other bloggers. In the business this is called Doing a Malkin, after the master of this particular technique, Michelle Malkin.

The three rules to a successful Malkin are as follows:

1. Makes sure your ignorant, uniformed hatred is decently shrouded in some sort of faux outrage – call it moral, ethical or whatever – just make sure your bigotry is presented with just enough bourgeois respectability so as to not discomfort your readers.

For example, you do not say this:

We can’t have fucking Sand Niggers and Moose Limbs running our ports because they’re all Ko-ran jabberin’ terrorists who want to kill Christian men and diddle our women.

That’s too crude.

Except if you’re running a Little Green Footballs clone, that is.

Rather, you say:

We can’t have Arabs running our ports because they are demonstrably unreliable as allies. This isn’t about race or religion, it’s about NATIONAL SECURITY.

Oh sure, it really is all about Arabs being Sand Niggers and you never will provide any facts or figures to back this up – which your readers already know – but you’ve given everyone, including yourself, an out...

2. When you are called out by other bloggers for being an ignorant bigot, get indignant. Righteously indignant. Say things like:

Obviously, some people value political correctness over NATIONAL SECURITY.

Or:

How can I be a bigot? People send me emails calling me a ‘Gook’. I’m not a bigot; I’m a fiercely independent and honest minority. And I get called names because of it.

Helpful Hint: If you can get on the right side of the race card, do so. The last thing you want to be is a simple old American WASP bitching about People of Color. To get away with serious minority bashing, you need to lay claim to being at least part SOTW (Something Other Than White), but only if the OTW part is one of the 'good' colors. Yellow and red seem to be hot these days, although among young white males, black is very 'in'. So, if you are not a minority who happens to be on the right side of the race card, then acquire some claim to that sort of racial heritage. If you are unsure as to how to do that, contact Prof. Ward Churchill in Boulder. He has an excellent audio course on the subject that is fairly priced.

Another one you can try is this:

Oh, I see. Now we’re all bigots... Anyone who raises tough questions about NATIONAL SECURITY must be a BIGOT, because the Washington ELITISTS don’t want to deal with the tough questions on NATIONAL SECURITY.

This is the old “If I’m a bigot, then everyone must be a bigot” ploy. If you are female, try to sound like you’re PMSing to the point of being unhinged. Guys, try to sound like the prostate’s been cranky lately. This establishes your deep indignation that anyone would question your moral authority, and saves you the time and trouble of trying to justify the crap you’ve written.

3. Make sure you pick on a minority that nobody likes.

Blogging Tip: It is important to remember that each side of the political spectrum has different rules for indulging in mindless bigotry:

If you’re a Republican and/or Conservative, you can be pretty explicit about hating unpopular minorities. For example, hating Muslims carries absolutely no penalty whatsoever. Same goes with Arabs. If you live in the Southwest, Latinos are fair game. You can still harsh on Blacks, just make sure you do it indirectly... Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are readily available and slow moving targets, for example. Attacks on sexual preferences are purely a personal matter and shouldn’t bother too many folks.

If you’re a Democratic and/or Liberal blogger, remember that you, too, can indulge in mindless bigotry. The key is to do so in service of “the cause”. Normally you should spend about 95% of your time (a) pointing out how bigoted Republicans and Conservatives are, and (b) pointing out how tolerant you are. However, when the opportunity arises for Democrats to score points by bashing groups for their religious affiliation, nationality, cultural heritage, etc., etc., feel free to do so. So by all means, bash Muslims and Arabs when necessary. How about Negroes and Latinos who vote Republican? They’re Sambos and – gasp – Catholics!! Just make it clear to your fellow Democrats and/or Liberals that this could get us votes... That will silence any criticism.

Final Thoughts: As you can readily see, the keys to establishing a successful blogging persona are a combination of deceit and hypocrisy in the service of shameless self-aggrandizement. You can do this.

Coming Up Next: Part Five: Writing Posts

Now that you’ve finished the first four parts of the Dennis the Peasant Blogging System™, you have your subject, your audience and your persona all in place. You are ready to start writing posts. But not just any posts... We’re talking great posts! Stay tuned!

Comments

[TmjUtah]

Dennis...

Brutal. Just brutal.

BTW, Christmas is going to be in Youngstown for Team Utah this year. I'll drop you a line when we know specifics.

So you can, you know, open up a spot for my Gulf V at your airport...

[FabioC.]

You'll be gettimg fatwas from all sides soon, Dennis.

It's the price for being truly indipendent...

[Tom Scudder]

Note that you CAN be of an "unpopular" color (that is, brown), as long as you are also a vehement critic of other brown people. See also: How to be a Muslim Reformer in 7 easy steps.

[Dan from Madison]

This series of posts just 100% kicks ass. That's all I have to say.

[joe]

I'll have you know that monkeyshit brown wasn't available for my chev...I mean porche.

[salvage]

Remember: If you were a city, you’d be Cleveland.

Oh my, that needs to be on a bumper sticker.

[David Thomson]

Taco Bell? That’s not in the least bit accurate. I’m an assistant manager at a MacDonald’s. Moreover, I work during the daytime. Only new hires are assigned to the night shift. Doesn’t twenty years with the same company count for something?

[richard mcenroe]

Cleveland, hell — When I get me meds I'm aiming to trade up to Scranton...

[Ethan]

1. I wish I'd said that.

2. Another quick way to spiff up your (I mean "your" in the collective sense) otherwise boring blog posts is to tack on a foreign (read: not in the US) hotspot to whatever boring thing you did.

Wrong: I got my back hair waxed today.

Right: I got my back hair waxed today. In London!

See?

[Jim]

"Normally you (Democrats) should spend about 95% of your time (a) pointing out how bigoted Republicans and Conservatives are, and (b) pointing out how tolerant you are"

while (c) ratcheting up the racist, religious, class and regional invective against "white, Taliban-Christian, Walmart-shopping and stupid flyover America", and (d) gender-bashing men for their patriarchal schemes to repress white educated women in the West.

To me, that enlightened tolerance toward fellow man to which Dems lay claim doesn't simply look bogus upon their racist vilification of conservative blacks and neo-con Jews, but, to prove I'm not a completely mindless partisan,

Down with those withering old isolationist paleo-cons like WFB!! (I'm only an ageist.)

[vaara]

Don't overlook the importance of developing codewords and catchphrases and using them ad nauseam, I mean so much that you risk inducing emesis, I mean making unsuspecting readers blow chunks. TLAs are particularly handy for fostering that Instant In-Group Feeling.

No normal person could possibly comprehend the sentence "LLL MSM moonbats are all mooselimb-loving dhjimmies, just like St. Pancake!" Or, for that matter: "IOKIYAR. Holden gets a pony!" But there are truly disturbing numbers of people who know exactly what those things mean.

[richard mcenroe]

20 lbs overweight? I'll take it.

And NOBODY makes a toupee this color...

[Roger]

Then try a glued-on fedora. In cyberland, we pretend it looks nice and natural and not at all like I'm hiding anything.

[MJ]

Hey Dennis, has Glenn Reynolds signed up to a better version of Pajamas (and more proffesional and left wing)?

http://lgfwatch.blogspot.com/2006/03/comment-is-free-apparently.html

[neil]

Is this series getting a better reaction than the Somalians did, or are you just out of things to say about them?

[DennisThePeasant]

Neil-

Neither.

[richard mcenroe]

I always thought "post hoc ergo propter hoc" meant "I can't take you flying because I pawned my propeller by mail..."

[richard mcenroe]

By the way, permit me to say a word in defense of stylish chappos, as whut I has been wearin' for years...

It ain't the hat, it's the head, baby...

[Jim]

OK, now, that started off like Butch Cassidy and ended up like Austin Powers. Am I even close?

Sorry about the hatful comment. No doubt you wear them well.

[Fits]

Knew it was time to leave Sioux City when the entire town went into an uproar after Taco Bell began keeping it's doors open to the ungodly hour of 10 PM. It WAS propitious that the coveted Native American Chair Study Head became available here in Gainesville, Fl when it did or I'd still be relegated to participating in all of those dreary Siouxland Back To The Siouxs focus groups for a measly six-figure recompense.

[Mike]

Dennis -- Where can I download the DtP Blogging System, and what operating systems can it be installed on? Also, are there any spell-checking plug-ins for the DtP-BS? The built-in one is clearly defective.

[Mike]

It's no accident that the airport code at Sioux City is SUX.

[Bane]

So, telling my readers I am chronically and proudly unemployed was a mistake? Dang. Hope I don't have to refund all that money they send me.