I realize now that in my effort to drive traffic to my site, I said some pretty hurtful things yesterday. I'd like to take them all back, because it didn't actually do a damn thing for increasing my hit count, as it turned out. Do global warming deniers and homophobic people not use Google? What's up with that?
Anyway, I shouldn't have said the things I said about vlogs being big, unwatchable piles of video crap (or whatever I said -- it had to be something along those lines). I haven't actually given them a fair shake at all, really. I actually have one friend whose vlog looks very interesting, even though I've only watched bits of two of her 80+ entries, and I was mostly just watching them to give her my opinion of her voice. She's recorded herself through her entire transition, which I think is amazingly bold of her, and her transformation has been amazing, so it's fascinating at least to watch her metamorphosis before your eyes. You can watch it yourself here, if you like. I couldn't have recorded myself early on, let alone had the courage to put it up for the world to see. Pretty cool.
I did keep this blog, of course, and I didn't exactly hold back a lot in the early days, but it was actually pretty anonymous for the first few months at least. Still, I suppose putting this stuff up here was brave in a way, and maybe some of it's useful to others. I hope so.
I concluded a long time ago that pretty much every trans woman has a blog, and although I used to follow several, and still occasionally check in on a few, I find most of them a bit tedious after a while. Mine has been useful to me, and I'm glad to read about others with similar experiences, but most trans blogs are too familiar to really hold my attention. I don't go back on my own entries too often, either, but I'm sometimes glad they're there, to remind me. The whole transition itself is already fading away like a distant memory.
I don't feel like I really have anything much more to work through or document here, but I do plan to still occasionally post something. Don't expect a lot of soul-baring going forward, and don't expect a whole lot of political commentary. No need for the former, and the latter is done to death already. So I'll probably just post whatever I feel like, when I feel like it, and if people want to read it, cool. If not, I'll stop.
But so far my little experiment with making money as a professional writer is paying off. 26 cents in ad revenues in the first day! At this rate, I might make as much as almost $100 this year. Okay, I better get more interesting if I'm gonna quit my regular job for this (note: I'm not), and it looks like stirring up controversy doesn't work as well for me as for, say, Rush Limbaugh.
Sorry for that.
But the stuff I said about not letting transgender people use the bathroom, I do not apologize for. Creeps me out, sorry.
Posts
Transition Day
3 weeks ago
4 comments:
If you want more traffic you have to make outrageous claims on a regular basis, not just on a one-shot deal.
People incensed by what you say will say they hate your blog, but they will return like lemmings just to find out what you said this time.
Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck have created their fame based upon this queer aspect of human nature. Most people who listen to their shows don't agree with the viewpoints expressed, they just enjoy being aggravated, the same way some people enjoy being scared by horror movies and roller coasters.
Did not see your blog yesterday, but actually vlogs are pretty useful in the Deaf community.
Hi Kara,
Been a while. I didn't say vlogs weren't useful, I said they suck.
But if you're talking about useful for learning sign language, well, then you're really saying that video is useful. No argument on that. Other than that, I don't see what's so useful about video to a deaf person (unless they can't read), and I don't see why vlogs would be superior to, say, instructional videos or television programs with embedded sign language translations, which are not vlogs and which things that I assume they must exist.
Vlogs are maybe as useful to illiterate people as blogs are to the literate, which is to say, not very useful at all, by and large.
I'll grant that my blog seems to be of interest to some people, and there are some good ones out there that I have found interesting from time to time, but as a whole, blogs and vlogs are dull.
Anyway, I'm trying to sort out what I want to do with mine. It's hard to come up with interesting things to write about without spilling details of my personal life that I no longer wish to share in a public forum.
That's really the subtext in all of this.
Haven't visited your blog in a long time, Suzanne. Here's another hit for you.
Keep writing and don't take down your old posts.
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