Blog stalking guilt

I have a confession to make. I obsessively read several blogs written by people I find extremely irritating. And don't you dare think that you are one of those people. I am not talking about anyone on my bloglist to the side of this commentary. Or anyone who has ever commented on my blog or anyone I know in real life. If you are reading this and you say to yourself, "Gee, she must be talking about me" then you know for sure that I AM NOT. This means you, people whose names start with J, S, K, D, M, A, T, etc... who actually read my blog. I guarantee that none of the irritating people whose blogs I read out of some sort of deranged sense of indignancy and self-righteousness has ever read mine. These are people I do not know even cyberly. I stumbled upon them through blog-surfing and connections from places on the web.

Do any of you do this?

Without going into detail or giving links, here is why:

One I read because I want to validate my reasons for not homeschooling my children. (Note to the person who might read this who does homeschool her children and lives quite far south of me, I read your blog to make myself feel guilty for not homeschooling my children. You seem to be doing a good job of it, and it's not making you crazy) I also read it to get my daily recommended eye-rolling exercise as this person puts REALLY HUGE fake flowers on her daughter's head and photographs her. I mean REALLY HUGE. To the point of nearly eclipsing the girl's own head.

One I read because I can't believe a person can be that vocal about her own beauty and charm and monetary riches. She has a very high opinion of her own writing and humor too. But I find her humor crass. (and yet I continued to read it mostly to say to myself, "I would NEVER write about THAT!) This person has only very recently gone private, though, and now I can't read her blog. Pout.

One I read because I believe she is a real-life incarnation of Seriously So Blessed (a Mormon satire blog), down to her use of {{ }} instead of regular parentheses, relentless use of cutesy words like "preggo" and "kiddos," overcapitalization of the word "me," over-apostrophization of any word ending in "s,"and vapid commentary on a life made better through crafting, shopping, and girls'-nights-out. The language usage person in me loves to feel grammatically superior and this blog feeds that hunger (even though I cringe at my own self when I make up words. See previous blog post title containing the word "exercism." I also choose to use non-standard usage for effect or for whimsy. So I can be quite a hypocrite when it comes to usage snobbery).

No I won't give you links. Find your own irritating blogs to read. Or maybe that's why you're here? In that case, :P

(Edited to add: yes, I feel guilty about this. I need to be nicer.)

Comments

Stephanie said…
I occasionally stumble onto other random blogs and think, "Are you kidding me?" My favorites are the all-natural moms who drink placenta smoothies when their babies are born. Wow. To each her own.
ICK.

(when asked by a delivery nurse if I wanted to see the placenta after birthing one of my babies, I thought to myself "Why would I want to look at that? I have a baby to look at." Out loud, I politely declined)
Jen said…
I have definitely come across blogs that are a bit over the top with self-congratulation and bragging. Or there's the ones that are plain mean. Someone on one of my photography forums linked to a blog dedicated to bashing published scrapbookers and photographers, and it was really vile and got personal. The thing that made me even sicker about it was that there were hundreds of followers who contributed their own nasty insults. It made me sad to see that there are so many negative people (ahem...women) out there so willing to condemn others.

I try not to sound braggy on my blog. I really just try to report the facts, ma'am. I do like taking pictures of my kids, so I'm sure that can get annoying sometimes. That's tough though because I am what I am, a mom who loves to see her kids in pictures:)

And, EWWW about placenta, smoothie drinkers.
Like I said, Jen, you are not one of those who I roll my eyes at. I do understand the picture-taking of one's own children (and posting of said pictures). My eye-rolling comes because of the HUGE flower. Really, if you want to take pictures of your cute kid, don't you want people to be drawn to the kid's face without the distraction of behemoth flora? Little flowers, ok. Head-sized, outrageously pink faux dahlias (no matter how much I like dahlias) please no.
Karie said…
Sara, at the moment *I* feel guilty for not homeschooling my kids, since we're on a newborn hiatus.

But I would rather you didn't feel guilty while reading my blog--you can feel superior that you're not so arrogant as to believe you can educate better than the local school district (which I CAN and they make it EASY, which speaks more to the school district's idiocy than anything else, but that's a post for a different day). And enjoy the baby pictures!

But I know I don't irritate you--I'm also arrogant enough to think I'm that nice. :D
Karie--no arrogance detected. And that's too bad that the local school district is that bad. For the most part, I like our school district, and for that I am grateful. I think I would not be a particularly organized educator of my own children in my own home, and my children would get on my nerves too much and I would get on their nerves too much as well.

Your pictures of your little boy almost make me want another one!
Jessie said…
I DO THE SAME THING!!!

I could basically copy and paste your paragraph about the third blog you read as the reason why I read a particular blog. The girl was one of my very first college roommates and left me very hurt and bitter. I get a fair amount of satisfaction when I read her blog full of phonetically spelled words and run on sentences and pass lots and lots of judgment on her.

Bon says it's unhealthy. He just doesn't understand.
Bon isn't a girl (good thing for you , huh?) so of course he doesn't understand. Jim doesn't understand it either.
Jenni said…
I've never read other blogs. It sounds like fun and that I'm missing so much. However, I did get anonymous hate male from someone at church last year, and the letter was poorly written. So I felt sorry for them and totally discounted any of their feelings on account of them being stupid.

And my word verification: prokdoc which is the kind of doctor I wouldn't ever want to be.
"Hate mail from someone at church" is an oxymoron, is it not? I don't comment on any of these blogs, for fear that I would be like your hate-mail sender, although one of them had a survey once and asked the question how the blog could be made better and I filled out the survey and replied with the advice not to apostrophize every word ending in "s." Passive-agressivity is where I live.
Dennis said…
I don't read except for the 4 family members that have them. If I did read others I would probably become so Irate that I would begin foaming at the mouth, ears, nose and toenails. I thouroughly enjoy my family members blogs and can find no fault at all with them (I wouldn't even think of trying to find fault). I do feel very self consious about my own blog since I don't spell goodly and my grammar is poor at best, but I hope that the few people who read my blog will firgive my spelling shortcomings.
I'd like to see you foam at the toenails.

Really, I don't read blogs to pick apart the spelling. This one blog with the apostrophes is an exception only because the blog is a money maker and the blogger's aim (I assume) is to maintain a professional image. But misplaced apostrophes get in the way (especially habitually putting them in words that are plural, not possessive) and make her look amateurish.
Jen said…
I recently ran into the apostrophe problem with a blog I designed. The owner of the website would use apostrophes for plural words and then not use them on possessive words. I tried to fix all of them, but it was ridiculous how many times it occurred. I did finally mention it to his wife that maybe he needs a quick recap on the use of apostrophes;)

I know you weren't talking about my blog. I was just saying that I hope I don't annoy anyone with all the pictures I take of my kids. I agree though that a giant flower on ones head, especially a small one at that (head, that is), is silly. A friend of mine way back when was always putting those big, huge, ridiculously large bows on her daughters' heads. She insisted that I have Mimi wear one when we were doing a photo shoot with her at 3 months. I didn't want to hurt my friend's feelings by refusing. Now I must look at those pictures daily of Mimi with her big, huge, ridiculously large bow on her head and wish I would have just told my friend that those bows look plain stupid. Ugh!
Shantel said…
I am late on the blog reading, however I just need to say - this post made me laugh - and I can so relate. Your awesome.
Unknown said…
Actually, and I know this is an old post, but as a Sith Lord one of my many special abilities is to know when someone is talking about me, but I was not blogging back in 2009 (it was a complicated year for me in college) so you wouldn't be talking about - unless you knew someone at Pomona College.