Miasmatic Review

Fire, meet gasoline.

It’s been a while since I’ve done anything to piss people off, on here. Yet I can’t help but to bring up something that really annoys the hell out of me. It’s something that many of you do or have done in the past. What is it?

Guest blogging.

I can forgive typos, bad spelling, poor grammar and slang (Hey I’m probably the king of grammatically incorrect misspelled slang with poor grammar!). When I go to a blog and I see a post up by someone other then the blog owner, it irritates me. The reason I go to that blog is so I can read the posts by the normal author. If I wanted to read these other people’s posts, I’d go to their site. If they don’t have a blog of their own, then someone needs to twist their arm a little.

Now before you guest posters go off on me, I’m not saying I don’t like what you wrote. What I’m saying is that I go to that person’s blog to read their thoughts, not yours. Normally when I see a guest post, I just hit the back button and go on to the next blog as if the author has not made a post that day. What, I might be missing out on a great post? You’re correct I might, but I can honestly say I’ve never picked up a new read based on a guest post. I’ve always picked them up based on recommendations or links to a post on their own blog. When I hit my blogroll, I have a limited time to check them all out. When I’m finished, which is rare anymore, I go on to look for new reads. Seeing as I can barely keep up with my blogroll now, I want to make sure I hit all my regular reads before I start looking at new ones.

I understand that many people get guest bloggers while they are away just to keep traffic up. Admittedly, I am a statistic junky. I don’t know if you’ve noticed all the crap in my sidebar, but I’m tracking everything. Yet, I don’t see how you not posting for 1-3 weeks while your on vacation is going to hurt your overall traffic. Yes, while you are gone it is going to drop off. Nevertheless, your readers will return once you do. It has every time I left for a while.

I’m seeing this trend more and more often. In fact, I was recently asked to guestblog for someone while they where away. While I was honored that they not only trusted me with their blog, but that they also appreciated what I did here enough to ask me, I had to decline. In keeping with my beliefs, I could not guestblog somewhere else, while refusing to read other guest bloggers.

This is why I will never have a guest blogger here. Also, this is my blog; it is an extension of me. It’s where I spew forth my toxic and corrupting thoughts across the internet like a bad STD. If I let someone else post here, it would be like giving a piece of me up. This hastily assembled HTML island in the tumultuous sea known as the internet is MY safe harbor. When all else goes bad, I can come here and get away from all the other problems in the world, and focus on me. Why would I want to give a piece of that up?

I know not everyone will agree with me, but what are your feelings on the subject? Am I the only one that feels this way?