If you know me well, you know I talk like a truck driver. I do only talk like that among my close friends whom I’m totally comfortable with, or a bunch of other guys tailgating. Lucky you if you’re one of them.
A few weeks ago I was at a good friend’s wedding. The morning of the wedding we played golf, about eight of us. I’m sure there was plenty of foul language on the golf course.
After golf, we grabbed lunch in the clubhouse.
One guy there didn’t seem to realize or care that there were others well within earshot of us or otherwise forgot to turn on the filters.
And since we were at a wedding event, he felt compelled to tell his nasty bachelor party stories. That’s all well and good, very funny and all, but he was really loud, fucking fuck fuck. You know how we do it, adding ‘fucking’ as a new syllable into words.
The rest of us got really uncomfortable and told him to cool it more than once.
What’s this have to do with anything, Scott?
Lots of bloggers I read tend to use this language in their blog posts as well. That’s cool. That’s who they are. Doesn’t bother me at all to read that. It’s actually nice to see that they have no inhibitions in their writing. I can sling that shit with the best of ‘em.
But, a few times recently, a few of the blogs I read had up with “Fuck” right there in the title (like here and here).
They made me think, “cool it man, you’re in crowded room.”
Here’s the thing. In this web 2.0 world of mashups and widgets, your blog headlines end up all over the place. Sure, if people are grabbing your feeds, fuck ‘em, they get what they get.
But if you submit your blog to places like BlogCatalog, BUMPzee, Blogrush, etc. they dutifully pick up your blog posts and publish your headlines on other people’s blogs who are in those networks.
It’s all fine to put this stuff on your own blog, but when you put it in the title, you’re putting it in other people’s blogs and sites as well.
And their grandmothers may be reading. Or it may be your mother’s blog. Consider that.
