One Ninety-Two, Where Are You?

Well, it's finally happened. After months of holding steady, (what some might call "festering stagnation"), I lost another follower.

Where, oh, where did I go wrong?

This, of course, is inevitably what happens when you don't blogvertise, when you don't blogket, when you don't netblog or tweet or slit the slitted sheet on which you sit.

One day random Wednesday, some funky chick in Morgantown, West Virginia or wherever wakes up, looks at her blog roll and says,

"My Masonic Apron-- what the fuck is this cock?" and she hits "Un-Follow."

Un-followed. I have been unfollowed. The blogging equivalent of "De-friended."

Zoinks. That's a real kick in the cyberballs.

The thing is, though, it isn't really. When I look and see that I have (now) 191 followers, I laugh. Because, really, I don't. You know me and my obsessive ways-- I check the stats of this blog daily, because I'm curious, still, even after all these months and these 780 posts or whatever it is. I'm curious about peoples' reading habits. I would say maybe, maybe twenty to twenty-five different individual people read this blog regularly.

191 followers? Please.

I'll not deny that it's an ego boost to look over there on the righthand side of my screen and see all those avatars supposedly representing people who actually read my blog, but I know it's a falsehood. A long time ago, when I was a twenty-something, "My Masonic Apron" was the Featured Blog for some month on 20sb, and an assload of people all-of-a-sudden started "following" my blog. But I don't think it would be unfair to say that most of them do not read it anymore. I wonder how many of them did to begin with. When something's deemed fashionable, the shocks on that bandwagon get awfully worn.

That this blog was ever fashionable, even if it was in a small, fleeting way, still to this day kind of blows my mind. It's antithetical, of course, to the very principles and ideals this blog was founded on, and I do recollect myself becoming a little bit of a blog whore in those days when I was trying very hard to gain readers. I would hit up random peoples' blogs and do what I despised people doing to me: I would read five or six of their posts, make witty comments and hope they would follow me. So that, you know, I could dominate the world and shit while wearing a studded, vinyl face-mask and pink patent-leather chaps.

I tried to remain loyal to the blogs that I found during that period in my life, but most of those bloggers have since stopped blogging and, if they haven't, I've stopped being interested. Now, I read maybe three blogs. I've grown apathetic. I've grown... old.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me when I get unfollowed, and, if I'm surprised by any aspect of it, I expect it's mostly surprise that a person would actually expend the effort to un-follow me as opposed to just stop reading. I'll admit that I harbored a minimal delusion that I would somehow hit 200 followers before I'd written my 1,000th post, but I don't think that's going to happen. Readership has reached a very modest plateau, and, without putting myself out there and being a rocked-out-with-my-cock-out blogwhore, there is no way new readers will hear about My Masonic Apron, and I'm kind of okay with that.

Speaking of the 1,000th post, that seemed to me to be a good, ceremonious place to shut it all down as I was thinking about such things. As I mentioned, I'm about 220 posts away from that milestone, and I haven't quite decided about what I'm going to do when the odometer rolls around. I guess where I am in life at that point matters somewhat-- will I have more to say that I haven't already said four or five different times in slightly different, more-or-less neurotic ways in previous posts. I know I've repeated myself here a hundred times, and I don't very much care about that. But the fact remains that everything must have an end, and I'm finding myself at one of those times where I'm wondering what the point is.

As I suspect former follower 192 was probably wondering a little bit, too.

Please, Stalk Me

I recently read a discussion post on www.20sb.net about "blog stalkers."

Like most discussions that take place on this board, replete with enticing, hard-hitting topics like "Longest You've Gone Without Sex?", "How Ugly Are You?", "I Want to Discover More Girly Blogs!" and, my favorite, "Should Canada's Anthem Become Gender-Neutral?" I was definitely moved and intrigued by a discussion on the burgeoning phenomenon of "blog stalkers."

I have to go on the record at this point and admit that I'm not sure I understand the term. I mean, I know there are people out there who read my blog every day, and they make comments about the things that I write-- personal stuff!-- and some of these people even go so far as to "follow" me.

I mean, skeevy times, right?

Here's the thing: I thought that's what bloggers... wanted.

Maybe I'm wrong, but don't we obsessively self-promote, self-adulate, ardently seek the approval and consistent praise of total strangers? Don't we welcome them into our lives by opening ourselves up like a mid-March crocus? I mean... I thought that's what we did.

So I got to thinking, because no one on that particular discussion board was able to adequately elucidate exactly what a blog stalker was-- what is the difference between a blog follower and a blog stalker.

Well, I thought about this for a long time, and I came to the conclusion that there are a lot of similarities, and only a couple differences.

SIMILARITIES:

Blog followers & blog stalkers...

* read your blog obsessively

* comment frequently

* tell their friends, acquaintances, neighbors, comrades-in-arms, postal inspectors about your blog

* are almost always female

* have a vested interest in what you have to say

* can't squeeze out their morning loaf until they've read your blog at least three times

* more often than not read your blog at least semi-nude

DIFFERENCES

* Blog followers give you positive attention, blog stalkers give you negative attention

* Blog followers may sometimes end their comments with "I love you." Blog stalkers may sometimes end their comments with "Mo' cut you."

If there are other things that set blog followers and blog stalkers apart, I couldn't figure out what those traits might be. Maybe I just haven't had enough experience with blog stalkers. I once had a bunch of people get mad at me for a negative review I wrote about the band, "Hoots & Hellmouth" but they forgot about me after the next time they got high.

I sometimes have followers of My Masonic Apron write me 20sb messages or g-mails about this or that, and they sometimes mention feeling guilty about coming off "stalkerish." And I have to pretty much laugh that off until one of them shows up on my doorstep wearing a masonic apron with my picture embroidered on it and bloody pig's head as a facemask. Because, really-- the internet and the blogosphere has very much blurred the line between fan, follower, friend, stalker and everything in between. These designations just aren't as clear-cut as they once were. My creative writing teacher hiding in J.D. Salinger's bushes wearing camouflage make-up and eating tinned tuna for three weeks? Stalker. I mean, come on-- that's easy.

Someone in Alberta checking your blog four times a day? Maybe they're just a fan with O.C.D. Who knows, right? And maybe I'm a reverse-stalker for checking my blog stats so much. Maybe I'm fucking stalking YOU! Well, folksies... what are you going to do? Bust out a cyber-restraining order against me? That I can't come within five thousand IP addresses from yours? Tell it to the judge, sweetheart.

Do me a favor, though, in the meantime: get me some more stalkers. Or followers. Or whatever. I could use the attention; positive or otherwise.

An Open Letter to My Former Follower

Yesterday, I had 30 followers of this blog. Today, I have one fewer (or, as the Guardasil commercials are fond of saying, "One less.")

So, yeah...

I'm pretty sad about that.

Dear Former Follower:

I miss you.

I don't know why you left, but I'm guessing it was something I said.

I have a pretty big mouth, I realize that, but I never intended to hurt you, or make you cry, or, far worse, make you leave.

Where you went?

I don't even know who you are. I'm guessing you're not one of my male followers-- I can't afford to lose either of them. Who are you and why did you go away?

Did you get offended by yesterday's post about shallow, vapid 20somethings who blindly support cop-killers and other inane causes to piss off their parents, impress their liberal Facebook pals or because they have no moral compass to tell them what is right and what is wrong? Oh, my poor, lost, wayward follower-- are you a Mumia supporter? Well, you must have had some kind of inkling that this blog was not for you from the beginning. I mean, for a start, I speak in complete sentences.

Maybe you found the Dear Apron columns offensive. I can understand that. After all, they're all simmery with snark and shit, and that can just be too much for some sensitive people. Are you a sensitive person, former follower? Do you write Dear Abby letters devoid of irony? Hmm, well, maybe we're better off going our separate ways.

It's possible you didn't like the images to which I sometimes hyperlink. Yeah. Some of those just aren't very nice. Some are just.... questionable. Regardless of their quality or inherent value, I don't really hyperlink that much anymore. Maybe that's why you left. Jesus. There's no pleasing some people.

I suppose it's also possible that you just got tired of me obsessing over my personal inadequacies, my fears, my paranoias, my hypochondiasis, my mediocrity, my occupational foibles, my struggle for acceptance, my petty problems, my daliances in homeownership, my aberrant interests in slain police officers, airplane disasters, Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, vintage British television, antique hats and eyeglasses, typewriters, telephones, masturbation and Canadian folk music.

Well, I guess I can see that, too. Though it kinda hurts. Just a little bit.

I wish you would have emailed me before you left. You know, to tell me what the issue was. Not that I would have done anything about it necessarily, but at least I would have known why.

WHY?! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! WHYYYY?!!! WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME, YOU FUCKING BITCH! YOU FUCKED WHORE?! WHAT THE FUCK! I FUCKING HATE YOU, CROTCHMOUTH! RECTUM-LICK FUCKWHORE! GO SUCK A DONKEYDICK, YOU STONE COLD BIATCH!!!!!!!!

Whoa.

Sorry. See? Just a teensy little email could have avoided all that.

Then again... maybe it was the profanity.....

Meh.

Fuck you.