You ARE actually BORING!
Thu, August 30, 2007
Filed under: Internet, Rants
Rainbow Luck’s latest entry1 actually gave me something to think about. Unfortunately for Eunice though, my conclusion is the same: teenie-boppers DO suck2! For reasons read this blog entry!
Since we already have Eunice’s link to our disposal, let’s take advantage of it and pick it apart3.
Upon viewing this site, the first thing I notice is a gaggle of boxes, stacked around a huge header image. What does the header image tell me? It’s a collage of… things, none of which I can remember clearly because none stand out enough, or rather everything blends together into a big pile of … *traces the form of an undefined shape*. In short it’s exactly the same as 259687596 other teenie-bopper sites: let’s toss a shitload of pictures together and present it as ART. Hah: impressed you didn’t I? You, as the lucky visitor are supposed to nod at this in awe. *shakes visitor’s head for emphasis*
Question: Why do I (Vera) care?
I mean, after all there’s always the option of hitting that “little red X in the corner”. I’m fond of e-drama, others think hating things is fun… and others find this ridiculous attitude funny.
A second sweep of eye looks for some sort of content, generally an introduction (or greeting in your case).
There’s an art to making introductions, which every webmaster with a slight hint of a brain can instinctively feel. Eunice does know it: making the visitor’s stay as pleasant as possible.
Steps to be taken:
- Provide a visually appealing gift wrapping
- Easy and clean unwrapping process
- Appealing content
Now most people stop at no 1. Given the fact that the gift in this case is the site itself, the wrapping would be represented by the layout. Sure, the first impression is important: glossy ribbons definitely beat boring tinfoil4:
Eunice seems to partly keep no 2 in mind as well: she provides an easily accessible gift; a site accessible by both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Unfortunately right after this she manages to make a royal… blunder. What? Was I supposed to say something other than blunder?
Be courteous on the tagboard and blog or else I will ban you. Have a good day.
In other words, you (the visitor) either declare your utter admiration for the gift, or you don’t get one. Yeah sure, one should not look a gift horse in the mouth. However, if you have a rather wide selection of gift horses (i.e. websites in this case) terms change. Even more: those gift givers don’t demand admiration AND their horses have better teeth (eg: Pixel Girl Presents, Beccary, SquidFingers).
And we come to no.3, the most important part: the content of the site. In this case graphics and blog entires (as well as some pages detailing Eunice’s life/personality).
As shown above, there are sites5 which offer much better graphics at a lesser “price” (they only ask for a link back, no respect), plus they don’t use stolen content. Yes use of celebrity photos is STOLEN CONTENT. Did Eunice ask Hillary Duff permission to use that picture? Did Hillary Duff actually give it to her? For free?? The fact that “everyone’s doing it” does not make this less of a crime.
And we come to the blog entries. Simply put, they’re dead boring. Let’s take for example Five Lessons a Day. Basically Eunice tells the visitor that she had Maths, PE, Chinese, Science and Tech which bored her. Now please tell me why a complete stranger5 would want to read such things on a daily basis?
We’re all egoists, most especially because we have absolutely no tangent with webmaster. Do you care that my parents are not religious and that they haven’t baptized me? Do you feel pity for me because I was bullied all through elementary school because of this? Is it terrible that I was scared of making close friends during junior high because I was scared that they’d find out I wasn’t baptized? Or would you feel compelled to read about how a classmate blackmailed me with telling all this to the guy I had a crush on? No?! How dare you?! Oh wait… I DON’T care about you feeling lonely during Chinese lessons. Fair’s fair.
So how DO you make the visitors stay then? Write in a compelling way (e.g. Violent Acres, Verbalized, Jing Wen) OR provide useful insights on coding6(e.g. Jemjabella, MeyerWeb, Jeffery Zeldman Present).
Make it fun to browse: poke fun at yourself, be less miserable, don’t look for sympathy so much. Having your seat taken on the bus sounds rather stupid if you think that some kids walk 10km to school because they can’t afford anything else.
In conclusion, said site - or Swimchick and Outspoken Kate for that matter - look the exact same. They use the same design style, they speak in a similar way, they use the same type of tutorials, they deal with the same things. You’re basically clones of each other. You read this one, twice… ten times and then you grow up and look for something different. Out of curiosity please tell me the ages of the vast majority of your readers. Those that DO have websites. Are they 12-14 by any chance?
____________________________
1 you were upset about lack of traffic, so here you go.
2 to make things crystal clear from the start.
3 yeah I’m mean and rude; no this is not a review (see YourSite.nu for proof)
4 me being the tinfoil and Eunice being the gift wrap… in Eunice’s view of course :razz:
5 those are just the ones off the top of my head: there are many more.
6 or cooking, fashion, maths whatever you’re good at.
You do know mentioning Jem in the same sentence as Meyer and Zeldman will just inflate her ego even more, right?
(Pssst. Broken link to squidfinger[s].com.)
It’s a good rant. I don’t get why there’s just this typical type of teen webbies on the net that are, as you said, exactly the same. The rules are the same: leave a nice comment in the tagboard/guestbook or I’ll ban your IP! But I wouldn’t think it’s just an age thing. There are older people who speak in the similar way too.
@Rachael: those are the coding related sites I read most :razz:
@Rilla: sorry fixed. Yeah it’s not strictly teenagers who do this, however the vast majority are. And regardless of webmaster’s age, the commenters tend to be around 12-14… I id actually check out of sheer curiosity. As for why this particular website? Because this particular webmistress asked what was wrong with being a teenie-booper.
Oh, I’m so sorry you found my post boring. Next time you shouldn’t waste your precious time reading my rubbish blogs, then.
I like the style I make my website in, that’s why I make it like that. If it hurts your eyes so much, don’t bother looking.
No, Hilary Duff didn’t give me an image for free. I got it from another site (called Sweet and Talented) and I credited them on my credits page.
I have no idea why a stranger would want to read my blogs. Maybe it’s because they, unlike you, do actually find it interesting. When I type my blogs I do it because its is an activity I enjoy, not because I want to please someone.
No, I’m not a clone of whoever made Swimchick or Outspoken-Kate. My SITE is following their type of trend because I think it looks good, and yes, I did get some inspiration from them. You might not have noticed, but Swimchick’s webmistress is in her late teens, a lot older then fourteen.
Yeah, I was upset by the lack of traffic, but so what? I didn’t say you HAD to read my blog. ‘Having your seat taken on the bus sounds rather stupid if you think that some kids walk 10km to school because they can’t afford anything else.’ Yeah, it does sound stupid when you put it like that, but I did feel irritated at the time, so I posted it, it’s not a crime.
Some of my commenters are 12-14, some are older than that. I don’t see the point in you judging people on their age.
After reading this lengthy blog, I have to admit it’s pretty boring too.
Jessica is 17, so hardly “a lot older”. Also I didn’t say the webmistress was 12, I said that the vast majority of commenters are. I’m not judging people on their age, I’m simply pointing out that pretty soon the vast majority of your visitors will get bored by these kinds of posts.
For someone who so obviously got bored by this long post you’re quite interested in coming up with a comeback to everything I said. Don’t kid yourself, if you had found this boring, you’d have written “It was too boring to read it”. The fact that you devoted half a page to it, proves that you were definitely interested in it. So I’ve reached my goal.
You really are thick with the credit thing, or you’re just unwilling to read. Anyway let me put this clearly: UNLESS HILLARY DUFF GIVES YOU PERMISSION, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE HER PICTURES. Your source is ALSO doing illegal things by providing those pictures.
While you might not use the exact same words as Jessica and Kate, your content is 90% the same as theirs. Ergo, you’re their clones from my point of view (a random visitor). I don’t personally care what you post about: I was explaining why it is boring to read such things. That doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to post about the number of times you wash your teeth a year.
I would say something like, “Oh man, I hate them teeny bopper sites.” But when I look back at what my site was like when I was 15… yeah…
Your a bitch. Get a life.
I have one. That’s how I can pay for my shiny new top-of-the-range computer :smile:
Thanks for the advice though.
P.S. I don’t have a dog, sorry to disappoint.
^ Well technically, it’s more of a getting permission from the original photographer, not from Hilary Duff herself, but I see your point.
I don’t really think age is a point to bring up here, I mean I’m 12 and I agree with almost everything you say in this article, Vera. However, I could be just as bad (I definitely used to be). *Hopes furiously that I’m not a teenie-bopper* :grin:
Oops, I didn’t mean to say article, I meant blog entry.
@Mari: No :smile: , you’re definitely not a teenie-bopper. Also for the record, I used to have a similar site (up until version 5-6), until I’ve been told off.
@Amanda: well yes, but I’m assuming that Hillary Duff needs to give you permission as well. I mean, most people will like that avatar especially because it is HER, not because the photographer made a great work
Thanks. I had a few centered layouts before and I liked them a lot, but when you’re making my kind of header it’s hard to not have any sides to it. I wanted to make padding and all that but when I first used CSS codes I coded my whole site page like this:
header
content
So if I put some padding to my “content”, it will also affect the header and make the place look really messy. I’m trying to improve that but it’ll take a REALLY long time…
My layout doesn’t feature a celebrity, I actually have no idea who the girl in the picture is. I just got the picture from http://community.livejournal.com/foto_decadent , a site that provides ‘avante-garde fashion photography’.
Well, comebacks are my hobby xD It’s true, seriously.
So Eunice, just because you found the image on some site makes it ok to use? People on these “source” sites have the same rights as you: None. Unless you ask the person who took that photo in the first place, OR you actually are that person.
What is it with people and their golden auras of invincibility? Anything you say is changed into their defense, your offense, or slipping past negative facts which are actually true.
You people mean to tell me you’ve never used an image you found online? I mean, all images are owned by whoever’s in the photo… and whoever took it. Do you know how many blends of celebrities are made everyday without anyone being sued? A picture’s a picture. If you put it on the Internet, expect it to be used. I’m sure these celebrities know their photos are out and about… this whole “don’t use the photos without original permission” is ridilicous. To use 1 picture, you want Eunice to track down Hilary Duff and get granted permission? Insane.
No, we don’t want her to track down Hilary Duff and get granted permission. We want her to not use the picture!
(Or at least that’s how I think of it). Of course no one gets sued for making celebrity blends, because it’d take forever to track down and sue so many people. But it’s the difference between doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing. Which do you choose?
@Audrey: Of course we did, but when we were told that it’s illegal we stopped using them. We either used our OWN photos, or we went to stock photo galleries and looked for royalty free photos.
http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/scribblings/scr-copyviolation.php
^ read the comments as well. That should give you an idea.
@Audrey: All your facts are wrong. What proof do you have of what you’ve said? “Just because everyone else does! When you put an image on the web, it’s free for taking.” So in that sense, any picture on the wall of your home, a museum, or public building is free to grab too?
There is a thing called copyright law. Which means it is illegal, wrong, and unfair to take/manipulate another person’s work without permission. Sure it’s easy to make a copy of something on your computer. But people completely forget about the person and their effort which went into the original work. And that’s what makes it so wrong in my opinion.
Just because no one gets sued doesn’t mean everyone is immune to it and the law. There are often too many people to chase after, and artists/lawyers often go after the most immediate problems.
Aw Mari, I’m so glad I host you.
@Eunice - how can you say you don’t expect strangers to read your blog, and then complain that you don’t get much traffic? Either tell all your friends to read your blog, or put up with the strangers.
@Louise - you crack me up.
@Audrey - Just because lots of people do something, it doesn’t make it right. Lots of people murder other people, does that make it okay? I think not. Likewise, using pictures without permission is not okay. And yes, I did just compare stolen imagery to murder. :roll:
@Rachael: Even though I do not expect lots of new visitors, I am always happy when I see some. I don’t expect a sudden rise of traffic, but I always hope that my average will rise. In my opinion, that is a pretty normal thought.
@Louise: … where did I say I was invincible? In comments like these, all defensive ones are twisted, and all the ones like yours who support the original blog always have this desire to make everything I say sound dumb.
:roll: Just out of curiosity Eunice, have you actually read the article I linked? If you had, then you’d realize that you were not allowed to display pictures which don’t belong to you on your website.
I don’t actually set out to make everything you say sound stupid, however your view on using material that does not belong to you is faulty. Just because people display their artwork online, it doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to take it and use it. We keep trying to explain why this is the case, however apparently neither you nor Audrey are willing to even consider thinking about our reasons.
Can we use html codes in your comments?
Stop complaining then!
:roll:
Yeah, WP allows some, but I left that paragraph commented. Anyway, it’s high time for a brand new WP installation but that will have to wait for… I told you what