Sensational Sabbath

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Back when The Bible was conceived of there was no YouTube, no MySpace, no Facebook, no Google, not even so much as an Altavista.

Fortunately attendees of the “Godblogs” conference in Kennington, southeast London, in their infinite wisdom, have drawn up a few guideliness… well “commandments” actually. Ten of them. Go figure.

Ten commandments for bloggers

1 You shall not put your blog before your integrity

Surely I wouldn’t do anything opportunistic like write about iPhones or free stuff on the internet just to draw a crowd? Surely I wouldn’t bait notables like Nalts and Loren Coleman to comment on my blog just for bragging rights? Tsk, tsk.

2 You shall not make an idol of your blog

And John said, Let there be blog: and there was blog. And John saw the blog, that it was good: and John divided the ‘culture’ from the ‘personal universe’.

3 You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin

Five words: I have a GodTube account.

4 Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog

Happy Sunday everyone!

5 Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes

I would like to take this opportunity to publicly apologise to QiRanger for drawing attention to his substitution of “threw” for “through” (which would’ve been more grammatically correct given the context) in the comments section to his recent post titled, Ultimatums.

6 You shall not murder someone else’s honour, reputation or feelings

In fairness, ABBA did that to themselves. [Incidentally something that came to my attention after the recent story I carried about Eucharist Desecration was that Bjorn from ABBA was infact not Bjorn again. He's a card-carrying Atheist. I guess producing music like that would make me question the existence of the divine too. Check out this video of him talking about his beliefs.]

Also, any reports suggesting Dan from RandomProdInc had died were completely erroneous. (If you check the comments on that post, you’ll even find an apologetic one from Tom – also from RandomProdInc. Oh, memories!)

7 You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind

This is becoming increasingly precarious territory. Okay, I have a confession; I once penned a slightly risque blog post about somebody I knew from one of those social networking sites. I felt it was so risque that I decided not to publish it. I did, however, work up the nerve to send it to the person it was about. They accepted it quite graciously and complimented me on my writing skills. It is worth noting that the individual in question was neither married or in a relationship at the time.

8 You shall not steal another person’s content

Okay, I actually agree with this one; shocking, isn’t it? A blog is an invitation to be original, to be yourself, to create. There is no obvious benefit in (as we say in programming circles) ‘reinventing the wheel.’ Not only does it infringe upon the copyright of others, duplicated content is deemed very poorly in the esteem of search engines like Google. Bloggers don’t let other bloggers hurt their Google ranking.

9 You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger

RoboFillet and Killert00thbrush do not believe in gnomosexual marriage. (Stop the hate! Love thy gnome as you love yourself, damnit!)

10 You shall not covet your neighbour’s blog ranking. Be content with your own content

It’s only human to compare. Alas, subscriber envy is a common occurrence in today’s digital world. I may have once or twice exclaimed, “Check out the Feedburner Subscription counter on that – woah!”

That being said, I like my content. I’m quite proud of it. I like writing. I like writing here. I like that a small number of people read what I write, but I really feel as though I have reached a place where I enjoy the process enough that it wouldn’t matter if nobody was reading. That said however…

Thanks for reading!

Tagged as: blogging, commandments, Sensational Sabbath