On Blogging and Assumptions
China heads this meta-blogging editorial.
Some negative comments I got on my use of spoilers in my recent Gurren-Lagann got me thinking, not about spoilers in particular, but in the fact that I assumed my audience would already be aware of those spoilers, since I myself was. A mistake on my part it seems. But that got me thinking about what I, and other bloggers, assume about their audience. We all have certain individual perceptions about our readers. Because of my disjointed writing style, where I go from thoughts on an anime, to a manga review, to an irrelevant youtube post, all in a week, I tend to assume whoever reads my blog is aware of what I’m talking about, whether that be the most recent Gurren-Lagann episode or an allusion to Gaogaigar.
In the realm of spoilers, I tend to not worry about them at all. Since whenever I write about anime I usually neglect to tell the story at all, since I hate writing summaries, I’ll just assume whoever is reading it already knows the story. Since I read a bunch of anime blogs and visit 4chan daily, I’ve become disentized to spoilers. They just represent an aspect of the story that I now know ahead of watching that episode, and in my mind more information is always better. Now, if there’s something I really don’t want to spoil for myself, I’ll know where to steer clear of, but I also assume other people do the same. This is probably part of the problem. I assume my audience is similar to me; a highly anime literate fan who reads anime blogs, knows of nano and animeblogger, knows of the usual sites like TT, and maybe visits 4chan. For a large part, this is probably true, but there are always the people who won’t know of those things.
Which raises the question of is that a problem or not. Naturally there are people who don’t like what I write and thus steer clear of it. It’d be nice to gain their readership, because all writers and naturally egotists, but I’m not going to change the way I do things for it. But what if I assume something wrong about the people who do enjoy my blog? Would I need to apologize, or just write them off for not fitting my assumptions? Fortunately, I’ve never been in this position, and I hope I’m not anytime soon. But it’s an interesting thing to think about. I usually think more about what I’m going to write, than who I’m writing for. This mostly works fine, but I wonder if I have to look at it in a different way in some situations, such as spoilers. Any other bloggers ever thought in such a way, or have particular assumptions about their audience? I’m interested in hearing what other people think about these things.
While it’s time-consuming, I try to put things across in a way that goes down with most people. I try not to do episode summaries or spoilers because I assume that most people want to find things out for themselves without my help. Plus I believe that many people aren’t in the know and hate to be spoiled in the first place. :3
I also tend to preface statements by saying “Most people” or “some people” because not everyone agrees with what I say. While I might be seen as indecisive because of it, I’m trying to provide things that I like, but other people don’t mind reading. When it gets to purely writing to please the people that comment or when I’m writing something that doesn’t reflect my actual opinion, that’s when I know I should take a break from my anime blogging, if not stop. Fortunately, three months and some days into it, I’m not feeling that way.
I guess I also assume that my audience doesn’t mind reading many lines of text, which I tend to throw out.
Comment on May 22, 2007 @ 6:35 pm
I guess its cuz i dont care if people look at what i write (cuz they usually dont anyway) and dont care what they think about it either. So usually ill throw spoilers out there without warning, and hell, even once or twice. If you’re reading a blog about later-episodes of an anime, you shouldnt expect NO SPOILERS, i mean wtf? Going to ‘EPISODE X OF SHOW XXXX’ screams “This will tell you things you dont know if you havnt seen this episode you retards”
So meh, i think its their own problem for being retarded.
Comment on May 22, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
I’m used to writing on Livejournal, so when I write about something spoilery, I preface it with “THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE”, have a paragraph or two of non-spoilery material, and put everything spoilery behind the cut (on Wordpress, generally the !–more– tag).
I personally don’t care about spoilers, but I try to be nice, especially if readers have to scroll down past major spoilers in order to read other posts. I wouldn’t want to be yelled at for actively seeking out spoilers (it’s happened before), so I Do Unto Others and all that.
Comment on May 22, 2007 @ 7:43 pm
You should be like Impz and not care at all, look how he spoiled Bokurano 7 for like everyone reading his blog by putting the spoiler BEFORE the cut. That takes balls, I tell you. Be a man, do the right thing.
Comment on May 22, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
Owen: STICK IN IN HER POOPER, lawl
Helloes Demian, you needs moar Touhou 10 in your life.
I spoilariz’d Kanon for EVERYONE, and no one cared :3
Comment on May 23, 2007 @ 12:59 am
So, now I have to give my few words.
First off I like your blog very much Demian, please continue with the good work!
Second, regarding your writing style. If a blogger would try to target an audience as possible for me it’d be just boring. A blog isn’t just your daily news report, personal feelings, opinions and style make it much more interesting to read. Otherwise I would just go to another page and read the summary. End of line here.
And finaly, spoilers. Ah well, these small always present spoilers
This is a BLOG. I mean, for what do the people actualy come here? When an author writes what he thinks about an episode, manga whatever it’s only natural that he refers to the story and here we get spoilers. It’s something different when I spoiler the ending of a game which I always avoid when writing reviews of visual novels.
I have nor the time or will to write pages now about this topic so just let me say this:
If you don’t want to read spoilers just watch the episode first and then read the blog! Strange that blogs like Random Curiosity with a VERY detailed summary get millions of hits and nobody complains about spoilers. This is so stupid I can’t believe it..
Spoil whenever you like Demian, this is a BLOG and most important, it is YOURS!
Comment on May 23, 2007 @ 1:55 am
@Owen: I can’t tell if your being sarcastic or not. Doesn’t really matter, though, as Bokurano anime is horrible when compared to the actual manga. That’s where the real spoilers are.
@DrmChsr0: That’s because Kanon was shitz ohohoho.
Comment on May 23, 2007 @ 3:23 am
Drmchsr0: You got me at “her”, NO U
Oh and I was being serious, Demian, but meant for it to come off as sarcastic. When people read anime blogs they’ve got really no room to complain about spoilers, unless the blogger’s got a no-spoilers policy and unwittingly violates this rule.
It simply doesn’t make sense! Unless you like making vague titles for your posts like me, there’s no reason for you to pander to them.
For the most part though, I guess it would depend on your posting style. Have you consciously shied away from spoilers all this while and only done spoiler-filled posts recently? Any good reader would notice a change given time, and this could be the reason.
Comment on May 23, 2007 @ 4:38 am
Strange that blogs like Random Curiosity with a VERY detailed summary get millions of hits and nobody complains about spoilers.
That’s because RC puts the spoilers behind the cut and warns if they’re major.
Comment on May 23, 2007 @ 5:57 am
Well, my post was maybe a bit unclear since I’m a hotblooded nature^^
Of course it’d be better to make the entries like that. I still think however that it’s just natural that you’ll be spoilered when you read an anime blog.
That’s the second thing I forgot to say, of course the spoiler thing is just for anime entries, as for reviews like of mangas it’s of course important to avoid spoilers.
Comment on May 23, 2007 @ 10:53 am