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Every blogger wants their site to be a success— and “success” must be the definition you most accept. Do you define it as having a lot of readers/followers? Good traffic? Or the discipline of writing and posting on a routinely basis. For me, I hope to have my writing noticed and stories shared. I hope to have my many ideas pondered upon and reacted to and commented upon. That seems to me the ideal blogging life. But with every article I have read on how to better one’s blog, one tip that remains a recurring suggestion, that everyone seems to follow, is that our accounts should have a niche.
One of Twitter’s great contributions— whether good or bad— is micro blogging, to limit characters to at most 280. To expand our thoughts beyond the limit, we have to add several other tweets below the first, creating a thread. This is discipline in itself: to limit a point, to have your idea short and to-the-point, to try to be creative and no-nonsense. TikTok, Snapchat, Reels, and Shorts as well follow the same brevity format. Hours of preparation filtered down to less than twenty seconds a clip.
These are all well and good, I suppose. But in my experience, at least, it has resulted into a fragmented and segmented way of thinking. And while I can still read a book, I couldn’t read it as thoroughly, as deeply, as lengthily as I once used to.
Apart from the brevity, the knack and trend (which has extended to several years now up until the present), promoted and popularized by Instagram, is the concept of the niche. Head over to Instagram’s own account, @Instagram, and you’ll notice accounts that cater to one specific thing. Instagram, for years, have been profiling accounts that view the world through that one craft/ art/ hobby they have chosen. You go to this guy to know more about knitting and gardening. You go to this girl for movie reviews and canoe making and poetry. I suppose when one looks at it from a “customer” or fan point-of-view, you go to a certain account knowing what brand or “product” they’re displaying, it’s understandably convenient for anyone.
This blog/newsletter of mine cannot do this.
What I’m trying to find out, my pursuit and how I want to view the world, does and will revolve around Queer— its nature and attribution, how manifests and affects us.
That’s not to say I didn’t make any effort or attempt to do it. I’ve made accounts before focusing on books only, focusing on movies or anime only. Then something would happen. My mind would wander, something else will seem interesting. Then I ponder as to why I ever decided to focus on this just one this when life is an explosion of all things interesting. I do not think I lack focus. I think I just have many things to say, some more than others. I think that’s Queer. I think that’s my normal.
I got the best descriptions of Queer through a Sage Journals Paper entitled Examining Queer Elements and Ideologies in LGBT-Themed Literature: What Queer Literature Can Offer Young Adult Readers.
Rooted in Poststructuralism, of course. A couple of definitions below are what I like most:
“With the notion of identity, there is no assumed identity. Rather, a person, or here a character, experiences emotional and sexual desires, engages in sexual acts, and performs gender, but these cannot be captured in a single, stable sexual or gender identity. Instead, sexual and gender identities are understood as multiple, variable, and even, at times, conflicting.”
“The disruption of norms is a key tenet of queer theory.”
We might then wonder, isn’t Queer a then a category in itself? I provide the best nature of Queer explained to us by author Shon Faye:
Will there be more topics in the future? Possibly yes. My life is just built that way. There are way too many interests of mine for me to be boxed to a niche. And I’m the least adventurous person I know!
I know perhaps this is the worst marketing technique and that few will notice my blog. But recently I just got a shout out from Substack and that’s cause for hope. My posts are definitely all over the place. But so far, I’ve gained subscriptions. That’s a good sign! But please let me end this reflection by sharing to you a piece of advice that’s been important to me the day I heard it.
Thank you for reading.