UPDATE: I’ve gone and done it. Check the “Satire” category to see the results of my efforts to date.
Advise me.
Sometimes I fantasize about making an anonymous satire blog, but of course I never do it, since, well, I have enough things to go to confession for without adding, “I published 98% of my uncharitable thoughts on the internet.” I’m keeping it at a cool 10%, thank you very much.
Meanwhile, the inimitable Larry D. is back to work at Acts of the Apostasy, and he laments the shortage of good Catholic humor around places these days. He fails to mention Dr. Boli (whose appeal is “Catholic” in the “Universal” meaning of the word, not because it’s a religion-themed thing). Dr. Boli’s the only blog I read cover-to-cover, and you would read it too, if you had any sense. I’m a fan of the other humor blogs Larry mentions, because, well, humor. I also like Lark News if you go in for evangelical.
So my blogger angst:
1) Will I be any good at it? Not that such a fear ever stopped me from writing something before, so I don’t see what bearing that has on the topic.
2) The solution to pollution is dilution? Nah, no worries there, this blog is already all over the map. One more state can’t hurt, right?
3) I really do try to keep it charitable. Which turns the satire fodder trough into a teeny tiny salad plate of things people can actually joke about. So, a challenge. Who doesn’t like a challenge?
We’ll see.
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Literary Criticism: Satire falls flat when you stretch beyond your area of expertise. They say “write what you know,” and in satire, writing what you think you know just makes you sound bitter. Or clueless. I’ve read a few pieces lately from writers I generally like, but where the work fell apart when the object of the humor degenerated into a straw man.
So. #3 again. It’s not as easy to do well as people imagine.
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Utterly unrelated case of Life Imitates Junior High School: I had a report that readers were following links from my blog only to go and have a troll fest at some other innocent blogger’s combox. Seriously? Come on kids. Push it up to 9th grade. Take a few minutes to read your host, get to know who you’re talking to, and try to say something intelligent.
Honest discussion is par for the course. Disagreement refines ideas into solid arguments. Rudeness just lets everyone know what gutter you crawled out of. Knock it off.
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