Hello! I know I'm a little late on the last week's post. OK a lot late considering it's a new week already. However, better late than, never right? Anyways, in this post we are going to touch on 2 topics:
- Do numbers really count? - Blogger's perspective
- What have I been up to recently
Let's dive in.
Do numbers really count? Blogger's perspective
We live in a society where the numbers on your social media handles matter. Be it 1 or 10,000 we will all judge a person after seeing the numbers. However, who are we to judge them? Do these numbers really matter? In today's article, or at least part of today's article, I'm going to present to you why they should and should not matter - at least from a blogger's perspective.
Why do they matter?
This is one of the most common explanation ever. The higher the likes, the more 'liked' you feel. The more 'liked' you feel, people will care about you more because you are more popular, right? I know, you expect me to debate against this right about now but I'm not going to because it's true. That addiction to be popular, to be the one having all the attention, to have all eyes on you can happen to anyone.
However, as a blogger, this addiction, this 'high' affects us first because of our industry. This leads to my next point -
Technically the number itself is not our main rice bowl. It's the work and stuff behind it. The numbers just help a lot of company decide if they would like to contribute to our bowl or not. Although some organisations do see the quality of work. Plenty others would choose to look at a more objectifiable statistic to decide. It's the same logic as would you sponsor a person with 10 followers or a person with 10k followers? The chances of you reaching more people with the same amount of 'money' is of course, a lot higher with the account that have 10k followers - be it fake followers or not.
https://notionpress.com/story/read/139/wake-upDespite saying that, I'm not saying that I support this kind of judgement where everything is objective and online popularity is chosen over quality work - I don't want to live through high school again. It's just that reality check Rita came knocking. Long gone are the days where you only judge people based on their results. Now, you judge people based on the numbers on this small rectangle of ours. Just like this short story competition I've Joined -
A little backstory behind this competition. A few months ago, I saw Notion Press promoting an upcoming short story competition on their Facebook ad. As an aspiring writer, I got interested and signed up for it. I intended to be the first one to post my story when the competition start but one procrastinating tasks leads to another and the next thing I know, I'm a week late. I only submitted my story a week into the competition, leaving me at number 40 something at that point of time. I know this contest is dependent on votes and votes only. I just like to have the illusion that I'm kinda 'popular' in my own ways - ya, that illusion came crashing down a few days after I posted on my Facebook page. I mean it still got likes and votes - once again, thank you to who voted - but it's not 162 people votes kind of votes - that's the top number of votes for now.
"If you are in competition where you will obviously be the loser, don't even bother wasting your time trying. Just give up." - Shi Hui's MomOn the other hand, I'm in the top 10 - right on the number 10 - with 47 votes! *claps* I think I would be stuck there for it's kind of hard to climb up the ladder because number 9 have 84 votes. I don't understand why is there such a big gap. Maybe the previous 10 th person got advice from my mother:
Thanks for your words of encouragement, mother. I will cherish them greatly.
Unless something drastic change in the next 5 days and I suddenly got 120 people rushing to the site and voting for me or some miracle, I highly suspect that I will be stuck in the 10 th position. I mean 10 th is closer to 1 than any other number, right? All I must do is to cover the 0 ! - lame joke alert.
For all the potential 120 people who have faith in my story and want to vote. All you have to do is head over here: https://notionpress.com/story/read/139/wake-up
And click vote. Ensure you let the voting bar finish loading after you click 'vote' and share the Facebook pop up for the vote to go through :) To check if your vote have gone through, you can see the points increased by 10, if not you can refresh the page and check it.
Thank you for your help and your positivity. May it flow through me.
Now going back on point,
- Life was much simpler because it was lived before
Why should the numbers not matter?
I'm not talking about reincarnation. It's more like this post :
I'm not saying that life is better without numbers. I'm not saying it's better with them either. It's different. We worry about different things now. It is just unfortunate that one of those things we worry about can only exist within the proximity of another. It also seemed simpler because someone else lived in that generation before. We often make better decisions in the present than in the past for we've learned from the mistakes right? However, that does not equate to happiness. This leads to our next point.
With this numbers, we are able to work from home luxuriously. But is that the best decision? Because whenever we work from home, we would have our own working hours and own OT times. We tend to over work. We strive for a higher numbers and work even harder. Even our personal life is affected. No longer can we eat food or go to a place without taking a photo and planning when and where to post them.
Our hobbies soon become a liability. What was fun start to feel stressful. What's worst is we stop being happy for the simplest things. We are more motivated by the numbers 'liking' the photo of these simplest things. Even if we try to be happy, it's not that simple. Maybe we've forgotten how to be happy. Maybe the association to be happy for the simplest things does not work in this generation anymore. Maybe happiness is just not a thing anymore.
Personally, I also feel that happiness have become such a difficult thing to achieve. We often have quick fix to our happiness but seldom you see people whom are truly happy with every second of their life. Like many others, I am not happy. I am unsure of the exact cause to this situation but I just feel very emotionless. I guess, things are just very neutral right now.
Whatcha doin?
Next, what have I been doing all these time that I was able to miss a week's post? Well honestly, I don't know. Things just happens. Although I spend most of my waking hours at home and that I seemed to be MIA from 6am to at least 2pm daily - that's my sleeping time for this period of my life. Please do not follow, it's bad for your health and skin. I do work. In fact I do a lot of work. A lot of promotional work for my blog - you can see from the boost of new followers that I have of each of my platforms. Oh and a little message for all you new faces:
Besides that, I took a online course... OK still taking the online course on Pinterest platform. I've been really into DIY and craft things recently - you can view my DIY section on IreviewUread here - and pinterest is the queen/king of DIY and craft platforms. Thus, I decided to invest some time in it. It worked. Now I have beautifully organised boards. I've also joined other beautifully organised group boards - Yes, there's such a thing, so fascinating - and I intend to update them on a regular basis.
So like what I said about all my other platforms, do follow me on pinterest for more pinteresting pintures:
Aside from that, I've also been improving my youtube game by adding captions in my latest video and other things so that I can up my youtube game. I've also created this random youtube caption blog to record all of what I said on youtube. It's crazy but it's for some searchable purpose. I don't really understand it but it have to be done.
You see, a lot of what happened after a blog post was posted was often not shown. Marketing is so important, no matter how much I loathe the process, I still have to do it. Remember back in the days when IreviewUread just started and my posts are just weird and unmarketed? I didn't know how important marketing is. I thought the 'numbers' would just come organically. My naivety disgusts me.
Besides all these marketing things, I also do various side projects such as my episode story - which is now on hold because life - reviews for other sites and juggle my personal life. By that I mean school life. I may be graduating soon but for now I am still a student with research papers to write and journal articles to cite. #UniLife
With that, I'm going back behind the scenes to improve my numbers.
