I’ve asked a few people to write blog posts for my blog this week, the first of which is “The Swearing Lady” from the blog Arse End of Ireland. She was shortlisted in many a category in the blog awards this year and if you’ve not read her, do and subscribe to her too. Oh and her birthday is this Wednesday, so wish her an early happy birthday. This is her guest post:
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You have no idea how much it upsets me to introduce myself as “The Swearing Ladyâ€, but that’s how you lot know me, so it’ll have to do. It’s my own fault, naturally. When the blogging bug hit me, which it did with the optimistic wallop you get when applying for a large bank loan, I needed a name and I didn’t think too hard about being saddled with it. Like said large bank loan, I forgot that a blog is for life.
Anyway, I blog over at Arse End Of Ireland, which is a bitter little bite of the blogosphere indeed. The point of the exercise was to spew forth the nastiest quips I could secret behind faux-comedy without having to leave the house for the stand-up experience, which I’ve heard costs you a fortune in Jameson. And for a while it worked really well. No one knew me, because The Swearing Lady isn’t my real name. The lesson I should have been learning is that anonymity is the blogger’s best friend, and that the honesty that’ll earn you the respeck’ of thousands comes only from no one knowing where your local SuperValu is (obviously this doesn’t refer to tech bloggers, of which there are more than there are grains of sand in a seaside sandwich. Or journalists, who all have blogs for some charitable reason). For those of us who bitch, who confess or who wage war from behind a monitor, being a Scarlet Pimpernel will save you from just being scarle’. It’s much sexier as well. Remember when no one knew what Amy Winehouse looked like? It’s like that.
See, there may come a time when people notice your blog and stroke their beards and go, “I am quite, quite captivatedâ€. They start complimenting you and emailing you and asking you for interviews and demanding you join them in podcast sessions and quoting you in the local paper. It is in this instance you’ll need to worry about that anonymity and the effect the gnashers of fleeting fame is having on its wee little arse. Is it worth having the discreet veil you’ve pulled over your identity raveled away by sudden interest and the love of a half-arsed audience? Fuck no! And not just because you’ll have lost the freedom of obscurity and you’ll no longer be able to decry the Irish Independent as a tosspot paper without upsetting half of your journo readers. It’s because…
Your mother will find out.
No more talking about how the boy-next-door gave you crabs, then (but that shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re a writer of exquisite talents, because no one wants to read about your itches)? No, the real problem is that you won’t be able to pass the homestead without Maman wondering aloud what you’ve said about her this week and looking pleased as a priest in front of a plate of Jaffa cakes.
“Am I in it?†she’ll ask.
“What?â€
“The internet!â€
“I fucking hope not.â€
You thought I was going to warn you all about court cases and defamation charges, didn’t you? You thought I’d say that the freedom to write came from slithering away from the long arm of the law. Not a bit of it. Being able to blog without feeling like you owe your family a few seconds in the weak limelight of a 25-subscriber webpage is an experience so heady I’ve forgotten it now, like Keith Richards and a time before he was a breathing cliff face.
Hold on to your insignificance, brethren. Mammies will pull pride out of anything.
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You can read more from The Swearing Lady here.