I am finally starting to understand why local TV weather people hype up the weather so much. (They always seem to  play up every impending sunshower as The Storm To End All Storms.)Bad or controversial news attracts people, and it feels good to have a big audience. I like to be altruistic and state that I don’t care about how many people actually read my words, but, honestly, when push comes to shove, I care. Sorry; I do. I like a big audience.

Now, what does my blog have to do with people in the media hyping stories to get more audience share? The explanation is a little convoluted…but here goes:

My last blog post was titled Stages, referring to the different stages of life that I have gone through. On Blogster, I tagged it with the words like “relationships” and “joy” and “love.” Most of the post centers around my relationships with my grandchildren. There are four pictures of my oldest grandchildren published there. You know how many comments about the post I got on Blogster? Three. That’s it. Three!

Now, some of you know that I keep identical blogs on MyBloggers.com and Blogster.com. On MyBloggers, I’m Hayduke. On Blogster, I’m MrWilson. (Mr. Wilson was taken from Mark Twain’s novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, by the way, and not the character from Dennis the Menace.)

On MyBloggers, the post was read by a large audience, many of whom left comments about their own lives and experiences. On MyBloggers, I tag all of my posts alike – Life and Events.

In fact, it seems that every posting I make on MyBloggers garners a good-sized audience, no matter what the topic.

On Blogster, however, the folksy, touchy-feely posts pull in a very small audience. The Blogster folk are more into controversy and sex and pain and indignation. (The inhabitants of MyBloggers-ville are also interested in such things, but they seem to have equal interest in the humanities that are lacking among the Blogster-ites.)

It seems to me that the Blogster readers are more interested in things that make them angry or sexually stimulated, and less into their feelings.

I like both sites. I truly do.  I’ve got good friends on both of them who write interesting pieces, and whose opinions and insights I value and enjoy. However, from now on with Blogster, I think I’m going to tag all of posts with words like Sex!, Jack-ass Conservatives, Idiotic Liberals, and Torture for Pleasure!

What do you think?