Popularity

Ahh, popularity.

The mean girls from Mean Girls being...mean.

You know, "she's more popular than I am" or "I wanna be popular" or "I'm so unpopular", etc. There have been plenty of movies on the subject. Mean Girls is maybe the most popular. We've all had issues with popularity, and I'd be surprised if you haven't. I want to be more popular, I don't like being popular, I'm such a nerd, why can't I be popular, the popular girls suck and I want to destroy them, to name several examples.

This situation has popped up in many, many contemporary books. It happens to plenty of people, whether you're concerned about your popularity or bullied or harmed by other, more popular people. And the situations, of course, also are often found in media.

But the problem of popularity also crosses over into the blogging world, sadly.

Note: not all bloggers are kids in green shirts.

Not all blogs are popular. There are extremely popular blogs and then moderately popular blogs and then small blogs and then blogs that are barely noticed.

However, sometimes, sadly, being popular gets you more stuff. More ARCs and more chances to be on a blog tour. More chances to interview big authors or get swag, more chances to host giveaways. The more stats you have, the more followers, the more people interested in reading your blog the better chance publishers will notice. (Kelly's post on stats here is a good explanation of stats & what they really mean.) And so people want to be popular, because they want....stuff.

And free stuff is nice. I like free stuff. I'm not judging people who want to gain more free stuff.

But it makes me sad when people just want to be popular. Now, this next part will probably sound like I'm an annoying mother, and I am sorry OH SO VERY SORRY, but there really is no other way to say it:

BEING POPULAR IS NOT EVERYTHING.

Now, I'm probably reminding you of your mom, or a counselor or guidance worker. You've heard this before. C'mon.

Picture me as this lady, minus the math problems (ick).

But it makes me sad that we still have to point this out, prove that being popular is not everything. Midlist blogs can still get free stuff. I get emails asking if I can review books. I get ARCs. I've been offered to do blog tours before.

Being popular is not everything. You can still receive stuff, get fans, get comments, get anything your heart desires.

So I'd like to thank all the blogs I continually read, the ones that pipe into my reader. They aren't all popular, have thousands of fans, host plenty of giveaways and have mailboxes stuffed with books. But they're good blogs with quality resources and reviews. And that's really all I want to get out of a blog.

So I'd like to thank all the blogs I read. And remember (hear goes the teacher thing again): your blog does matter.

No matter how popular it is. And popularity isn't everything.

So thank you, bloggers, no matter how popular you are.