ATTENTION: YOU MUST READ THIS POST!!!

Just kidding. You don't have to read it, or comment on it, or think anything of it whatsoever. But titling is perhaps the most important part of our exercise in pseudo-blogging, the part that gathers or frightens away readership. The problem with contributing to a mandatory “blog about blogging…and other stuff” is that unlike other blogs, our readers don’t approach us with pre-endowed interest or even knowledge of what they’re about to read. Thus, our titles are really the only hope we have to attract an audience, whereas in most “real” blogs the titles merely serve the function of specificity, catering to an implicitly interested audience and clarifying not that “I’m talking about drugs” but that “I’m talking about mescaline.” Clever titles are entertaining, but rarely essential. Here, they are both. Titling tactics can make or break an entry, and it seems most people here know this. We see colloquial hooks like “Reality Check!” and alliteration like “Creation, Not Confession,” albeit an abundance of alliteration will anesthetize anybody to its attention-grabbing aim. We also have aurally and visually pleasing repetition in titles like “Good Writing is Good Writing.” But is this an effective strategy, or code for creative bankruptcy? Is there a shortage of metaphors in the modern world?

Let’s admit it. We don’t read every entry from start to finish. We may even skip over entire posts, scrolling up or down in search of that bright orange beacon of megalomania or narcissism that coerces attention from clicker-happy college students: “I am blogger, hear me roar!”