 | Rope Burns |
 | |
No, not that kind, you little bondage freak!
As in…learning the ropes.
As in…always being a day late and and a dollar short, because I am a creature of habit (which you can attribute to my flickering bouts of co-dependency) and put off learning new things, particulary techno-crap.
As in…the fact that I cling to tradition (it’s a Catholic thing). So I don’t know html (I’d rather pay someone), I fumble with Internet etiquette (yes, there is such a thing) and I’m probably the last person in the history of the Net to finally get her own blog. If you build it they will cum? er, come?
As in…I am –much more, than less– the type who always goes by the seat-of-her-panties (it’s the poet in me), just doing my thing without too much thought to convention or cabals (as you should know by now, I have an aversion to boxes and rules).
But, in between blogging here and blogging there and taking calls and doing interviews and writing essays and all the other stuff that deleriously clutters my days, I’m trying to understand how this World Wide Web works. In particular these days, I am focusing on this blogging thing.
I was told my someone who I think is pretty internet saavy that “google likes text” and “verbage is everything.” Therefore, if I want to get noticed, I should use a lot of keywords and such, so that the Internet Gods pick up on it and somehow through their mystic and all-knowing powers (something to do with magic spells known as algorithms), lead the web-surfing minions to my little blog. Evidently, the The Gods keep tabs on all of this in a little black book. Their highly-secretive scribblings are knows as page rank.
And then there are the High Priests of Internet blogging, Technorati. These guys seem to really know their stuff and act as a liaison–connecting everything and everybody together, be it Google, blogger or surfer. They are have created a few magic spells of their own, including tags and pings. And, unlike the Internet Gods, they generously share their wizardly creations with all of us.
At least that’s what I’m getting out of it so far. As you might imagine, I can get flustered with all of this.
I get rope burns.
I don’t understand it either. Since you seem to be making an effort to work all this out, please take us along on the journey. In this (as in oh so many ways, Angela!), you can be our guide and teacher.
Angela, our divine English major (summa cum laude—that is not a sexual reference, but could be in her case), should be roundly applauded for becoming so technoliterate on her very own. The princess of prose on paper has really grown up. I am so very proud of her.