The Blog That Wasn’t There Part Two

This is the exciting conclusion to a two-part series entitled The Blog That Wasn’t There. When we left I had just accidentally hit the Publish button and created part one. -Ed

We were led to believe that hyperlinks were good. They could lead to other websites. They were part and parcel of the grand “content” scheme, the belief that sharing would occur across the internet.

For example, bloggers could embed video, music, images and more with just a bit of text. Books on blogging advised us that this was the thing to do.

Even WordPress got in on it. They rolled out something called PicApp. It was a way to legally include a vast library of commercial images in your posts. Like a good little foot soldier I used the feature every chance I could get.

What could possibly go wrong?

Bloggy

Bloggy, bloggy wasn’t there
Bloggy, bloggy didn’t care it wasn’t there
Just like my underwear
Bloggy wasn’t there

If you got a bloggy issue, here’s a bloggy tissue
BL to the O to the G G Y
BL to the O to the G G Y
Say it gots no soul but blog has gots a wide gaping hole

Do bloggers ever go back and re-read their own stuff? I do. Perhaps I’m doing a bit of research on a new post or I want to link something in. When I go through this process I’ll often re-read the entire thing. That’s usually when I discover all sorts of horrible typos that my editor failed to catch. Hint: I don’t have an editor.

And I’m just OCD enough to fix them, years later, once discovered.

But as I went through this exercise I began to notice something else. All my contents were gone.

There, on the blog post, where a content used to be… What’s that?

It’s the wide gaping hole of nothingness.

Every spot where I used PicApp in good faith is now an empty rectangle. All of those YouTube videos? They have been replaced by even funner messages like:

• The video uploader made the video private
• The uploader account no longer exists
• The video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sony. (You know, the company that wrote fake reviews of its own movies. They are sticklers for the rule of law.)
• The video is not allowed in your country.
• The uploader has restricted playback on your platform.
• YouTube performed an exorcism of the video. (Only applies to Kirk Cameron while trying to promote his latest narcissistic crappy movie.)
• Video was deemed “hate speech” after whiny protests by the Church Lady and her cohorts. (Only applies to atheists who are amazing.)

In fact, my research indicates all videos will be removed by YouTube except for the following:

• Funny video of cat

Now I go back and look at old posts and I, the inimitable author of same, don’t even have a clue what was supposed to be there. And all this time you actually thought you were building something. Ha ha ha ha!

The moral of this story: It’s obvious. Never, never, never include embed any content in your blog posts. That’s the worst mistake you can ever make.

So, effective immediately, I’m renaming this place The Library Of Gaping Holes Formerly Known As Contents. The Library of Alexandria had nothing on this vast repository of suppositories.

Just consider it my gift to you. Feel free to come on back any time you want your head filled with nothing.