The guy who just retired and decided to buy a Cadillac Escalade for himself and his wife…He’s not reading your blog.

The lady who feeds her kids fast food 4 times a week. Guess what? She’s not reading your blog either.

The guy who throws the wrapper from his breakfast on the ground every day while waiting for the bus. Hey! He doesn’t read your blog.

The family down the street that’s perfectly happy to be on welfare instead of working? Nope, not reading your blog.

What about those people from the ultra-conservative, homophobic, bigoted, creationist church on the other side of town? Some of them must read your blog. Nah…probably not.

See a pattern developing? True, I’m exaggerating here but when I read blog posts about one issue or another I tend to think to myself “who the fuck are they trying to persuade here?” The concept of the “niche” blog with respect to controversial issues is a self-defeating one. Readers seeking out niche blogs about global warming, for example, are likely already firmly planted on one side of the issue or the other. The baby boomer using an oversized SUV and not paying a lot of attention to phrases like “carbon footprint” or “global warming” are NOT finding those blogs. Ironically those are the people who could be persuaded. My parents, for example, have never read a blog in their life but last year I successfully explained to them why they should get rid of their Lincoln Towncar in favor of something smaller.

Back to global warming as it seems to be a popular issue. Many of us saw the picture of the polar bear on the thinking blog the other day. Although I didn’t like his presentation of the picture I did think it’s almost an example of successful persuasive activism. When you put a persuasive post on a popular non-niche blog you’re more likely to reach people who may not have formed their opinion yet. It may be possible to get them to change their behavior or at least pique their curiosity so that they seek out more information elsewhere. Notice that I said “almost an example.” A post such as the one I’m talking about needs to steer the undecided masses to additional information. It’s not enough to put up a scary statistic or picture. How many posts about childhood obesity even explain what exactly it is and why it’s a potential health disaster? Not too many. (my own posts on the subject sure don’t.)

Search engines do help a little bit. The timid, perhaps inexperienced internet user may hear about something on the news and type a string into Google just to see what comes up.  Those people are going to find the niche blogs and some of them will get the message but, sadly, it seems to me that the vast majority of the people who are on the wrong side of important issues are there blindly with no motivation or desire to change.

If we could figure out how to get those people to the best niche blogs, perhaps some real progress could be made.

Maybe all of the niche blogs devoted to important issues should just change their title to “Supermega moneyblogging” or something similar. I notice a lot of total idiots read blogs about making money.