Variations on a Theme: What A Narcissistic Consumer Anthropologist Can Do With A Blog

Today is day 364 of my 365 blog-a-day commitment. Instead of focusing today’s post on a sappy recollection of my experience (don’t worry, that will happen tomorrow) , I thought I would take some time to have a look through all the things I’ve written about in the past year and see what kind of content I pulled out of my – err – brain and what “the people” responded to most.

So, thus far as of about 2 minutes ago, the basic stats are as follows:

364 posts

Daily views: from a low of 1 to a high of 1,127 and a grand total of 45,901

Followers: 814 and counting – and i know for a fact that there are at LEAST a dozen of you who read the blog every day. I would have been flattered with one.

Two promotions to “Freshly Pressed”. Again, would have been flattered with one.

🙂

As far as topics go, I have covered a number of themes. The most popular themes (the ones that got the most “likes”) were related to :

• Pop culture, politics and news “hot topics”: from maple syrup hiests to Jodi Foster to wayward and not-so-wayward athletes
• American consumer culture: from lamenting “first world” challenges to consumer culture trends and media
• Well being, inspiration and generally humanistic, socially forward content: like intelligent optimism, inspirational content inspired by the “creative class” and lessons learned while watching my dog at the dog park
• Travel: documentation of my vacation destinations and the street art and local culture I encountered along the way

Other topics that people seemed to like included:

• Issues related to gender and race
• Brand and marketing-specific content
• Corporate culture (my Office Acculturation series)
• Holidays and other celebrations and traditions
• Millennials and youth culture
• Hipster subculture
• Pets
• Reblogs from two favorites I picked up along the way: Sociology of Style and So-Called Millennials

A few other topics here and there started early on but didn’t seem to catch fire, like my observations of my suburban cultural experience.

That being said – I am awash in data and writing samples and am now contemplating the possibility of compiling a “blook” (I just made that up). And I am just Narcissistic enough to think that someone might be interested in reading it. So maybe that will be my next “commitment”.

But never fear – I will not abandon my reader’s need to diversify how they fill their downtime by reading my meandering observations instead of playing Bejewelled Blitz or Words With Friends. I will still blog – maybe not every day – but some days – and potentially for the rest of my life. I don’t know what my life would be like without neurotically checking my stats several times a day and obsessing over assigning meaning to everything I see.

So, thanks in advance for indulging my Narcissistic need to do something that counts and for enjoying it enough to keep me motivated. This blog has been a bright spot in my life this past year and I hope to continue shedding light on the meaning that often tends to get lost in the mundanity of our consumer culture.