Well, I Quit

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty disillusioned with the blogging endeavor I started a few months ago.

It's the one I've been trying to share here pretty regularly. Not my poetry, but the cute little blogs about life and relationships and stuff.

I've been contemplating calling it quits on that web site for a while, because I felt like what I was writing just...wasn't fitting in with the web site, for some reason. The articles I wrote that meant the most to me were ones that weren't getting shared or promoted, and the ones I wrote that were just throwaways were SOMETIMES getting promoted but I didn't care because I half-assed them and they were terrible.

I posted an article called "Why I Became a Slut," which I linked to in a previous post, and got this feedback from an admin of the web site I wrote it for:

"First, let me start by saying the article is very well written. Your points are clear, and it makes sense. That being said, it feels very formal - professional, almost. Not at all what I (and I think many readers) would expect from an article with such a provocative title. I was expecting a very conversational piece with a hard hitting, don't fuck with me, sort of attitude. "Call me a slut if you want, but I'm allowed to fuck just because it feels good and I want to," kind of thing. Something where you're throwing the gauntlet down and presenting it in a very real and risqué way.

Instead, this reads more like a (very well written) college term paper. It approaches sex, stigmas of sex, and millennials in more of a polite, academic way. There's nothing wrong with that - but it doesn't fit with the title, and I don't think it resonates with Facebook's core audience. People on Facebook share content that represents who they are and reflects their own personalities. We find that way more often than not, articles that are conversational in tone - that read as though the author is there speaking to the reader - do far better in general."

tl;dr: "This is really well-written, well-organized and professional level writing. ...That's not actually what we want."

(Also I wonder if this person has actually read much academic writing, because this is absolutely not by any stretch an academic approach to discussing sexuality among millennials.)

I was pretty bitter about it, especially since that was an article I was pretty proud of.

Then they announced their changes to the web site a couple hours later. The pay rate for the Basic bloggers is getting cut in half--which hurts, because I was already only making 20 cents or less a day most days for the work I put in. Not only that, but the only way to reach Pro status now is to get two months in a row with 25k views or more. Pro status bloggers get paid FOUR TIMES what the Basic level bloggers make now, but I'll never get there because my writing is apparently somehow too well-written to merit shares and promotion from the web site.

So that was pretty much the nail in the coffin.

I'm really bummed about it. Not because I was especially attached to that web site--it was kind of a fun, lighthearted thing I did on the side of the stuff I'm really passionate about, which is poetry, which doesn't honestly get nearly as many page views--but this was the only web site I've found where I can write about whatever I want on a whim, on my own schedule, and stand a snowball's chance in Hell at getting paid for it.

And now, my friends, that snowball has officially melted.

And now I just feel bitter and resentful about the whole ordeal. Part of me is like, "Come on, keep writing! You can prove yourself capable of doing what needs to be done!" but I don't want to keep writing shitty throwaway pieces because the stuff I actually care about doesn't go anywhere.

I'm just so damn bitter and bitchy about this right now.