Court Controversy and Get Attention with Blogging
A writer I’ve worked with once told me a fascinating story about his lunch with an author of “outrage blogs.”
“This guy,” he told me, “had no filter. We went to have lunch. I learned he was in town, I was familiar with his work, and I had a limited amount of time to pick his brain about the types of success he’s had with ‘outrage blogging.’ He was open to discussing it; he was getting ready to leave the country for Hungary, of all places. So I met him for lunch downtown and got an earful.”
That earful had my friend looking around to see who among the waitstaff was getting offended. Apparently the blogger in question was extremely outspoken and didn’t care who overheard his inflammatory opinions.
“It was interesting,” my writer friend admitted. I don’t know if I learned much beyond the basics. He seemed to have an intuitive knack for finding topics that would offend people. Those blogs would then get ‘hate shares’ when people shared them on their social media to complain about them. I even modeled some work on what I learned from him, although I didn’t keep writing that type of article.”
As for the man himself, that was a very odd experience for my friend. “You never met a guy more uncomfortable in his own skin,” he said of the blogger. “It was like his human suit was chafing him and he was looking forward to removing it after a long day.”
Funny stories aside, this encounter explains an interesting and possibly effective way to use your blog to get attention, drive traffic, and expand your “digital footprint,” which is controversy. These types of blogs are infamously labeled, sometimes, as “thought experiments.” They don’t necessarily represent the author’s true opinions (although they might). What they do, however, is offend people. The more upset they get by the article, the more likely they are to share it, which means the piece gets more traffic, better visibility, and so on.
“There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.” – Herodotus
The results should be obvious… but remember, there’s a price for courting controversy. Even if you don’t really believe the inflammatory or controversial things you say, other people will believe you believe them. Don’t get crazy with this technique if you can’t handle its consequences.
If, on the other hand, you can endure a little flak, you can use this method to get attention for material that might otherwise go ignored. It’s an age-old formula: Nobody pays attention to politely written, quietly posted articles the way they do to rude, loud, even angry blog pieces. You’ll have to decide if this kind of thing is right for you._
*This blog was written 100% by a human and contains no AI-generated written content.
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