Blog Wars - Lesson 1 : How to Start a Blog War
Nov 14, 2005 in General
Section 1.0 - Introduction
Since blog wars seem to be the IN thing these days, I figured that I should write up a suitable guideline for you noobs wishing to get in with the crowd. If you follow these fool-proof steps, you should be able to catapult yourself to fame, even if your blog has no substance at all.
Section 1.1 - Choosing your victim
This is essentially the person you want to go to war with. Ideally, this has to be someone you really hate - someone whose views you do not share or someone who has bigoted opinions. Unfortunately, it is not always wise to choose your enemies this way.
Some people are chicken shit and would not go to war with you even if you poop on their heads. This rules out jovial dudes like Eyeris even though he is a Liverpool fan and me being a Manyoo fan should hate him upon sight. It would, however be a waste of time to pick a fight with him because he would never respond.
Also, it is best that you pick fights with people with larger audiences than yourself. This is a common rule of thumb. Since the point of blog wars is usually to attract attention to yourself, the larger the fish you fry, the more you get to eat for dinner.
It is also easy to fight wars with someone who is generally hated by the public. This is also due to the fact that people are usually chicken shit and would not start a war in the first place but would join in the war in your favour later. That way, you get to sit back and enjoy the fun as people fight your war for you.
Section 1.2 - Choosing your battlefield
This is a keypoint to winning the war. People generally choose their own backyard because they have the advantage of having their fan supporting them, and mainly so that they can get more hits as opposed to giving their opponents more brownie points.
It is also possible to start the war on the enemy turf, but being the enemy territory, he might modify your weapons comments and use them as bad propoganda against you. This is obvoiusly not wise and should only be attempted if you know your enemy has not the technology for such dirty tactics.
It would be good to note that it is highly unadvisable to start wars on a neutral battlefield as it benefits nobody and makes both of you look like idiots.
Section 1.3 - Rallying your troops
No sane idiot goes to war alone. This is perhaps the most important part of the war preperation. Propoganda is always important. Play up your image as the good guy. Smear tactics against the opposition is essential. Ridicule him and make him look like a fool. Try to gain some sympathy points along the way.
If you have a huge fan base, half your battle is already won. If you have propoganda which people can relate to, the other half of your battle would be yours for the taking. This is of course speaking under the assumption that you start a war and intend to win it. Otherwise, the propoganda is irrelevant and you can just proceed with the smear campaign. Adobe Photoshop is a useful tool here. This is also where you can permanently stamp your reputation as a sleazy bastard (which is useful for future wars).
Section 1.4 - Going to war!
Write up a great big hate article about the person. Links and names are optional depending on the size of your gut. By putting links and naming the target, you are declaring a full out war and you would be known as 'He-who-speaks-his-mind'.
By leaving out the name, you risk being called 'chicken-shit' BUT you can later deny that you were talking about a certain person when he retaliates. In fact, you can use his retaliation to make it seem like you were the victim of a malicious attack and you can proceed to redeem your sympathy points among the spectators.
Another cheap tactic widely used (with great efficiency, I must add) these days is to bait your enemy on his own turf by launching guerilla hit-and-run tactics by bombing his comment box. Keep repeating until your enemy gets pissed and declares war on you. This is another good strategy as it makes you look like the victim and you get sympathy points for that.
Some people prefer to attack a particular article written by the target blogger. A good way of doing that is by exploiting the fact that most other people have poor English and probably did not understand that article anyway. The quotes can be taken out of context and be used against the blogger and you can also draw random conclusions from something said to make it look like the blogger said something bad.
For example, if the target says that he likes apples, you could surmise that he hates oranges and therefore is a fruit bigot who practices discrimination. You would be surprised the number of troops you could rally to your benefit this way.
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This concludes Lesson One. For your homework, please try out the steps above on a subject of your choice and notify me of the outcome.
For a simple and effective example, please refer to this.



