Blither and Blather – My Policy on Likes and Comments and Follows – Oh My!

Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 22177 – 747:

Dearly Beloved Fans, Friends, Fiends, Foes, Foundlings, Fronkensteens, and Hodge-Podge, Esoteric, and Eclectic Collection of Followers,

There are a lot of blogs I follow that I am not sure how I even wound up following them. One way is when I am visiting someone else’s blog that I have followed for a while and I see a comment left by someone that I think was clever or interesting and is relevant to that post, I click on their avatar. If they have their link configured correctly, I will go and check out their blog and see if they really are all that clever and if they are someone I think I might like to follow. I will read a couple of their posts and if I like them, I like them (see what I did there? Hardy-har-har). Many times a post will elicit a comment from me and I connect with that person on some level.

Other times a person will leave a “like” on a post of mine and out of curiosity I will go see what they are about. If a person comments on a post I am generally a little more interested and can also tell a tiny bit about them. If the comment is genuine. If you comment on my blog I will comment back, unless I feel certain that you are just a spammer. I make a real effort to respond to every comment although with the new job schedule it can take a day or two. I really like getting comments. I appreciate that a person would take their valuable time and speak to me about what I have written. I am respectful of the time and energy it takes to make a comment and I don’t delete or block anyone whether I agree with them or not. Obviously, I reserve the right to do that, especially if your comment is vulgar and rude.

Now when I read blogs on other platforms it’s not the same because they don’t have the “like” button but they do have a comments section. Sometimes I will leave a comment but other times I won’t. My goal is to say something relevant to the post.

Here’s the thing, I don’t just click the “like” button, the “comment” button, or the “follow” button unless I mean it.

If I click “like” on your post it means that I have read the full post from beginning to end but either don’t have time or inclination to comment.

If I leave a comment it will be something related to that post or, in the case of poetry (James, perhaps, being the exception with his poetic interludes) I may make a simple remark on the order of, “That was beautiful” or “that brought a tear to my eye” or sometimes I will click the “like” button as my comment. Photo blogs it’s kind of the same way. You have taken a beautiful picture and I may not be able to come up with a thousand words to describe it. Actually, I do comment occasionally on the ones I follow. Oh, by the way, if a video blog is a vlog, is a photo blog a phlog?

I can’t remember where I was going with all this but when I started out I had a definite plan to say something important. Oh, I know, “Something important.”