Meme Woes

I hate memes.

Goodness, I'm going to regret saying that. Let me try again:

Memes are not typically a good fit for my blog.

There we go. Better?

My first experience with memes was from consuming blogs rather than writing them. I'd feel like I'd come to know a blogger and had a great appreciation for their content. But slowly, it would begin to be taken up by a bunch of fake happy excitement about participation in a meme. I say fake happy because I would notice their personality and writing style change. And gradually, their blog would become more meme and less of them, until I couldn't be bothered to read anymore. My favorite author might be there physically, but they've left the building as far as this reader was concerned.

Memes are great as community projects, but I'm seeing two things that are really important: 1) maintaining the individuality of a blog, and 2) ensuring the meme fits well into the blog and the author's style.

When I began blogging at first I wrote off all memes and contented myself with displaying my enthusiasm for the blogging community in other ways, namely by tweets and comments. But two in particular have piqued my interest lately - the Review Roundup and Toy with me Tuesday. Now that I have something akin enough to a review scheduled for publishing, I have the chance to actually consider participating in the Review Roundup. But it requires each person to post an entire list of links on their blog. As I'm subscribed to blogs, I keep getting the same post with the same links from different blogs. It feels spammy to me. It's something I don't want to subject readers to, because I don't like being the reader on the receiving end of it. A button to "click for more" is a lot less intrusive, and I plan to get around to suggesting it to dizzygirl.

The other one, Toy with Me Tuesday, as had my attention since I first heard of it and I've enjoyed people's posts when participating even if some of them do come off as a little corny/forced. I was toying with the idea of participating, but it didn't feel right until I happened to snap a photo on a whim the other day that I realized would be perfect for it. Eagerly, I read up on the guidelines.

Here's the problem: I have a weird personal thing about referring to sex toys as "toys". I'm okay with it in conversation, but on my blog I'd just rather not. It feels like it indicates they're frivolous, as if they aren't currently essential to my sense of wellbeing, as if my doctor didn't recognize a huge improvement in my health when I began using them and told me that I should continue. Maybe if I didn't come from a culture that told me they were superfluous (at best) then I'd be less sensitized to it. Nevertheless, including a button of a picture with "sex toys" spelled out in the sand with said items just doesn't feel right on my blog. Other blogs have a fun, happy-go-lucky atmosphere and that's totally cool and it fits well. But on my blog? Nope.

I emailed Nymphomaniac saying I'd love to participate but requesting that I could just include a link to Toy With Me Tuesday instead of the banner. It'd be completely within her rights to refuse it, but I'm hoping she allows it because it really would be fun to join in a meme that I feel suits both me and my blog.

Maybe I don't hate memes after all--perhaps I'm just hopelessly picky instead. Comforting thought, that.