Apparently the fourth anniversary of this blog happened a week or so ago. I only remembered this yesterday. Anyway, it got me thinking about what I am hoping to achieve by blogging.

The main thing I want is celebrity. The fame that comes from having one’s name recognised everywhere one goes. I want to be paid by a casino just to walk around their establishment and enjoy free drinks. I want to be given free stuff by companies hoping to promote their wares. I want to spend most of my days in upmarket restaurants and bars.

I’m not claiming that being famous will make me a better person. To the contrary, I suspect I might become a bit of a cock. But that’s okay, because I’d be eating off golden plates, driving a sports car, and snorting cocaine off the thighs of Scandinavian supermodels, so what does it matter if I also became a repellent person?

But I’m beginning to worry that blogging alone won’t get me there. If I am to achieve celebrity I may either have to give up blogging and try something else, or take this thing to the next level.

First I think I’ll try making some changes to my blog. But where to start?

Be more disagreeable?

Is it time to stop pretending to be reasonable? Maybe I should adopt an increasingly shrill and partisan tone, like David Farrar has done recently in his blog. There was once a time when I would read Kiwiblog (though almost never the comments), but in recent months it has become hard work. Someone perhaps ought to tell David to tone the feigned outrage down a few notches.

Or is it time for another blog-feud? As spectacles go there really isn’t anything better than a good stoush between bloggers. They’re not always fun to participate in, though, especially if you’re on the losing end; and even if you win you usually feel somehow soiled and cheapened by the experience.

Comment moderation?

Most of my readers are lovely people, but some of you really piss me off.

One or two of you make me wish I had taken up stamp-collecting instead of blogging.

One of you just won’t shut up. Don’t you have a job? A life away from the computer?

Managing comments is difficult, because short of letting anything go and turning the site into a mini-sewer, judgement needs to be exercised, and that invariably requires decisions to be made about what is acceptable, and what is offensive or just plain trolling.

One option open to me is to disable all comments. I have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, and these provide a platform for people to tell me how wonderful or awful I am, so I wouldn’t be stifling debate if I prevented people commenting here.

But will people come here if they cannot comment?

And will that one person just continue his endless comments via Twitter and Facebook?

A newspaper

I hear great things can be done with an online newspaper format. That’s why I am going to do something nobody in New Zealand has ever done before, and establish an online satirical newspaper.

So shortly I will be re-branding this site, and providing satirical content in three-column format designed to poke fun at the humourless leaders of small political parties.

My new site, The Non-Combatant, will be launching soon. Keep an eye out for it!