How to Write a Funny Blog

How to Write a Funny Blog by mattresspolice

Tuesday, 27 March 2007, 8:55am
Filed under: FYI (ish), lists, Pop! goes the Diesel

Do you wish you had a funny blog? Of course you do. Everybody wants a funny blog. Funny blogs are da bomb. Are the kids still saying “da bomb”? If they are, then that was a good example of topical humor. Or at least a topical sentence, assuming “da” is an article.

Anyway, that’s exactly the kind of hit-and-miss crap you’ll find on my blog all day long. And with my simple eight step program, your blog could be just as funny. Now, because of my love for humanity and inability to get anyone to pay $39.95 for my pamphlet entitled Eight Steps to a Funny Blog, I present an abbreviated version of the program here:

Step 1: Write what you know. If you never leave the house and all you know about is your cats, write about that. Writing what you know allows you to utilize excruciating detail to compensate for the fact that your cats are no different from 80 million other fluff-coated fatballs that nobody gives a shit about.

Step 2: Write about how “crazy” your life is, especially if your life is fantastically dull. For example, let’s say that your toilet overflowed just as you needed to leave to pick the kid up from soccer. That’s what I call a “manicdote” – A story that has a sense of urgency but otherwise is of absolutely no interest to anyone. Manicdotes are pure gold, because (a) people can relate to them; (b) they keep people from feeling bad because your life is more interesting than theirs; and (c) they are a great excuse to use tons of exclamation points!!!

Step 3: Use familiar phrases to evoke a sense of wackiness, such as “You can’t make this stuff up!!!” This particular phrase is quite useful for camouflaging a story that could very well have been made up, but in all likelihood should not have been. Other gems are: “You don’t have to be crazy to read this blog – but it helps!!!” and “Blogging hard or hardly blogging?!!”

Step 4: Pick a joke and stick with it. Don’t confuse your readers by taking your post in strange and unexpected directions. For example, if you think George W. Bush is stupid, introduce that idea in your first paragraph and then take another 16 paragraphs working up to a punchline in which it is revealed that he is, in fact, quite stupid. The payoff chuckle is well worth the 20 minutes of buildup.

Step 5: If you run out of material, copy and paste jokes from an email that’s going around the office. You know, the one about the differences between how men and women drive, or the one with the list of silly things that kids say about going pee-pee and whatnot. Even if we’ve all seen them a hundred times before, it’s probably been a good three weeks since the last time. What’s a blog for if not endlessly repeating other people’s jokes?

Step 6: Break the rules. Don’t feel constrained by other people’s notions of proper grammar, spelling or capitalization. Far more important than following these arbitrary rules is the copious use of smileys and abbreviations like “LOL” to telegraph your point to the reader.

Step 7: Whine about your stupid jerk boss or your ex-spouse (or even better, current spouse!). You won’t sound immature or bitter. Just darned funny.

Step 8: Always end your posts on a positive note. People love that kind of stupid crap.

~Diesel

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